Grand Forks, ND Building Safety: Fire Sprinkler Requirements (2026)

Section 19-0121 adopts "the International Residential Code, 2021 edition, Chapters 1 through 11 and 44," then lists dozens of numbered local amendments to that adopted text. Item (46) is blunt: "R313. Delete entire section." R313 is the IRC chapter that would otherwise trigger mandatory automatic fire sprinkler systems in new one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses, so striking it removes that construction-cost mandate from every home permit the Department of Building Safety reviews under this article. The council did not treat every life-safety chapter the same way: rather than delete the smoke-alarm rule at R314.2.2, it rewrote that section to keep smoke alarms mandatory whenever "an addition is built, an unfinished area is finished or one or more sleeping rooms are added," while adding an exception for structurally infeasible hardwired installations "as determined by the code official." Because R313 no longer exists in the locally adopted code, a Grand Forks homeowner, builder, or duplex developer cannot be cited under Article 1 for skipping a sprinkler system, and a certificate of occupancy is not conditioned on one.

Any sprinkler system a homeowner chooses to install anyway is voluntary and outside this article's reach; a separate, unrelated provision elsewhere in the fire-and-building chapter addresses sprinklers only for certain existing-building basement and large-story conditions, a different rule from the one this deletion removes.