Cecil County, MD Building Safety: Carbon Monoxide Detectors (2026)

Section 240-16M of the Minimum Livability Code makes the property owner responsible for installing and maintaining in good working order a carbon monoxide detector or detectors, in accordance with the Public Safety Article, Title 12, Subtitle 11, Annotated Code of Maryland, and any codes the county has adopted that meet or exceed that state standard. Once a tenant is in occupancy, responsibility for maintaining the detector shifts to that tenant for the duration of their tenancy. The requirement is expressly limited by its own text: it pertains to new construction for which a building permit is issued on or after January 1, 2008, so it does not retroactively require detectors in older housing stock built before that date unless another adopted code independently requires one.

The provision sits directly alongside the chapter's parallel smoke-alarm rule in the same section (§ 240-16L), which uses the identical owner-installs/tenant-maintains structure but ties to the state's Smoke Detection Systems law instead. Both duties are enforced by the Department of Permits and Inspections' Code Official under the general Minimum Livability Code enforcement powers in § 240-11 and § 240-12, including the authority to inspect a unit with reasonable notice and to condemn a structure found unsafe or unfit for occupancy.