Burlington, NC Noise from Specific Sources: Generator Noise (2026)

Section 22-68(a) through (c) sets property-line sound limits of sixty decibels overnight, 10:00 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., and seventy decibels during the day and evening, for mechanically or electronically produced sound. Subsection (d) lists nine categories of sound exempt from those limits, and item (3) reads simply: "Sounds resulting from electrical generators used during a power outage." That exemption sits alongside safety signals and warning devices in item (1) and authorized emergency vehicles in item (2), placing generator noise in the same emergency-response category rather than treating it as an everyday allowance.

Because the text ties the exemption to generators "used during a power outage," a generator run outside an actual outage, for testing, maintenance or routine backup power at other times, falls back under the general property-line limits and the reasonable-person standard in § 22-67 rather than the exemption. Separately, § 22-70(a) restricts "construction machinery" and other equipment, not generators specifically, from operating in residential areas or within three hundred feet of a residence between 10:00 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., but that section's exceptions in § 22-70(c) allow a refrigeration truck motor not exceeding one horsepower to keep running overnight to protect perishable goods, showing the code separately manages small motor noise from the outage-generator exemption in § 22-68(d)(3).