Guides: Residential
Fire Safety Compliance for Homes
Fire safety is the one compliance area where a design decision and a life-safety decision are the same decision. Here's what a residential renovation in Singapore needs to work within.
Detection
Smoke Detectors
Every home built in Singapore since June 2018 is required to have a smoke detector, and it needs to comply with a recognised standard: EN 14604, UL 217 or AS 3786. Detectors are placed in the living room and along corridors or staircase landings, and they need regular maintenance to stay functional. A renovation that disturbs ceiling wiring or finishes is a common point where a detector gets disconnected and never reconnected.
Escape Routes
Common Corridors
A minimum clear passage of 1.2 metres must be maintained from the parapet wall along common corridors, and nothing may be placed along a corridor narrower than that. Storage inside dry riser, wet riser or hose-reel compartments is prohibited outright. These rules apply to what residents place in shared corridors during and after a renovation, not just what a contractor does inside the unit. A homeowner storing renovation materials in the corridor is as much a compliance failure as a design decision that narrows it.
Doors
Fire-Rated Doors
Main entrance doors and any fire compartment doors carry a fire rating that must be maintained if they're replaced or altered during a renovation. Swapping a unit's front door for a non-rated design is one of the more common fire-safety compliance misses in residential renovations, precisely because it's framed as a cosmetic decision rather than a life-safety one.
Designing a commercial fit-out instead?
Commercial spaces answer to a considerably stricter fire code. See our Commercial Compliance Standards guide for the SCDF Fire Code 2023 framework.