Horry County, SC Outdoor Cooking: BBQ & Propane Rules (2026)

Chapter 5's beach ordinance, rewritten in full by Ord. No. 27-11 in May 2011, treats cooking fires as a beach-safety hazard rather than a residential-zoning issue. Section 5-4, titled Fires prohibited, names overlapping categories in one sentence: any fire or open flame, and separately any propane fired grill, cooker, or heating device heated by fire. The ban applies to the public beach itself, the mean-low-water-mark-to-property-line strip defined in Sec. 5-1, plus public beach accesses, the street ends that run into the beach, and county land immediately next to the beach, and it runs at any time, with no seasonal window and no daytime carve-out unlike several of Horry's other beach rules, such as the 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. animal restriction in Sec. 5-3.

This is a beach-specific rule; it does not reach a propane grill on a private residential deck, patio, or balcony away from the beach strand. For grilling anywhere else in unincorporated Horry, including condo balconies in Socastee, Carolina Forest, or Garden City, County Code § 20-451 governs instead, exempting contained, monitored cooking fires from the county's general open-burning setback rule. On the beach itself, Sec. 5-6 separately bars fireworks, so a beachgoer cannot substitute fireworks for a banned grill fire either. The rule sits inside Chapter 5's broader beach-conduct code, which Horry enforces alongside its other Grand Strand-specific bans on glass containers, alcohol, and overnight sleeping.