Tamarac, FL Outdoor Cooking: Smoker Rules (2026)

Tamarac's blanket open-burning prohibition in Tamarac Code § 7-54 bans igniting or allowing any burning of substances on public or private property anywhere in the city, but the same sentence that creates the ban immediately narrows it: nothing in the section is deemed to prohibit burning wood, tinder or similar materials in a stove, oven, barbecue pit or fireplace for the purpose of cooking or fuel. That single clause is the only local rule governing backyard smokers, charcoal grills, wood-fired ovens and fire pits in Tamarac; the Code does not separately license, permit, or set hours, setbacks or fuel-type limits for outdoor cooking appliances.

The section traces to Code 1975 § 11-14 and was last amended by Ordinance No. 93-29 in December 1993, and it sits in Chapter 7's fire prevention standards article alongside the city's adoption of the Florida Fire Prevention Code (§ 7-48) and that code's own enforcement and appeal provisions (§§ 7-50, 7-51). Because the cooking exemption is written as an exception to the open-burning ban rather than as its own regulatory scheme, a resident's obligations are simply to keep the burning confined to a stove, oven, barbecue pit or fireplace and to use it for cooking or fuel; burning debris, trash or yard waste in the same appliance falls back outside the exemption and into the general prohibition.

A cross-reference following § 7-54 ties the section to Chapter 5 (buildings), Chapter 9 (health, sanitation and nuisances), Chapter 10 (land development), Chapter 11 (landscaping), Chapter 15 (parks and recreation), Chapter 19 (solid waste) and Chapter 24 (zoning), so a fire pit installation can still trigger separate building or zoning standards even though it needs no burning permit under § 7-54 itself.