Jupiter, FL Noise from Specific Sources: Generator Noise (2026)

Section 13-139 lists nine categories of sound exempt from the exterior sound standards of § 13-144, and item (9) covers generators specifically: sound from a portable generator or a permanent standby generator during a power utility outage, or for the time it takes to perform a maintenance cycle, one time a week, for a period not exceeding 30 minutes, and only between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. The exemption has two distinct triggers. During an actual utility power outage, a generator can run without being held to the residential, commercial or industrial decibel limits, at any hour, because the outage itself is the qualifying event. Outside an outage, the only other exempt use is a single weekly self-test or maintenance cycle, and that test is boxed in on three axes at once: it can happen only once per week, it cannot run longer than 30 minutes, and it must fall between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

A generator run for testing at 6:00 a.m., or for 45 minutes, or twice in the same week, falls outside the § 13-139(9) exemption and is measured instead against the ordinary sound-zone limits in § 13-144, which for a residential zone are 55 dBA in the daytime and 45 dBA at night. The same division also defines 'mechanical equipment' in § 13-137 to include generators expressly, confirming that absent this narrow exemption, generator noise is otherwise fully subject to the town's decibel standards.