Franklin County, NC Noise from Specific Sources: Generator Noise (2026)

Chapter 14, Article III, the Noise Ordinance of Franklin County, exempts ten categories of noise from its misdemeanor enforcement scheme in section 14-59, and emergency work is one of them. Section 14-59(7) excuses noise generated while restoring property to a safe condition after a fire, accident or natural disaster, while restoring public utilities, or while protecting persons or property from imminent danger, and it specifically names use of emergency power generators as covered emergency work. That means a resident or business running a backup generator during a power outage, storm cleanup or utility restoration in unincorporated Franklin County is not exposed to the article's general prohibition on noise detrimental to health, safety or welfare under section 14-58(a).

The exemption is tied to the emergency itself, not to generators as a category, so a generator run outside those circumstances, for ordinary convenience rather than emergency restoration, would fall back under the general standard and could be weighed against the two-household complaint test in section 14-60. The same exceptions section also covers manufacturing noise, emergency vehicles, permitted construction, farm and landscape equipment with standard mufflers, aircraft, government services, holiday fireworks under state permit, and railroad noise, placing emergency generator use in the company of activities the board of commissioners decided should not trigger the article's Class III misdemeanor penalty in section 14-56. As with the rest of Article III, this exemption applies only outside the corporate limits of the county's municipalities under section 14-57(b).