Margate, FL Noise Ordinances: Quiet Hours (2026)

Margate's nighttime noise limit is a measured number. Table I in section 33-82(a) makes it unlawful for a sound or noise source in a residential district to exceed 55 dBA between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. and 60 dBA between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. The other rows of the table set commercial-agricultural at 60 dBA at night and 65 dBA by day, and industrial at 65 dBA at night and 70 dBA by day. When a noise source can be measured in more than one use district, the limits of the most restrictive district apply at the district boundary. Measurements use a sound level meter on the A weighting scale, per section 33-86.

The table has corrections for intermittent sound. A source that operates continuously one minute or less in any hour gets +15 dB(A), five minutes or less gets +10, and fifteen minutes or less gets +5. A source of repetitive impulse character or with a pure tone or cyclically varying amplitude is held to -5. Only one correction applies.

Section 33-79 adds clock-based rules for specific acts. Loading, unloading, opening or handling boxes, crates, containers and garbage cans between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. is banned when it causes excessive and unnecessarily loud noise. Powered model vehicles cannot run between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., and lawn maintenance and lot clearing equipment powered by an engine is banned from sunset to 7:00 a.m. in residentially or commercially zoned areas. Section 33-78 prohibits any excessive, unreasonable or unusually loud noise and any noise disturbance at any hour.

The Margate Police Department administers the program (section 33-77). Emergency work is exempt (section 33-80), and the city manager can grant up to a fifteen-day exemption, renewable once, to give a noise source time to install controls (section 33-81).