Carbon Monoxide Alarm Rules for North Dakota Rentals

North Dakota answers this question in two places that were written a century apart, and neither of them mentions the other.

The technical rule is NDAC 24.1-06-01-40(3), a State Electrical Board wiring standard made under NDCC 43-09-05, effective 1 April 2017 and amended on 1 October 2020 and 1 July 2024. It provides that an approved carbon monoxide alarm shall be installed in dwelling units within which fuel-fired appliances are installed and in dwelling units that have attached garages, and it names three locations. Because the requirement lives in a wiring standard rather than in a building code, the power and interconnection language is unusually specific and the official who inspects it may be an electrical inspector.

A second layer sits over parts of the state. The State Fire Code at NDAC 45-18-01-04 takes the 2021 International Fire Code, and its amendments inside chapter 9 reach only Sections 903.2.8, 903.3.1.1.1, 903.3.5, 905.1.1 and 907.8.3, so Section 915 applies as published. Two definitions carry that statewide: NDAC 45-18-01-02(1) applies the chapter to all persons without restrictions unless specifically exempted, and NDAC 45-18-01-03(2) says "city" or "jurisdiction" refers to the state of North Dakota. The state building code, by contrast, is elective under NDAC 108-01-01-04(2) and applies only in the cities, townships and counties that chose to adopt and enforce one. The Department of Commerce publishes the list of enforcing jurisdictions in the code book, so a landlord can look their own address up.

The lease side is NDCC chapter 47-16, and its shape is the thing to understand before reading any remedy. North Dakota is a Field Code state: 47-16-13, the repair-and-deduct section, still speaks of "dilapidations which the lessor ought to repair" and has not been rewritten since the Civil Code of 1877. In 1977 the legislature bolted a modern duty list onto that chapter at 47-16-13.1 without touching the older section. So the duty is modern, the remedy is Victorian, and a tenant's argument runs across the seam between them.

The scope words are "dwelling units", and that phrase is doing the work a tenant needs it to do.

NDAC 24.1-06-01-40(3) requires an approved carbon monoxide alarm in dwelling units within which fuel-fired appliances are installed and in dwelling units that have attached garages. Nothing in the subsection turns on ownership, tenure or the existence of a lease. A rented house in Dickinson, a unit in a Fargo fourplex and an owner-occupied bungalow in Mandan are all inside it on the same words, provided the fuel or the garage condition is there.

The subsection above proves the drafter was sorting by occupancy type rather than by tenure, which is worth knowing because it also settles a question this page does not answer. Subsection 1 requires smoke alarms in dwelling units, congregate residences, and hotel or lodging house guest rooms used for sleeping. Subsection 2 requires apartment houses, hotels and congregate residences to carry a manual and automatic fire alarm system. Subsection 3, the carbon monoxide one, names dwelling units and stops. Hotels appear on either side of it and not in it, which is why a North Dakota guest room takes its answer from the fire code instead.

Two conditions bring a rental in and there is no third. Fuel-fired appliances installed in the unit, or an attached garage. A gas furnace, a gas water heater, a gas range or a wood or pellet stove puts the unit inside the rule; so does a garage sharing a wall or a door. An all-electric unit in a building with no attached garage falls outside the wiring standard, and the fire code trigger conditions at Sections 915.1.2 through 915.1.6 then ask a wider question, reaching a fuel-burning appliance elsewhere in the building with a communicating opening into the unit. In a Grand Forks apartment block with a gas boiler in a shared plant room, that second route is the one that matters.

Existing buildings are covered rather than grandfathered. The fire code's existing-structures chapter reaches them: North Dakota amends only Section 1103.5.1 in chapter 11 and leaves Section 1103.9 intact, and it does not amend IFC 102.1, so item 3 of that section still applies Chapter 11 to existing structures without anyone forming an opinion first. NDAC 45-18-01-02(2) adds that a condition legally in existence when the chapter was adopted may continue only where the state fire marshal is of the opinion that it does not constitute a distinct hazard to life or property.

NDCC 47-16-13.1(1) is the landlord duty list, and for a carbon monoxide alarm three of its six subdivisions are live at once.

Subdivision (a) requires the landlord to comply with the requirements of applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety. In most states that clause waits on a municipality to adopt something. In North Dakota it does not, because the alarm requirement is already statewide in NDAC 24.1-06-01-40(3) and in the adopted residential code. Subdivision (b) requires all repairs and whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition. Subdivision (d) requires the landlord to maintain in good and safe working order all electrical, heating, ventilating and other facilities and appliances supplied or required to be supplied by the landlord, and the words "or required to be supplied" are why a landlord who never fitted an alarm the code requires is still inside (d).

Subsection 2 is where the reading gets interesting, and it rewards care. It allows the landlord a reasonable time to remedy noncompliance, but only "in case of noncompliance with the requirements of subdivisions b through f of subsection 1". Subdivision (a), the code-compliance duty, is left out of that list. Subsection 3 then provides that where the subdivision (a) duty is greater than any other duty in the subsection, the landlord's duty is determined by reference to subdivision (a). Since the carbon monoxide requirement enters through (a), the statute on its face attaches no grace period to it. Two cautions before anyone builds a case on that. The repair-and-deduct route in 47-16-13 runs on its own reasonable time after notice regardless, so the practical gain is narrower than the text suggests, and this is a reading of the words rather than a settled rule.

Then the lease clause, and North Dakota's answer is the odd one out. Subsections 4 and 5 permit an agreement that the tenant perform specified repairs, maintenance tasks, alterations or remodeling, in writing, signed, supported by adequate consideration and entered into in good faith. Subsection 5(b) sets the limit, and it is a limit in an unexpected place: the work must not be "necessary to cure noncompliance with subdivision e of subsection 1". Subdivision (e) is the duty to provide receptacles for ashes, garbage and rubbish. The uniform act this list was modelled on carves out the code-compliance duty; North Dakota's carve-out points at the bins. So a clause moving carbon monoxide work onto a tenant is not blocked by 5(b) on the face of the text. Subsection 6 blunts it for one class of rental, providing that the landlord may not treat performance of the subsection 4 agreement, the single-family one, as a condition to any obligation under the rental agreement. Beyond that the backstop is 47-16-13.3, which lets a court refuse to enforce an unconscionable provision or limit its application.

NDCC 47-16-13.2 lists seven tenant duties and three of them reach an alarm.

Subsection 1 requires compliance with obligations primarily imposed on tenants by applicable provisions of building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety. Note "primarily imposed upon tenants": the wiring standard puts its duty on the installation rather than on the occupant, so this subsection does not quietly transfer the alarm to the tenant.

Subsection 5 requires reasonable use of all electrical, heating, ventilating and other facilities and appliances in the premises. Subsection 6 forbids the tenant, or anyone the tenant knowingly permits, from deliberately or negligently destroying, defacing, damaging, impairing or removing any part of the premises. North Dakota wrote negligently as well as deliberately, and included "impair", so a device disabled and left disabled is inside the words as squarely as one taken down.

The consequence is sharper here than in most states, and it comes from the enforcement section rather than from the duty. NDCC 47-16-13.6 makes any right or action under 47-16-13.1 through 47-16-13.6 enforceable by action and lets the court award reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party. That runs both ways. A North Dakota tenant who sues over an alarm and loses can be ordered to pay the landlord's legal costs, which is a risk the fee-shifting statutes in most tenant-side states do not create. Report the fault in writing, keep the device on the wall, and keep the receipts.

NDAC 24.1-06-01-40(3) gives three locations and the middle one is where summaries go wrong.

An approved alarm goes outside each sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the bedrooms. It goes on every habitable level. And it goes in each bedroom, or its attached bathroom, within which a fuel-fired appliance is located.

Nothing is excluded from that count. The carve-out for crawl spaces and uninhabitable attics that circulates alongside this rule belongs to subsection 1(a), the smoke alarm requirement, which asks for a smoke alarm "on each additional story of the dwelling, including basements and habitable attics but not including crawl spaces and uninhabitable attics". One section of North Dakota code carries the exclusion list and the rule that does not use it, two subsections apart. Any guidance citing 24.1-06-01-40 without its subsection number has a coin-flip chance of describing the wrong device, and a landlord who applies the smoke alarm exclusions to the carbon monoxide rule will end up one alarm short on a partly finished lower level.

Device and power language follows the adopted code. Single-station alarms are listed to UL 2034 and combination units to UL 217 with UL 2034. New construction takes primary power from the building wiring with battery backup, and interconnection is required where more than one alarm is required in the same dwelling unit. Existing settings have permitted alternatives, which is the practical route for older rental stock.

In an electing jurisdiction a second document may apply. Bismarck amends Section R315.3 of the 2021 International Residential Code at Title 4, Section 4-02-02, to the same three placements, and the match with the state rule is word for word down to the unhyphenated "fuel burning" that the model code hyphenates. A Bismarck landlord reading the city code and a Fargo landlord reading the state rule are following the same sentence.

North Dakota writes no move-in inspection, no testing interval and no notice period into either instrument. What it does write is an entry rule unlike any other on this site, and both parties should read it before an alarm inspection is scheduled.

NDCC 47-16-07.3(2) lets the landlord enter only during reasonable hours and in a reasonable manner, for inspecting the premises, making necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations or improvements, supplying necessary or agreed services, or showing the unit to purchasers, insurers, mortgagees, real estate agents, tenants, workmen or contractors. Unless it is impractical, the landlord shall first notify the tenant and receive consent, which shall not be unreasonably withheld, and the notice shall identify a time certain.

Then the sentence that changes the practice: "consent shall be presumed from failure to object to access after notice of intent to enter at a time certain has been given." And notice may be given by personal service, by posting it in a conspicuous place in or about the dwelling unit for a reasonable period, or by any other method resulting in actual notice. North Dakota sets no hours figure. A note taped to the door naming a day and a time, left up long enough, and met with silence, is consent. Compare Hawaii's two days and New Mexico's twenty-four hours: a North Dakota tenant who wants a say has to say something.

Subsection 1 is wider still. The landlord may enter at any time in an emergency, where the landlord reasonably believes the tenant has abandoned the premises, or where the landlord reasonably believes the tenant is in substantial violation of the lease. That third limb has no counterpart in any other landlord-entry provision in the fifty-one.

For the device itself, work from the manufacturer's instructions and the date on the back. Published service lives run from five to ten years, with Kidde giving ten to everything built since 2013 and seven to older units, and our guide to how long carbon monoxide detectors last collects what each maker states. Photograph the model number and the date at move-in. North Dakota gives a tenant no statutory inventory and no fee-free complaint route, so the photograph is the record.

There is no state agency a North Dakota tenant calls about a missing carbon monoxide alarm in an occupied rental. The electrical inspector's work is installation and permitted jobs. The fire marshal administers the fire code. Neither runs a tenant complaint line for a dead alarm, so the remedies here are the ones a tenant exercises themselves or asks a court for.

Chapter 47-16 was read in full for this page, and four counts are worth stating because they are the control on everything below. Across sixty-five pages: "carbon monoxide" occurs zero times, "withhold" zero, "escrow" zero and "counterclaim" zero, against 100 occurrences of "lessee" and 44 of "landlord". "Deduct" occurs once. "Dilapidation" occurs once. The entire tenant remedy for a carbon monoxide alarm in North Dakota hangs on those two single occurrences.

Both of them are in NDCC 47-16-13, and it is short enough to quote whole. If within a reasonable time after notice from the lessee of dilapidations which the lessor ought to repair the lessor neglects to do so, the lessee may repair the premises and deduct the expense of such repair from the rent, recover it in any other lawful manner from the lessor, or vacate the premises, in which case the lessee shall be discharged from further payment of rent or performance of other conditions.

Read what that gives and what it costs. It gives an uncapped deduction: no dollar figure, no fraction of a month's rent, no annual ceiling and no limit on how often the route may be used, where Hawaii caps a tenant at three months' rent in six and New Mexico gives no deduction at all. And the third limb is more generous than most termination provisions, discharging the lessee from further payment of rent or performance of other conditions rather than from the rent alone.

What it costs is precision on the way in. The trigger word is "dilapidations which the lessor ought to repair", written in 1877 for a world of roofs and window frames. A carbon monoxide alarm reaches it only once 47-16-13 is read together with the 1977 duty list at 47-16-13.1, where subdivision (a) carries the code requirement and subdivision (d) carries the maintenance of facilities the landlord is required to supply. That is the argument a North Dakota tenant has to make, and it is about scope rather than about limits. Put the notice in writing even though the chapter prescribes no form, because the chapter's silence here is conspicuous: 47-16-15 wants a calendar month's written notice to end a month-to-month tenancy and 47-16-17.1 specifies exactly what a domestic violence notice must say, so the least formal notice in the chapter is the one every remedy in this row depends on.

Termination has a second route at 47-16-17(1), available where the lessor does not within a reasonable time after request put the property into good condition or repair it. Weigh either route against 47-16-13.7, which keeps a lessee evicted according to law liable for rent for the remainder of the term subject to the landlord's duty to mitigate. Walking out without invoking 47-16-13(3) or 47-16-17(1) is the expensive way to leave.

Damages sit at 47-16-13.5, which lets any aggrieved party under 47-16-13.1 through 47-16-13.6 recover appropriate damages subject to a duty to mitigate, and 47-16-13.6 makes those rights enforceable by action with reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party. Read the last four words before filing. The fee award is not tenant-side, and a tenant who loses pays.

One protection this chapter does not contain deserves stating rather than leaving to inference. "Retaliate" occurs once in sixty-five pages, in 47-16-17.1, and it protects a person who exercised the right to terminate a lease under that domestic violence section, not a tenant who asked for a repair. Nothing in the parts of chapter 47-16 read here shields a tenant who complains about an alarm from a rent increase or a notice at the end of the term. A North Dakota tenant should not assume the shield that Hawaii writes at HRS 521-74 and New Mexico at NMSA 47-8-39. Get the request in writing, keep it factual, and know that the timing protection other states supply is not in this chapter.

North Dakota publishes no fine table for a missing carbon monoxide alarm, and the record for this state carries the negative rather than a figure. No stand-alone statewide penalty specific to carbon monoxide detector noncompliance appears in the cited instruments.

Two features of the enforcement structure explain it. The wiring standard is administered through licensing, permit and inspection workflow rather than through a citation schedule, so the consequence of a defective installation is correction and re-inspection. And on the fire code side, IFC 112.4, the model code's violation penalty, is one of the sections NDAC 45-18-01-04 amends, so whatever consequence attaches to a North Dakota fire code violation is not the one printed in the model text and should be read from the state amendment rather than from the published code.

That leaves civil exposure as the number that matters, and North Dakota's fee-shifting rule cuts in an unusual direction here. Under 47-16-13.6 the court may award reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party in an action on the 47-16-13.1 duties. For a landlord who did not fit an alarm the wiring standard required, that is a second cost stacked on top of a damages award. For a landlord who did fit one and can show it, it is a deterrent to a weak claim. Both parties should treat the documentation as the asset: the permit, the inspection record, the alarm's model and date, and the written notice.

For a tenant, the practical figure is the uncapped deduction under 47-16-13 rather than any fine. A replacement alarm and an hour of an electrician's time comes off the rent with no ceiling in the section, and no statutory fine anywhere in North Dakota would reach the landlord faster.