Iowa City, IA Fire Regulations: Propane Storage (2026)

Article H of Title 14, Chapter 5 exists, as section 14-5H-1 states, to protect property from off-site impacts including the storage of combustible and flammable materials, and section 14-5H-2 makes the article apply to every use in Iowa City unless a more specific provision exempts it. Section 14-5H-3 lets the building official require, at the applicant's expense, that a registered professional engineer or other qualified person certify that a use meets the article's storage standards. Within that framework, section 14-5H-8(F) singles out liquefied petroleum gas: bulk storage of LP-gas is prohibited citywide except in the CI-1 intensive commercial, I-1 general industrial, I-2 heavy industrial, RDP research development park, and ORP office research park zones.

Even there, the storage is not automatic; it may be allowed only as specified and strictly regulated by the International Fire Code, as amended. The same five-zone carve-out and fire-code deference appear twice more in the same section: subsection D bans bulk storage of flammable cryogenic fluids outside those zones, and subsection E bans bulk aboveground storage of Class I and Class II liquids outside them, showing this is a deliberate, article-wide approach to concentrating bulk hazardous-material storage in Iowa City's industrial and research park districts rather than residential, commercial or mixed-use areas.