Bellevue, NE Building Safety: Fire Sprinkler Requirements (2026)

Bellevue adopted the International Residential Code, 2021 Edition, as one of its building codes under § 8-17(A)(3), but the City Council rewrote the Code's sprinkler provisions before enacting it locally. Bellevue Code of Ordinances § 8-18.6(G) deletes IRC Section R309.5, Fire sprinklers, in its entirety, removing the base requirement outright. Section 8-18.6(O) then rewrites IRC Section R313.1 so that townhouses need no automatic residential fire sprinkler system, and § 8-18.6(Q) does the same for IRC Section R313.2, covering one- and two-family dwellings. The amendments do not ban sprinklers, they simply make them optional: §§ 8-18.6(P) and (R) require that if a homeowner or builder chooses to install a non-required automatic residential fire sprinkler system anyway, in a townhouse or a one- or two-family home, it must still be designed and installed to NFPA 13, NFPA 13D, or NFPA 13R standards.

The Permits and Inspections Department, which administers the adopted building codes under §§ 8-2 through 8-4, enforces the amended IRC provisions the same way it enforces the rest of Chapter 8: through the permit and inspection process set out at §§ 8-19 and 8-20. Nebraska's State Building Code adoption statute already excludes IRC Section R313 from the mandatory state code under § 8-16(A)(2), so Bellevue's local deletion of the sprinkler requirement does not conflict with the state adoption; the city's own amendment simply confirms that new homes and townhouses here carry no sprinkler mandate.