Carbon Monoxide Alarms in North Carolina Hotels and Short-Term Rentals

Two verbs in one sentence set North Carolina apart. G.S. 143-138(b2) says the State Building Code "may" contain provisions requiring carbon monoxide alarms in dwelling units with a combustion heater, appliance or fireplace, and that it "shall" contain provisions requiring electrical carbon monoxide alarms at a lodging establishment. Houses got the permissive verb. Lodging got the mandatory one, and it got the word electrical with it.

Subdivision (3) of the same subsection tells the Building Code Council to write those provisions for "new and existing lodging establishments". Elsewhere the requirement for hotels arrives through a building code that bites when someone pulls a permit, leaving a motel built in 1974 and never renovated with no obligation. North Carolina reached backwards and covered the building already standing.

The requirement came out of two deaths and then a third. Daryl and Shirley Jenkins died in room 225 of the Best Western Blue Ridge Plaza in Boone on 16 April 2013. Eleven-year-old Jeffrey Williams died in the same room on 8 June, and his mother Jeannie survived. A pool water heater below the room was venting carbon monoxide into it. Session Law 2013-413 followed that summer, and the definition of a combustion appliance the legislature wrote into the statute names water heaters.

A lodging establishment under this subsection means any hotel, motel, tourist home, or other establishment permitted under authority of G.S. 130A-248 to provide lodging accommodations for pay to the public. Subdivision (2) then names categories a reader might think sat outside: tourist homes providing accommodations for seven or more continuous days, which the statute calls extended-stay establishments, and bed and breakfast inns and bed and breakfast homes as defined in G.S. 130A-247. A bed and breakfast home there runs to eight guest rooms in the owner's or manager's permanent residence; an inn runs from nine to twelve.

The permit reference is where a small operator finds their answer, and it cuts the other way. G.S. 130A-248(a1) covers the sanitation of hotels, motels, tourist homes and other establishments providing lodging for pay, and G.S. 130A-250(1) exempts from that Part any such establishment "with four or fewer lodging units". An operation holding no permit because it falls under that exemption is not an establishment permitted under authority of G.S. 130A-248, so the lodging rule in G.S. 143-138(b2) does not describe it. A four-unit cottage court and a single whole-house vacation rental both land there. Bed and breakfast homes and inns do not, because they are permitted under subsection (a2) and the carbon monoxide statute names them by their own definitions.

Confirm permit status with the county environmental health office rather than counting rooms and assuming. A property outside the lodging rule is not outside carbon monoxide law: it is a dwelling, and the residential path at Section R315 of the North Carolina Residential Code and the landlord duty at G.S. 42-42(a)(7) may reach it instead.

Put an alarm in every guest room holding a combustion heater, appliance or fireplace. Then put one in every guest room sharing a common wall, floor or ceiling with a room that holds one. That second limb is the part operators miss, and it is why the Boone deaths are the right way to read the statute: room 225 burned nothing. The heater sat elsewhere in the building and the gas came to the guests.

The statute defines what counts as a combustion appliance rather than leaving it to argument. Anything burning natural or liquefied petroleum gas, fuel oil, kerosene, wood or coal for heating, cooking, drying or decorative purposes qualifies, and the list the legislature wrote out runs through space heaters, wall and ceiling heaters, ranges, ovens, stoves, furnaces, fireplaces, water heaters and clothes dryers. Candles and canned fuels are excluded by name. A laundry with gas dryers, a kitchen with a gas range and a pool heater each trigger the rule for the rooms around them.

Keep the installation paperwork. The statute requires alarms installed in accordance with either the National Fire Protection Association standard or the minimum protection designated in the manufacturer's instructions, "which the lodging establishment shall retain or provide as proof of compliance". The burden of showing compliance sits with the operator, and the document that discharges it is the instruction sheet that came in the box.

Alarms must be listed by a nationally recognized testing laboratory approved to test and certify to ANSI/UL 2034 or ANSI/UL 2075. They must draw primary power from the building's wiring wherever a commercial source serves the property, and they must fall back to battery power when that supply is interrupted. This is what the statute's second verb was pointing at: a plug-in unit from a hardware store does not satisfy the lodging provision, though it may satisfy the separate dwelling-unit provision in the same subsection.

A combined carbon monoxide and smoke alarm is permitted where the device meets the carbon monoxide requirements of the subdivision and ANSI/UL 217 for smoke alarms.

Larger properties have an alternative that scales better than counting single-station alarms across two hundred rooms. In place of alarms, the statute permits a carbon monoxide detection system with detectors and audible notification appliances installed and maintained in accordance with NFPA 720, with the detectors listed as complying with ANSI/UL 2075. A property already running a monitored fire alarm system will usually find the system route cheaper to maintain and easier to prove.

G.S. 143-138(b2)(3) puts the drafting duty on the Building Code Council, which writes the operative provisions into the Fire Prevention volume of the North Carolina State Building Code. Enforcement then runs through local inspection departments, because North Carolina administers its statewide code through city and county inspectors rather than through a single state agency.

Two officials can therefore arrive at a lodging property for two different reasons. The local fire or building inspector enforces the carbon monoxide provisions. The county environmental health specialist inspects under the G.S. 130A-248 sanitation rules and issues the lodging permit, and that permit decides whether the carbon monoxide provisions describe the property at all.

Violations of subsection (b2) and the rules adopted under it are punishable in accordance with subsection (h) of G.S. 143-138 and G.S. 143-139, which carry the general enforcement and penalty machinery of the State Building Code rather than a carbon monoxide fine schedule of their own.

That machinery is not the operator's real exposure. A hotel that skipped an alarm in a room adjoining a boiler space has failed a written statutory standard, and the legislature wrote that standard after three guests died in a room whose heater sat elsewhere in the building. The landlord-tenant penalties described on the North Carolina state page, an infraction with a $250 maximum, come from G.S. 42-44 and cover rental dwellings rather than lodging establishments.