Dubuque, IA Fire Regulations: Fire Pits & Backyard Fires (2026)

Section 6-9-2(A) bans burning solid waste in the city, but subsection A(3) carves out outdoor cooking using charcoal, natural gas or propane, small wood fires consistent with section 307.3.2 of the international fire code (its recreational-fires provision), bonfires and prescribed fires as regulated elsewhere in the chapter. That exemption, carried forward from 2007 Code section 19-7, is what lets a homeowner run a charcoal grill, a propane fire table or a modest wood-burning fire pit in the yard without a burning permit. Bonfires get treated separately and more strictly: section 6-9-3(A)(3), adopted by Ordinance 40-13 on July 15, 2013, requires anyone who wants to "light and/or conduct a bonfire" to first obtain a permit from the fire chief, with fees and requirements the fire chief sets under subsection B of that same section.

The code does not print a distance-from-structure setback or a fire-pit size limit for the recreational-fire exemption itself; the operative line is the international fire code's section 307.3.2 definition of a recreational fire, which section 6-9-2 incorporates by reference rather than restating in the municipal code. Blasting, fireworks and pyrotechnics, land-clearing burns, agricultural burns and prescribed silvicultural or wildlife-management burns all require their own separate fire chief permits under section 6-9-3(A), distinct from the bonfire and recreational-fire rules governing an ordinary backyard fire pit.