“Smoke Alarms and Fire Prevention Systems in Illinois Community Associations” – KSN attorney Joshua Weinstein discusses legal updates impacting smoke alarms and fire prevention systems in Illinois condominium, homeowner (HOA), and townhome community associations. (9 mins.)
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Episode Transcription
Bernie: You are listening to the KSN Podcast, and on this episode, we’re discussing fire safety issues impacting Illinois Community Associations. Welcome to the KSN Podcast where you’ll hear from KSN attorneys as they share their experience and insight on legal issues surrounding community associations, landlord tenant law, collections, litigation, and property tax appeals. I’m Bernie, and this episode is an excerpt from our February 25th, 2023 free webinar presented by KSN attorneys, Joshua Weinstein and Omar Malik. During the webinar, Josh and Omar discussed legislative updates and case law updates impacting condominium, homeowner and townhome community associations. Specifically, Josh discussed two fire safety concerns that are of interest to board members and property managers. The first being smoke detectors, and the second being fire safety systems. KSN is an experienced legal resource, and we look forward to demonstrating how we have earned the trust of thousands of clients and thousands of community associations since 1983. If you’d like to contact any of KSN’s attorneys, please call 855-537-0500 or you can visit ksnlaw.com to view our legal services, our educational resources, and submit an inquiry.
Josh: My name’s Josh Weinstein. I’m a partner with KSN. My colleague Omar Malik will be presenting with me today. He’s also a partner with our firm. Tonight, we’re going to be going over legal updates for condominiums, HOAs, and townhome associations and other community associations in Illinois. You can check out and register for future KSN events by visiting ksnlaw.com/events. Sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date so you can see when we’ll be presenting again and the topics that we’ll be going over. So, like I said, we’re going to be going over legal updates, both in terms of statutory updates and as well as case law updates and this is strictly for Illinois case law and Illinois legislation. So with that, why don’t we get started? A change to the Illinois Smoke Detector Act. It’s called the Illinois Smoke Detector Act. One thing to note off the bat is much of what changed doesn’t apply to condominium units in the city of Chicago because there’s a civic provision in the act that was inserted, basically saying these new requirements of this section aren’t going to apply to units and municipalities with more than a million inhabitants.
So, outside of the city of Chicago, this could have some impact, but basically what it does is is the Smoke Detector Act applies to every dwelling unit, which includes condominium units. So, for dwelling units that were in existence on July 1st, 1988 smoke detectors are required in dwelling units and they can either be battery powered as long as the battery is self-contained non-removable long-term battery, or is wired into the structure’s AC power line and doesn’t need to be interconnected. So, one of the changes is that the act was made more specific to describe what it means for these units that meet this standard that were in existence on July 1st, 1988. What sort of battery power has to be provided and/or what wiring sort of system they need to have. The battery requirements apply to battery powered smoke detectors that are one, in existence and exceed 10 years from the date they’re being manufactured, two, fail to respond to operability tests or otherwise malfunction or three, are newly installed. So anything after July 1st, 1988 has to meet those requirements.
For dwelling units that are newly constructed, reconstructed, or substantially remodeled after December 31st, 1987, so effectively from 1988 onwards, smoke alarms have to be permanently wired into the building’s electrical system, and if more than one smoke alarm is required, the smoke alarm have to be wired so that the initiation of one smoke alarm will initiate all the smoke alarm in the dwelling unit. So, if you’ve got two smoke alarms in a unit, they got to be set up for if one goes off, it triggers all of them. And then for newly dwelling units, newly constructed, reconstructed or substantially remodeled after January 1st, 2011, smoke alarms that are permanently wired into a building’s electrical system have to also maintain an alternative backup power source such as batteries or an emergency generator. It’s important to know that it doesn’t apply to fire alarms, smoke detectors or smoke alarms that are electronically connected as a part of a centrally monitored or supervised alarm system. Nor do they apply to smoke detectors, smoke alarms or other things that use a low power radio frequency signal or Wi-Fi to send and receive notifications from the internet. So, just some slight changes. That law has been in effect for quite a while, there were just some slight changes to it with respect to the types of battery operations that need to– or battery power that needs to be provided to some smoke detectors and whether or not some of these requirements apply to all units in the entire state or just apply to non-Chicago units.
Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to move on to some case law. A pretty fact specific case, I don’t want you all to think that there’s something to be taken and applied to every association in the state necessarily here, but it’s The Village of Downers Grove versus The Village of Square III Condo Association. What happened here is the village fined the association for failing to submit an annual fire prevention system inspection report as required by the Village’s Fire Prevention Code and the village said, well, even though the fire prevention system installed in this condo building in the 1990s was grandfathered from having to be upgraded to meet the new code, which that’s the case in a lot of associations, a lot of villages where you have a building that’s built up to code at the time, and then the code changes to somehow some system within the building that met code at the time is now technically out of code if you were to look at things out of context. But you have some sort of grandfather provision, which exempts the association in light of when they’ve put some system in place, right?
So, they said, yeah, well, you’re grandfathered in from having to upgrade your fire prevention system to meet the new code, but you’re still required to have your system inspected annually and the condo association said, no, we’re exempt from having to have a fire prevention system at all because of how the buildings were constructed and when they were constructed. The Village said, well, once the fire alarm system was installed and once it was approved, you can’t downgrade it, it is still going to be subject to these annual inspection requirements that are applicable to all existing buildings and the appellate court agreed. It went to the appellate court, the appellate court agreed and said that even if the fire prevention code did not require a building to have a fire protection system, once an approved system was in place, the Fire Prevention code in this case required the system to be tested annually and a report required to be submitted to the Village. Even though the association was grandfathered from having to upgrade their fire prevention system to meet the new code, they were still required to have it inspected and tested annually as the fire prevention code mentioned and required.
Outro: The music for this show is provided by podcastthemes.com. Please note the material contained on the KSN podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is established by your review or receipt of the information contained on the KSN podcast. You should not act on the information discussed on the KSN Podcast without first obtaining legal advice from an attorney duly licensed to practice law in your state. While KSN has made every effort to include up to date information on the KSN Podcast, the law can change quickly. Accordingly, please understand that information discussed on the podcast may not yet reflect the most recent legal developments. Material is not guaranteed to be correct, complete, or up to date. KSN reserves the right to revise or update the information and statements of law discussed on the podcast at any time without notice and disclaims any liability for your use of information or statements of law discussed on the podcast or the performance of the podcast generally. The KSN podcast may be considered advertising in some jurisdictions under applicable laws and ethical rules or regulations.
Please note the material contained on the KSN Podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is established by your review or receipt of the information contained on the KSN Podcast. You should not act on the information discussed on the KSN Podcast without first obtaining legal advice from an attorney duly licensed to practice law in your State. While KSN has made every effort to include up-to-date information on The KSN podcast, the law can change quickly. Accordingly, please understand that information discussed on the podcast may not yet reflect the most recent legal developments. Material is not guaranteed to be correct, complete, or up to date. KSN reserves the right to revise or update the information and statements of law discussed on the podcast at any time, without notice, and disclaims any liability for your use of information or statements of law discussed on the podcast, or the performance of the podcast generally. The KSN Podcast may be considered advertising in some jurisdictions under applicable law/s and/or ethical rules/regulations. © 2023 Kovitz Shifrin Nesbit, A Professional Corporation.