Building safety policies are something no one wants to think about, until one of two things happens: an unfortunate event tests the building’s policies, or an inspection leads to penalties because important safety policies are not up to county code.
At Hales Property Management, we prefer to stay ahead of the curve and ensure that all our buildings have all the standard safety policies in place. This is actually one of the benefits of employing the services of a property management company—while as an owner-operator you may be guessing at what safety procedures you need to implement in your building, we have the resources to know exactly what Cook County safety code dictates and can roll out these best practices across all the buildings we manage.
Take, for example, smoke detectors. They’re simple enough to implement, but when you look into what the rules say, things get more complicated.
- Cook County code requires smoke detectors in every sleeping area and outside every bedroom entrance.
- Detectors need to be four inches clear of walls, 4-12 inches away from any wall-to-ceiling intersection, and 3 or more inches from any HVAC vent, lighting source, or ceiling fan.
- All detectors should be connected to electricity but also have a DC battery backup in case of power failure.
- Finally, all detectors should be interconnected so that all detectors in the same unit will go off whenever one of them detects anything.
As you can see, these rules can get pretty elaborate. Older buildings may get a break on some of these that can’t be implemented without needing extensive renovations. If you have a question about safety code in your building, reach out to us for more information!
