Carbon Monoxide Devices in Michigan Hotels, Motels and Boarding Houses

Michigan wrote lodging into the statute itself, which few states did. MCL 125.1504d(1) requires the owner, operator or builder of "residential occupancies where the occupants are primarily transient in nature, including, but not limited to, boarding houses, hotels, and motels" to install one operational carbon monoxide device at each source point.

Where that device goes is the part that surprises operators arriving from another state. A source point is defined at subsection (5)(c) as an area where a mechanism is present that provides a common source of heat from a fossil-fuel-burning furnace, boiler or water heater. The device belongs at the plant serving the building. Most states put alarms in the sleeping units and count them by room; Michigan counts them by heat source.

Two limits decide whether subsection (1) reaches a given property, and both are in its first line. The duty begins 1 December 2009, and it involves "only buildings and structures newly constructed on or after that date". A motel that opened in 1998 and has never been rebuilt is outside that subsection. It is not necessarily outside the section, and the difference is the whole open question here: subsection (2) provides that if the International Building Code carries a carbon monoxide requirement and the director adopts it in a code adopted after the amendatory act, "those requirements apply and shall be followed upon the effective date of the code". Section 915 has been in the IBC since its 2015 edition. So an older Michigan hotel turns on which edition the state enforces, and that could not be established: legislature.mi.gov does not resolve, the LARA rules site answers with a Cloudflare block, and up.codes returns 404 for both michigan/ibc-2015 and michigan/ibc-2021.

The statute describes an occupancy rather than a licence category, so the test is whether occupants are primarily transient in nature. Boarding houses, hotels and motels are named as examples and the phrase "including, but not limited to" leaves the list open, which is what lets it reach lodging formats the legislature did not name in 2008.

The date restriction does more work than the occupancy test. Only buildings and structures newly constructed on or after 1 December 2009 are covered, and section 4d has no renovation, sale or transfer trigger, so an older hotel does not enter section 4d later through a remodel. A Michigan operator's first question is the construction date, not the room count. That settles section 4d and not the wider question: subsection (2), set out below, can bring the International Building Code requirement in through a later code adoption, so an older hotel is outside this statute rather than outside every rule. This page does not close that second route, which is why the existing-building answer above reads as open.

Short-term rental hosts should read the occupancy words carefully. A whole-house rental let to a succession of weekend guests is a residential occupancy whose occupants are primarily transient, and nothing in section 4d limits it to licensed lodging. The building date still governs. For a house built before December 2009, the separate dwelling provision at MCL 125.1504f may apply instead, on its own triggers of initial construction, permitted renovation of a single-family dwelling, or the addition of a bedroom.

Find every source point and put one operational device at each. "Operational" carries its own definition at subsection (5)(b), meaning working and in service, so a device sitting in a maintenance cupboard does not satisfy the section.

Read the source-point definition closely before deciding a property has none. It covers a mechanism providing a common source of heat from a fossil-fuel-burning furnace, boiler or water heater. It excludes a place where the only fuel-burning thing present is a wood or fossil-fuel-burning fireplace, or a wood or fossil-fuel-burning space heater. A lobby with a decorative gas fireplace and nothing else is not a source point. A boiler room is. A gas-fired water heater serving the building is.

Michigan then offers something no other state in the fifty-one offers: two statutory liability shields, one for whoever installs the device and one for the owner or operator who maintains it. Wisconsin protects an owner against a false-alarm claim, which is a narrower thing than either. Under subsection (3) a person who installs a device in accordance with the manufacturer's published instructions in existence at the time of installation has no liability for its operation, maintenance or effectiveness. Under subsection (4) the owner or operator who installs or arranges installation and maintains the device to those same instructions gets the same protection. Keeping the instruction sheet and a maintenance record is what makes subsection (4) available, so file both.

The hardware specification is deliberately open. Subsection (2) permits a device that is battery-powered, plug-in with or without battery backup, wired into the AC power line with secondary battery backup, or connected to a system by means of a control panel. The one fixed requirement is that the alarm be audible.

Subsection (5)(a) sets the certification standard: a device that detects carbon monoxide, alerts occupants by a distinct and audible signal either self-contained in the unit or activated through a system connection, and is certified by a nationally recognized testing laboratory to conform to the latest Underwriters Laboratories standards. Note that section 4d words this differently from the dwelling section at MCL 125.1504f, which names ANSI/UL 2034 and ANSI/UL 2075 directly. For a hotel, the operative words are the latest UL standards rather than a fixed edition number.

Subsection (2) also carries a clause that can change this whole page for a given property. If the International Building Code contains a requirement for a carbon monoxide device, and the director adopts that requirement as part of a code adopted after the amendatory act that added the subsection, then those requirements apply and shall be followed from the effective date of that code. The IBC has carried a carbon monoxide section since its 2015 edition, and that section works on sleeping units rather than source points. Ask the local enforcing agency which building code edition is currently in force and whether it carries that section. If it does, guest-room placement sits on top of the source-point rule and the statute says so itself.

Michigan enforces through the local enforcing agency responsible for construction code administration, which in most communities is the municipal or county building department, under the Bureau of Construction Codes at the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. The check happens during inspections for initial construction, which fits a section that only reaches newly constructed buildings.

That leaves a gap worth naming. Because section 4d attaches at construction and carries no periodic inspection duty, nothing in it brings an inspector back to a hotel built in 2012 to confirm the device is still working. The obligation to keep it operational continues; the routine mechanism for checking does not.

Section 4d does not contain a penalty clause. The fine deferral that appears on the Michigan state page belongs to MCL 125.1504f(3), the dwelling section, and it should not be read across to lodging. What section 4d gives instead runs the other way: subsections (3) and (4) grant liability protection to those who install and maintain devices to the manufacturer's instructions.

For an operator that inverts the usual calculation. The exposure after a carbon monoxide incident is civil rather than regulatory, and the statute has told you exactly what buys protection. An operator with dated installation records, the manufacturer's instructions on file and a maintenance log has a statutory answer available. An operator without them is arguing the ordinary negligence case with no shield.

A second source of civil exposure sits outside the lodging statute altogether. MCL 554.139(1) writes two covenants into "every lease or license of residential premises": that the premises and all common areas are fit for the use intended by the parties, and that the lessor or licensor will keep them in reasonable repair and comply with the health and safety laws of the state and the local unit of government. The word doing the work for a lodging operator is licence. A guest ordinarily holds a licence rather than a lease, so the covenant is drafted in terms capable of reaching a stay. Subsection (3) then directs that the section be construed liberally.

What a Michigan landlord relies on to escape that covenant is unavailable here. Subsection (2) permits the parties to modify the fitness and repair obligations, but only where the lease or licence has a current term of at least one year. A twelve-month residential lease clears that threshold; a booking does not, and no ordinary lodging arrangement will. The covenant a Michigan tenant may have signed away therefore survives intact against a guest. Whether a court would apply 554.139 to transient lodging was not researched, no Michigan decision on the point was found, and this belongs on the list of things to raise with counsel rather than among the settled duties above.