New Berlin, WI Fire Regulations: Smoke Detectors (2026)

Chapter 124's sprinkler mandate in Section 124-11 A requires automatic fire sprinklers throughout an extensive list of occupancies, from basements and hotels to schools, day-care centers, nursing homes and high-hazard occupancies such as chemical works or grain elevators. Section 124-11 E then lists the only two spaces exempt from that sprinkler requirement: safe deposit vaults, and electrical service rooms, but only on the condition that the electrical service room is monitored by smoke detectors, rate-of-heat-rise detectors or fixed-temperature detectors. In practice this makes smoke detection a substitute safeguard, not an optional add-on, wherever a building owner wants to exempt an electrical room from sprinklering.

Chapter 124 itself does not reach every building: Section 124-1 limits its scope to public buildings and places of employment, and expressly exempts one- and two-family dwellings and their outbuildings, along with farm buildings and short-term construction buildings, so a single-family home's own smoke-alarm requirements come from the state Uniform Dwelling Code that Chapter 80 adopts by reference rather than from this fire-prevention chapter. The Fire Chief and the Fire Prevention and Inspection Bureau enforce Chapter 124's detector and sprinkler provisions and inspect buildings and premises within their jurisdiction as often as necessary to catch fire hazards.