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

Sec. 5-104(c)(5), part of the county's Basic Equipment and Facilities Standards for places of human habitation, ties the carbon monoxide alarm duty directly to the presence of a fuel-burning hazard: an attached garage, or a fossil-fuel burning heater, fireplace, or appliance. When any of those exist, the landlord must provide at least one carbon monoxide alarm in the unit. The ordinance also allocates battery duties: unless the landlord and tenant agree in writing otherwise, the landlord places new batteries at the start of each tenancy and the tenant replaces batteries as needed during the tenancy, except for tamper-resistant ten-year lithium battery alarms that need no swap.

Once a tenant gives written notice that an alarm needs repair or replacement, the landlord has 15 days to fix or replace it. This sits inside the Minimum Housing Ordinance enforced by the public officer, the Director of the Onslow County Planning and Development Department, under Division 3's investigation and hearing process; a unit missing a required carbon monoxide alarm where a fuel-burning source exists is a standards violation the officer can act on the same way as any other unfit-dwelling finding, up to and including a repair order under Sec.

5-123. Because the rule sits in the housing code rather than the fire code, it applies to occupied rental and leased dwellings in the county's unincorporated planning jurisdiction, not to owner-occupied homes with no lease and not to Camp Lejeune housing, which the federal government regulates separately.