Franklin County, NC Building Safety: Carbon Monoxide Detectors (2026)

Sec. 11-28 sets Franklin County's periodic fire-safety inspection schedule to preserve and protect public health and safety. The 'Once Every Year' tier lists assembly, hazardous, institutional, and high-rise occupancies, plus residential buildings, but it specifically carves out one- and two-family dwellings, reaching only the interior common areas of multifamily dwelling units. That same annual tier separately calls out new and existing lodging establishments, including hotels, motels, and tourist homes that provide accommodations for seven or more continuous days (extended-stay establishments), bed and breakfast inns, and bed and breakfast homes, for inspection of the installation and maintenance of carbon monoxide alarms and detectors, citing G.S.

143-138(b2) and the bed-and-breakfast definition in G.S. 130A-247. Industrial and non-public-school educational buildings fall on a two-year inspection cycle, and business, mercantile, storage, and religious buildings fall on a three-year cycle, but the code notes that any inspection frequency the General Statutes mandate for a specific occupancy overrides this local schedule. The Franklin County Fire Marshal, empowered under Sec. 11-24 and Sec. 11-25 to enforce the fire prevention chapter and administer inspections under Sec. 11-27, carries out these visits, which may be announced or unannounced and may include photographs or video.

Because the annual schedule excludes one- and two-family homes, a Franklin County homeowner has no county inspection mandate for a carbon monoxide alarm; that obligation runs instead to the specified lodging, institutional, and multifamily-common-area properties the fire marshal inspects each year.