West Des Moines, IA Building Safety: Carbon Monoxide Detectors (2026)

City Code section 8-2A-16(U) sets the local carbon monoxide standard for rental housing: at least one carbon monoxide detector is required in the immediate vicinity of sleeping rooms in every rental dwelling. The section does not stop at that floor: it expressly allows the State of Iowa Administrative Code to require additional detector locations beyond the single unit near the bedrooms, so a larger rental with multiple sleeping areas or a fuel-burning appliance setup may need more than one detector to satisfy the full standard.

The requirement sits in the same subsection list as the City's smoke detector mandate in section 8-2A-16(T), and both are treated the same way procedurally: because they are life-safety items, carbon monoxide problems are named in section 8-2A-16(H) as an exception that lets a tenant's complaint bypass the normal seven-day landlord notice period and reach the Building Division immediately. Detector compliance also factors into how often the Building Division re-inspects a given rental property under the schedule set out in section 8-2A-16(E), alongside the property's age, condition, and complaint history.

A property owner who fails to maintain required carbon monoxide detectors is exposed the same way as any other rental housing violation: the condition can be cited as a violation of the rental housing chapter, and, because the International Property Maintenance Code is deemed part of the City Code under section 8-2A-16(I), a pattern of uncorrected detector violations counts toward the three-violation threshold that puts an owner's rental certificates at risk citywide.