Stonecrest, GA Noise from Specific Sources: Car Alarm Limits (2026)

Section 18-63 bars any plainly audible sound between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. that reaches into a neighbor's sealed home or a multifamily common area, but subsection (c) lists sixteen sounds excluded from that ban, and item (3) covers automobile alarms specifically: the exclusion applies provided such alarm shall terminate its operation within five minutes of its activation if the sound is uninterrupted, or ten minutes, if the sound is intermittent. That five-and-ten-minute cutoff mirrors the separate exclusion in item (2) for exterior burglar and fire alarms on buildings, which get the identical five-minute continuous or ten-minute intermittent limit, though building alarms carry an added restriction that they cannot be tested between 8:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. at all.

The automobile alarm exclusion has no such testing-hours restriction; it is written only as a cutoff on how long the alarm itself may keep sounding once triggered. If a car alarm runs past the five-minute (continuous) or ten-minute (intermittent) mark, the exclusion no longer covers it, and the alarm becomes an ordinary violation of the plainly-audible rule in section 18-63(a) or (b), enforceable like any other nighttime noise source. The same exclusion structure carries over to commercial, industrial and mixed-use property under section 18-65(d), which imports the exclusions listed in subsection 18-63(c) wholesale, so a car alarm in a commercial parking lot gets the identical five/ten-minute grace period at night.