South Carolina CO Detector Requirements for Hotels and Short-Term Rentals

South Carolina has no standalone carbon monoxide statute, and the answer for a hotel comes from two codes the Building Codes Council adopted together on 6 October 2021 with an implementation date of 1 January 2023: the 2021 South Carolina Building Code, which is the 2021 International Building Code with South Carolina modifications, and the 2021 South Carolina Fire Code, the 2021 International Fire Code with the same treatment.

The provision is Section 915 in both. It is worth saying plainly because the older number circulates: in the 2012 I-Codes carbon monoxide sat at Section 908.7, and South Carolina has been two cycles past that since 2023. The Council's 2021 modification index runs to hundreds of entries and touches neither Section 915 nor Section 1103.9, so both apply here as the model code prints them.

Section 915 requires detection in Group I-1, I-2, I-4 and R occupancies, and in Group E classrooms, where one of the conditions in Sections 915.1.2 to 915.1.6 exists. Hotels, motels and boarding houses sit in Group R. For a building already standing the route is IFC Section 1103.9, which applies the same triggers and sends the reader to Section 915.2 for placement and Section 915.4 for installation. The International Existing Building Code cannot be the route in South Carolina, because S.C. Code Ann. § 6-9-60 makes it a permissive code that a municipality or county must adopt by ordinance before anyone can enforce it.

A short-term rental has no separate statute either and answers the same codes according to how the property is classified. The Building Codes Council sits inside the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, and the 2024 code cycle is under way: modification requests closed on 4 August 2025 and the Council ruled on them on 26 August 2025, so this answer is on the 2021 codes and an operator planning work in 2026 should check whether the 2024 editions have taken effect.

Occupancy gets a building into Section 915 and the trigger conditions decide which rooms need a device. Group I-1, I-2 and I-4 and the whole of Group R are in scope, which covers hotels, motels, inns, boarding houses, dormitories and residential dwelling units, and Group E classrooms come in on the same section.

Four conditions do the work, and each carries its own exceptions. Section 915.1.2 catches a unit holding a fuel-burning appliance or fireplace. Section 915.1.3 catches a unit served by a fuel-burning forced-air furnace, unless a detector sits in the first room or area served by each main duct leaving the furnace and its signal is transmitted automatically to an approved location. Section 915.1.4 catches a unit merely located in a building containing such equipment, unless there is no communicating opening, or a detector is placed between the equipment and the unit, or one is placed on the ceiling of the room holding the equipment. Section 915.1.5 catches a unit in a building with an attached private garage, unless the unit is more than one storey above or below the garage, or has no communicating opening to it, or reaches it only through an open-ended corridor.

An all-electric property with no attached garage and no fuel-burning equipment anywhere in the building meets none of the four and is outside the section. Short-term rentals operating as residential dwelling units are covered as Group R.

Hotel and motel operators (Group R-1). Two codes, one requirement. The 2021 South Carolina Building Code carries Section 915 for new construction and permitted work, and the 2021 South Carolina Fire Code carries Section 1103.9 for the building that is already standing, which sends the operator back to the same Section 915 for placement and installation. Neither waits for the other, and neither depends on the local jurisdiction having adopted anything: S.C. Code Ann. § 6-9-10(A) requires every municipality and county to enforce these codes.

Where the device goes. A guest room is a sleeping unit, so Section 915.2.2 governs and the alarm goes inside the room. The single exception permits a position outside each separate sleeping area, in the immediate vicinity of the unit, and only where the room or its attached bathroom holds no fuel-burning appliance and the room is not served by a forced-air furnace. Both have to be true.

A sentence to unlearn, because it was on this page until 2026-08-10. There is no exception releasing a guest room where it sits more than one storey from the appliance, is not connected by ductwork or ventilation shafts, and the building has a common-area alarm system. Measured across chapter 9 of the South Carolina Fire Code, "ventilation shaft" returns nothing and "ductwork" appears only in the smoke-control testing provisions. That three-part test is real in other states, written into their own amendments to Section 915, and South Carolina has not written it. The nearest thing South Carolina does have is the storey test in Section 915.1.5, and it is about an attached private garage rather than about appliances generally.

STR operators. A short-term rental classified as a residential occupancy answers the same two codes on the same terms. There is no separate South Carolina statute for short-term rentals.

Under Section 915 of the 2021 South Carolina Building Code and Fire Code, and Section 1103.9 of the Fire Code for existing buildings:

Trigger. One of the four conditions in Sections 915.1.2 to 915.1.5 has to be present. Section 915.1.6 is worth reading beside the garage condition: an open parking garage complying with Section 406.5 or an enclosed parking garage complying with Section 406.6 is not a private garage for this purpose, so a hotel with a structured parking deck is not caught by the garage trigger the way a hotel with domestic-scale attached parking is.

Placement. Section 915.2.2 for a guest room: inside the sleeping unit, with the corridor position available only where the unit and its attached bathroom hold no fuel-burning appliance and the unit is not served by a forced-air furnace. Section 915.2.1 for a dwelling unit, meaning an extended-stay apartment or a whole-house rental: outside each separate sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the bedrooms, and inside a bedroom that holds a fuel-burning appliance or has one in its attached bathroom. There is no requirement to put a device in every sleeping room, which is smoke alarm practice rather than carbon monoxide practice, and no per-storey rule anywhere in Section 915.

Power source. Section 915.4.1: primary power from the building wiring where that wiring is served from a commercial source, battery power when it is interrupted, permanent wiring with no disconnecting switch other than overcurrent protection, and battery-only alarms allowed in a building without commercial power. In an existing building Section 1103.9 adds two reliefs of its own, both narrow: battery-only alarms where the code in force when the building was built required no carbon monoxide detection, and battery-only alarms in dwelling units not served from a commercial power source. Nothing in the South Carolina code mentions ten-year sealed batteries or low-frequency sounders for carbon monoxide devices, and a claim to that effect stood on this page until 2026-08-10.

Device listing. Section 915.4.2: alarms listed to UL 2034. A combination carbon monoxide and smoke alarm is an acceptable alternative under Section 915.4.4 and is listed to UL 217 and UL 2034. A detection system under Section 915.5 is the third route, with detectors listed to UL 2075 and combination detectors to UL 268 and UL 2075.

South Carolina requires local governments to enforce the statewide building and fire codes. The primary enforcement authority is the local building official or local fire marshal in the jurisdiction where the property is located. New construction and renovation projects are subject to plan review and inspection. For existing buildings, the 2021 SC Fire Code (IFC § 1103.9) authorizes fire officials to require CO alarms as part of routine fire safety inspections or complaint investigations. The SC Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (LLR) oversees the Building Codes Council and code adoption, but day-to-day enforcement is local. Hotel operators and STR hosts may be subject to inspection by local fire departments, county code enforcement offices, or both.

The figures are statutory rather than local, and they are in S.C. Code Ann. § 6-9-80. A person found in violation of a code adopted under the chapter must be cited and fined by civil fine of not more than two hundred dollars, and before being charged with a second violation must be given seven calendar days to remedy it or to submit a plan for correcting it. A person who does neither within those seven days must be cited and fined up to two thousand dollars, and each day the violation continues is a separate offence.

That structure matters more than the numbers for a property with many rooms. The seven days start at the citation or written notice, the second-tier fine runs per day from there, and the clock is satisfied by a plan rather than by finished work, so the cheapest response to a carbon monoxide citation is usually a dated corrective plan filed inside the week. Section 6-9-80(A) also lets local officials, municipal or county attorneys, or a neighbouring property owner who would be damaged by the violation seek injunctive relief or mandamus, and a court may grant temporary relief on a verified complaint of imminent danger. Alongside all of that a building official can withhold or revoke a certificate of occupancy and stop work.