Industries · Multifamily
Fire Protection for Apartments, Multifamily & HOAs
In multifamily buildings, common-area fire protection is the owner or association responsibility — and it is very often the equipment nobody has inspected in years, because there is no tenant whose business depends on it.
We service common-area extinguishers, emergency and exit lighting, and provide walkthroughs for property managers and HOA boards who have inherited a building and do not know what they have.
What is the owner’s responsibility
- Extinguishers in corridors, laundry rooms, mechanical rooms, and clubhouses
- Emergency and exit lighting in corridors, stairwells, and at exit discharge
- Illuminated exit signage
- Fire protection in shared amenity spaces, including any commercial kitchen
- Keeping stairwells and egress paths clear
In-unit smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are typically also an owner responsibility, though the division varies by lease and by state landlord-tenant requirements.
Stairwells and storage
Stairwell storage is the most persistent finding in multifamily buildings, and the hardest to keep fixed, because residents treat under-stair space and landings as available. Bicycles, boxes, and furniture accumulate steadily between inspections.
Emergency lighting in older buildings
Buildings that installed all their emergency lighting at once tend to see it fail at once. A first inspection on an older property frequently turns up multiple units that illuminate on the test button and fail a full-duration test.
For a property manager that is useful to know before budgeting: it is often not one fixture, it is a batch, and modern LED replacements have meaningfully longer service life than what is coming out.
For boards and new managers
If you have just taken over a property or joined a board, an assessment is the fastest way to find out what you actually own. You inherit whatever the previous management left — equipment with no service history, systems nobody documented, and sometimes fixtures that were removed during a renovation and never replaced.
We inventory it, tell you what is compliant, what is overdue, and what an inspector would cite, and separate genuine violations from optional recommendations.
Common questions
Who is responsible, the HOA or the unit owner?
Generally the association or owner for common areas, and the unit owner or landlord for what is inside the unit. Your governing documents and lease agreements set the specific division, so check them rather than assuming.
How often should common-area equipment be serviced?
Extinguishers annually with a monthly visual check, emergency lighting monthly and annually. The same intervals as any commercial building.
We have no records at all. Where do we start?
An assessment. We inventory what is physically there, photograph the tags, tell you what is overdue, and give you a written baseline to build a maintenance calendar from.