Wausau, WI Outdoor Cooking: BBQ & Propane Rules (2026)

010(a) of the Wausau Municipal Code opens the City's grilling exception to the general outdoor-burning ban by allowing cooking with gas or charcoal on portable or permanent grills. That permission carries a specific restriction for larger residential buildings: at any multi-family dwelling with three or more separate occupancies, an open or closed outdoor cooking fire, a charcoal grill, a propane cooking device or any other open-flame device cannot be used within ten feet of the structure, and cannot be used at all above the ground floor.

That second clause is what rules out balcony and upper-floor patio grilling at apartment buildings and larger condo complexes inside city limits; it does not distinguish between charcoal and propane, catching every open-flame cooking method equally. The same subsection closes with a nuisance standard that applies regardless of building type: smoke from cooking grills cannot create a nuisance for neighboring property owners. Single-family and two-family homes are not subject to the ten-foot/ground-floor restriction, since the text is written specifically for buildings of three or more occupancies, though the nuisance-smoke rule still reaches them.

24, Fire Prevention, and is enforced by the Fire Department alongside the Police Department, the same agencies responsible for the chapter's broader outdoor-burning and recreational-fire rules.