Gary, IN Building Safety: Carbon Monoxide Detectors (2026)

Section 22-59 of Gary's fire code requires carbon monoxide alarms in every building of residential or mixed occupancy containing one or more residential units. At minimum, one approved alarm must sit within 40 feet of each sleeping room and be loud enough to be heard from every bedroom, installed to the manufacturer's specifications and meeting UL 2034 or an equivalent nationally recognized testing standard. Hotels and motels face a scaled requirement: one alarm per 10,000 square feet of floor area, one alarm on every floor with a fossil-fuel boiler or furnace, and two alarms on every floor where sleeping rooms use fossil-fuel warm-air heat.

A building with a single central fossil-fuel heating unit serving multiple units must have at least one alarm on the floor housing that unit. Subsection (b) exempts residential units, hotels, and motels that run entirely on electric, steam, or hot water heat with no duct or shaft connection to a fossil-fuel combustion source and that sit far enough from any combustion source to avoid receiving carbon monoxide from it. Owners must install the alarm and give at least one adult tenant per unit the testing and maintenance information; tenants are then responsible for testing, maintaining, and replacing batteries.

Removing an alarm's batteries or otherwise disabling a required alarm, outside normal battery replacement by an owner, manager, or agent, draws its own fine of not less than $250.00 per violation. Any other violation of § 22-59 carries a fine of $100 to $500, with each day a violation continues counted as a separate offense, and the building department or Bureau of Fire Prevention may issue implementing rules.