Sterling Heights, MI Outdoor Cooking: Smoker Rules (2026)

Fire Code Section 307.1.2, part of Sterling Heights' locally amended fire code in Macomb County, Michigan, lists commercially-built barbecues and smokers among the open burning types allowed without prior notice or a permit, provided they cook food for human consumption using only charcoal briquettes, LP-gas, pellets, or natural gas and are constantly attended. The same section separately permits UL-listed outdoor fireplaces and fire pits, metal or ceramic, solid-topped, with a spark arrestor, but bars them from burning between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Anything outside this list, like an open trench fire or a homemade barrel smoker, falls back to the general open-burning permit rule.