Short-term rentals and home fire sprinklers in Maryland: what the license inspection checks.

An Annapolis rowhouse that books every weekend of sailing season, a Silver Spring townhouse that rents to traveling nurses, a Fells Point house that turns over every three nights. Hosts in Maryland’s bigger jurisdictions now need a short-term rental license before the first listing goes live, and the license comes with a fire safety check. If the house has a fire sprinkler system, that check includes it. This guide covers what the inspector looks at, why a house full of strangers is harder on a sprinkler system than a house with a lease, and the walk a host should do between guests.

The license is where the fire check comes from

Montgomery County licenses short-term rentals through its housing department and requires the host to live in the house most of the year. Baltimore City requires a license and limits whole-house rentals to the host’s primary residence. Anne Arundel County, which has the heaviest short-term rental market in the state around Annapolis and the South River, licenses them with a fire and life safety inspection. Prince George’s County licenses them with a cap on nights and an inspection. The details differ by county and change from year to year, but every one of these programs asks the same question in some form. Does the house have working smoke alarms, a safe exit from every sleeping room, and, where one is installed, a working fire sprinkler system. Our guide to Maryland’s smoke alarm law covers the alarms. This guide covers the sprinklers.

What the inspector looks at on a 13D system

The inspection is not an engineering review. The inspector wants to see that the system is on and intact. That means the control valve is open, which our guide to the control valve shows how to read on both valve types. It means every head is where the drawings put it, not painted, not behind a new ceiling, not blocked by a bunk bed a host added to sleep two more guests. It means the waterflow bell rings when the test connection is opened, which our guide to the bell on the outside of the house explains. Some inspectors want a current report from a licensed sprinkler contractor, and our annual inspection produces it. Others walk the house themselves. Ask the license office which, and if they want paper, book the inspection a few weeks before the application so a weeping head or a closed valve gets fixed first rather than failing the visit.

Why guests are harder on a system than tenants

A tenant lives with the house for a year and learns where the heads are. A guest arrives at ten at night, has never seen a residential sprinkler head, and hangs a wet towel or a coat hanger on the first thing that sticks out of the bathroom ceiling. Our guide to accidental dischargecovers what happens next, and a short-term rental sees it more often than any other kind of house. A guest also turns up the thermostat, lights a candle under a head, props the garage door open on a January night and freezes the garage run, and in a few cases we have seen, closes the control valve because the bell went off at three in the morning and nobody answered the host’s number. Our guide to renting out a sprinklered housecovers who owns what on a lease. On a short-term rental everything is the host’s, every time.

The practical answer is a house guide that names the sprinkler system in one paragraph. Do not hang anything from the ceiling discs. Do not paint or cover them. If the bell outside rings, get out and call this number. The riser in the utility closet stays closed to guests, and a simple latch on that door keeps a well meaning guest from touching the valve. Hosts who run a cleaning crew between stays should put the heads on the turnover checklist, which brings us to the walk.

The walk between guests

It takes four minutes. Every ceiling disc and every sidewall head in the house gets a look. Anything hanging from one comes down. A disc that is loose, missing or painted goes on the repair list, and our guide to the cover plate that fell off says what to do that day. A wet spot in a ceiling under a head, or a damp carpet below one, gets a call the same morning. The control valve gets a glance on the way out. On a well lot, the pump panel light is on and the tank gauge reads full. A host who does this walk between every stay catches problems while they are a single head and not a ceiling.

When a rental stops being a house

A house rented whole to one party stays a house in the code. A house carved into separately rented rooms with a shared kitchen, run year round, starts to look like a lodging house, and a lodging house can be a different occupancy with a different sprinkler standard. Where that line falls depends on the number of guest rooms, whether the host lives there, and how the county has amended the building code, which is why some Annapolis operators have been told by the city that a six bedroom rooming arrangement needs more than a 13D system. If the plan is more than a whole-house listing, ask the license office how they classify it before buying the property, and read our guide to converting a house to a care home, which covers the same step up from 13D to 13R on a different kind of business.

Buying a house to rent it short term

A buyer who intends to list the house should put the sprinkler system on the inspection list with the roof and the furnace. Our guide to buying a house with fire sprinklers covers the pre-closing check, and for a short-term rental the stakes are higher because the license inspection follows closing by a few weeks. A house in Annapolis or Ocean Pines with a thirty year old system, a house in Montgomery County where a prior owner finished the basement without moving the heads, a house on a Harford County well where the tank has not been tested in a decade, all of those surface at the license inspection if they did not surface before closing. A pre-closing sprinkler checkup, with the $150 backflow test where the utility requires one, is cheaper than a delayed license. Our sprinkler checkup page explains what it covers.

What this costs a host

Nothing new, if the system is sound. The annual inspection on our inspections pageis the same visit a homeowner books. A head that a guest knocked loose is the same repair as anyone else’s. The one cost that is specific to a short-term rental is the walk between guests, and that is time, not money. Hosts who skip it are the ones who call us about a ceiling.