Apartment Inspection by Fire Dept.

[cheyer]

My unit was inspected,by a code enforcement/building guy, similar to Jobsaver's situation,..with plenty of notice,...wasn't concerned with storage or messes of any kind,...did look for smoke alarms, leaking ceilings, etc.

 

[FM William Burns]

Found this one a little late.

We now work with our Building Department Rental Housing Inspector who does rentals (multi-tenant residential) now and they get the fees. The suits didn't like all the various interpretations created by having numerous platoon members enforcing code provisions and when asked I agreed.

Regarding a warrant...... Our state does not consider Apt.'s as "private owned" so we the fire department can inspect "any" property as long as it's a reasonable time and don't need a warrant. We were used some years ago to inspect certain rental houses housing some people from another country because we had a DHS bulletin….well we found what they were looking for and left all the legal search stuff for the cops who initiated the inspection. Yea…….lets use the FD under the guise of a safety inspection to find what we can’t.

We do rentals now but in partnership and we concentrate on 4+ properties. We do common areas and fire protection systems like sprinklers and detection/alarm systems. I agree there are more fires in multi-tenant apartment occupancies and fire safety focus and education should be addressed there (just look at how many fires we have with BBQ's) or how many have died due to the old BOCA and existing allowance for single exit v. number and heights and the expectation that people can jump. Therefore, the codes adopted should be enforced equally on occupancies regardless of size and numbers etc.

Now if a tenant is a "Richard" to us as we inspect, (no offense to those named Richard here) well who's to say what comes after our inspection and our seeing his/her bong, plants and or stash or others in plain view.