In 2017, the Illinois General Assembly passed Public Act 100-0200 to update the Illinois Smoke Detector Act. Public Act 100-0200 requires all Illinois single and multi-family homes to have a smoke alarm with a sealed 10-year battery by January 1, 2023. The legislator provided several exceptions to this law—please review to see if your community is exempt. First, any building built after 1988 is not required to have 10-year sealed batteries installed. Second, any dwelling with a wireless integrated alarm system that uses low-power radio frequency communications does not need to install a 10-year sealed battery. Finally, any dwelling with an integrated wireless alarm that uses Wi-Fi or other wireless local area networking capability to send and receive notifications to and from the internet does not need to install a 10-year sealed battery.
Further, the City of Chicago has also passed an Ordinance that requires a sealed-battery smoke alarm to be installed when an existing battery-powered smoke alarm stops working or reaches the end of its life. Any owner who violates this new law will receive a 90-day warning letter. If the owner fails to rectify this violation, the owner may be fined up to $100 every 30 days until the violation is rectified or the cumulative number of fines assessed reaches $1,500.
For more information about this article, contact Tressler attorney Joseph Silverstein at jsilverstein@tresslerllp.com.