Provo, UT Outdoor Cooking: BBQ & Propane Rules (2026)

Provo City Code 9.51.040(1) starts from a blanket rule: it is unlawful for any person to create or permit an open burning of any kind within the city. Subsection (2) then lists the exemptions that keep ordinary backyard cooking legal. Subsection (2)(b) exempts, 'for the purpose of outdoor cooking, contained barbecues or pits with a cooking area no larger than six (6) feet in diameter.' That six-foot cap is the operative number for anyone running a charcoal grill, wood-fired pit, or similar contained cooking setup in a Provo yard: stay contained and under six feet across, and the open-burning ban does not apply.

The exemption sits inside Chapter 9.51, the International Fire Code chapter, which Provo adopted under Section 9.51.010 pursuant to Utah Code Title 15A, Chapter 5, along with the Fire Code's board-of-appeals, fire-flow, hydrant, and fire-apparatus-access appendices. Because Section 9.51.040's exceptions apply on top of the adopted International Fire Code rather than instead of it, a barbecue setup still has to clear whatever placement and clearance standards the adopted Fire Code imposes for outdoor cooking appliances even once it fits the six-foot diameter exemption.

Other exemptions in the same subsection cover agricultural burning on zoned-agriculture land, ditch-bank weed clearing, orchard heating, and controlled structure-burn training by the Provo Fire Department when the National Weather Service clearing index exceeds 500. None of those apply to a residential grill, which is squarely governed by (2)(b) alone. A backyard barbecue larger than six feet in diameter, or one not contained, falls back under the Subsection (1) general prohibition and becomes an unlawful open burning.