How to Secure Fire Department Approval for Your Facility

ada compliance in assisted living assisted living fire safety assisted living licensing process assisted living safety regulations certificate of occupancy requirements emergency exit requirements for assisted living fire department approval for assisted living fire inspection checklist for assisted living fire suppression systems for care facilities how to start an assisted living facility Apr 08, 2025

Starting an assisted living business is exciting, but you can’t open your doors until you get fire department approval! This step is critical because it ensures your facility is safe, meets fire codes, and complies with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations. Without it, you won’t get your Certificate of Occupancy—which means you can’t get licensed or accept residents.

But don’t worry! This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to pass your fire inspection and avoid costly delays.

Check out the video, too:

🔥 Why Fire Department Approval Matters

The fire department’s inspection is more than just a formality—it’s a crucial step in keeping your residents safe. Here’s why:

✅ Sets Your Max Occupancy – Helps determine how many residents you can have in your facility.
✅ Ensures ADA Compliance – Confirms that your building is wheelchair-friendly and accessible (if needed).
✅ Verifies Fire Safety Measures – Checks for sprinklers, fire extinguishers, and emergency exits.
✅ Protects Your Business – Prevents expensive fines and last-minute renovations.

By handling this early, you can avoid delays and move forward with licensing and opening your doors!

🚨 Key Fire Safety Requirements for Assisted Living

The fire department will check multiple areas of your facility to ensure safety. Here’s what they’ll be looking for:

1️⃣ Certificate of Occupancy & Max Capacity

Determines how many residents you can safely have.
This number is critical for licensing and business planning!

2️⃣ ADA Compliance (Accessibility Requirements) ♿

Your facility must be accessible for residents with mobility challenges. They’ll check for:

Wider hallways & doors for wheelchairs.
Grab bars in bathrooms.
Wheelchair-accessible sinks.
Ramps or lifts instead of stairs.

3️⃣ Fire Suppression Systems 🔥

Not all facilities need the same fire system. The fire department will tell you which one is required:

Fire Extinguishers Only – Small homes may only need extinguishers in each room.
NFPA 13R Sprinkler System – Slows down fires, giving residents time to escape.
NFPA 13 Sprinkler System – The highest level of protection, designed to save the building.

👉 Pro Tip: If your residents need help evacuating, you may be required to install a higher-level sprinkler system.

4️⃣ Emergency Exits (Egress Compliance) 🚪

The fire department will check:

All exit doors & clear pathways.
Escape routes for multi-story buildings.
Ladders or secondary exits if needed.

5️⃣ Fire Life Safety Compliance 🚑

Can your residents evacuate on their own or do they need staff assistance?
If many residents require help, you may need extra fire safety measures.

📋 Steps to Get Fire Department Approval

1️⃣ Start with the City Planner 🏛

Before contacting the fire department, check with your city’s planning office.
They’ll confirm your property is zoned correctly for assisted living.
Ask for a referral to the right fire department contact!

2️⃣ Schedule a Fire Inspection 📅

Call your local fire department and request an inspection.
Fire officials will walk through your facility and provide a list of required upgrades.

3️⃣ Treat Their Feedback as a Punch List ✅

The fire department’s recommendations are your renovation to-do list.
Focus on their required changes to avoid delays in approval.

4️⃣ Make the Necessary Upgrades 🔧

Install grab bars, fire extinguishers, and sprinklers as required.
Widen doorways and hallways if needed.
Ensure clear, accessible exit paths.

5️⃣ Schedule a Follow-Up Inspection 🔄

Once all changes are complete, request a final inspection.
If you pass, you’ll receive your fire department approval! 🎉

🏆 Final Thoughts: Get Fire Approval & Move Forward!

Fire department approval is a crucial step in opening your assisted living business. By planning ahead and following the right steps, you can:

✅ Avoid unnecessary delays.
✅ Get your Certificate of Occupancy faster.
✅ Move forward with licensing & opening your doors!

🎯 Ready to take action?

📥 Download our FREE Business Plan Checklist to ensure your facility meets all requirements from day one.

Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.

▶️ Watch on YouTube

🎙️ Listen to the podcast

Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:00
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson and I help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months in today's video we're going to be getting into the topic of how to get approval from the fire department to help you launch your Assisted Living business so if you need some help with that make sure you stick around for today's [Music] video hey friend welcome back to the channel excited to be talking with you today about how to get approval from the fire department for your Assisted Living

00:00:30
business before we jump into that topic though I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net we have our free underwriting calculator there for you to give you some extra guidance and help as you're trying to figure out if you have a profitable opportunity in front of you so go check out that free resource and with that said let's get into the topic of today's video how do you get approval from the fire department for your Assisted Living business and why why do

00:00:54
you need that that approval from the fire department to help you move things along let's start off with the why why you need the fire department to come in and and do this inspection for you number one it's going to be a requirement you're going to need to obtain what's called a certificate of occupancy and the fire department is the group of people that's going to be able to give that to you and they're going basically what they're going to say is here's your max occupancy yes this

00:01:19
specific location this physical facility itself is able to handle this type of of people so you need that certificate of occupancy so it's going to be required something that you'll need when you get to that license licensing part of your Assisted Living Journey as you get into this so you're going to get that Max occupancy number you're going to also they're going to give you an idea of like from an ADA compliance standpoint what do you need to do so if you are looking to do this there's a few things

00:01:44
that you want to do with from an ADA compliance standpoint you're going to be looking at things like wheelchair access or the width of doorways or hallways potentially grab bars in the bathroom uh you know maybe something like a sink that you can put a wheelchair under so this is a big thing that you need to be aware of as you get into assisted living so ADA compliance is a really big part of what you're trying to do there and so you need to make sure you do that they will also give you a little bit of

00:02:12
information about sprinkler systems do you need a sprinkler system if so what kind is it the more invasive is it the less invasive or do you just need fire extinguishers they'll be able to give you that guidance there which is going to help you out and understanding what that looks like another thing that they'll be able to tell you about is egress which is basically the ility to leave the home so this is with Windows do you need to have ladders or do you need to have something to be able to get

00:02:37
out of the home uh in the event of a fire or does everybody have to go out the front and and how does that play into the population that you are working with so egress is another one that you want to just kind of be looking at and get an understanding of and the fire department is going to give you a lot of good information on that so you know exactly what's going on the punch list is more of a internal thing for you that the give you hey if you want to do Assisted Living it's fine but you got to

00:03:04
make sure you're compliant with these things these things that they give you that's your punch list you need to do something around the width of the doorways or the hallways or everything that we talked about there with ADA compliance they will tell you those things you need to have these things that becomes then a punch list for you for the renovations or the projects that you need to do so you can get the approval so you can obtain the license get that certificate of occupancy so you can really start moving things along and

00:03:31
get ready to do the renovations on your home to have it ready for assisted living so this is where it's really helpful to have the fire department come in not only is it a requirement but they're going to tell you the things that you need to fix or renovate so that you are ready for your Assisted Living business big thing don't I would say probably don't talk to them about them being the person that's giving you the checklist I would even I would not even say hey I need that punch list of things

00:04:00
that I need to renovate they have no idea what you're talking about if you do that but if you take that list they give you and treat it as a punch list of the things that you need to get done now you're in business now you have a construction list a way for you to start working toward uh getting things ready to go so those are two of the big reasons why you need this another one is fire Life Safety so I've done a video about this in the past we'll link that up above where we get really deep into

00:04:27
fire Life Safety why fire suppression systems are so important uh but when they come in and walk the the property and you tell them some of the details you know we're we're going to have 10 people in in this facility we're going to have 16 people three people whatever number it is that you're going to have you tell them what that's going to look like are they mobile are they able to work are they wheelchair bound are they bed bound what does that look like can they really what they're they're trying

00:04:53
to understand is can this person in the event of a fire in the event of an emergency can they Evacuate the home by themselves or do they need assistance this is kind of the delineating line between what type of system you're going to have so you need to kind of have a really good understanding about that and we talk about this in our business Foundation part of of what what I teach here in Assisted Living investing you have to build this big foundation and a really big part of that is knowing who

00:05:22
your population is going to be who you want to serve getting really clear on that because the more clear you are there the better off you're going to be in those conversations with city planners and with the fire department and with the state when you're trying to do licensing when you're trying to get funding it all comes back to that if you want some help with that you need some guidance as you're trying to figure out how to get all of that in place then go check out our Mastermind program you can

00:05:47
apply for it uh takes you less than five minutes just me asking you a few questions to see you know where you at can I help you you can check that out at Alim mastermind.com application and if it's a good fit I'll send you you all the details and then if you feel like you need some extra guidance or I need some clarity on anything just reach back out and we can have a conversation but now let's talk a little bit about those fire suppression systems there's really at its core there's kind of three

00:06:11
options that that you need to be aware of some of these are fire suppression systems and one of them is just fire extinguishers so that's the most basic you may have the fire department come out and they tell you yep you all you need is fire extinguishers you need a bunch of them you need them in every single room but that will meet the requirement or you could be looking at a a fire suppression system there's two big ones that are kind of related to assisted living that you want to be aware of one is the NFPA 13r and this is

00:06:41
a system that is a little bit less invasive basically what it means is it it's going to suppress the the fire enough for people to get out of the building but it's not intended to protect the building often times these are ones that pipes they will go up in the ceiling and you can still see the pipes so that that's kind of what a 13 system the other one is an NFPA 13 system and this one is intended to protect the facility um to make sure that it does not burn down in the event of a fire so there's a lot more water

00:07:12
that goes into it there's more sprinklers it's it's more invasive typically they will be up inside of the like attic and and things like that you're going to have to sheet rock over them it's it's a little bit more invasive um from that standpoint because the pipes are bigger and and things like that so depending on how many people the population you're going to serve and their ability to get out of the house and honestly the other thing is how much you want to protect the facility from

00:07:38
from fire damage that's going to help dictate which of those systems are going to be the best for you um the fire department can give you guidance on exactly what that looks like you also want to work with the state and figure out is there a requirement do you have to have a 13 system because that will answer your questions or can you go with a 13r or can you go with the fire extinguishers so if you want to know a little bit more about that again we will there's a video that I've done that goes

00:08:03
really deep into fire suppression systems that kind of help you understand what that looks like so go ahead and watch that video we'll try to link that up above once again all right so those are all the reasons why you need to talk to the fire department let's talk about who you need to go talk to so when you the best way that I have found to do this actually is to start off talking with the city planner um so talk to the city planner you say to them we want to start an assisted living facility I want

00:08:29
to make sure that this property that I have is zoned correctly we'll link one of our zoning videos up above so you can kind of get a feel for what that looks like but you you're having that conversation and then you're going to shift over and say I also know that I need to have somebody that does fire suppression system can give me some information on the fire piece of all of this and I've heard that the fire department is the best place for me to go there do you have a good contact for

00:08:55
me to reach out to at the fire department so they could come and look at the house and and tell tell me if it is ready for assisted living and when you do that what it's going to do is number one give you a contact for who you should be talking to at at the fire department uh rather than just like randomly calling the fire department saying hey I need you to come look at a house for me for assisted living and they're like I don't know what you're talking about um it's better to kind of

00:09:18
go through that path because typically in my experience you're going to have somebody that is kind of dedicated to doing these types of inspections and the easiest way to find them is to talk with the city planner move to the fire department and then have them come out the actual inspection with the fire department doesn't take long my experience is 30 minutes like it's not a long visit they they can very quickly assess if you are ready for assisted living or which types of Renovations

00:09:47
what what's on your punch list that you need to get done so it's it's going to help you out quite a bit but it is so worth taking the time to figure this out uh it's going to be a requirement to get that certificate of occupancy but also it's something that just gives you that punch list that list of things make sure that you're not missing any steps as you're going through to try to get your license and and you can catch those things early on and you know exactly what to do as as you get into it all

00:10:11
right let's quickly just recap what we've talked about here we've been talking about how to get approval from the fire department and really what I wanted to help you out with is the why so we talked about the why of of talking with them number one certificate of occupancy number two they're going to tell you the max occupancy of your home number three is ADA compliance making sure you're good there and number four is that fire suppression system all of that leads to what is essentially a

00:10:34
punch list of things that you need to have ready in for your house to get the certificate of occupancy so you can obtain your facility license if you found any of this information to be helpful I'd love for you to like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this we go live on Tuesdays so if you ever have questions make sure you jump on those calls join the Facebook group so that we can get that information and then we also do these long form videos on Thursday so if

00:11:00
you have any topics or things that you want me to go really deep in and and have a a video like this on for you comment those down below cuz it helps me I have hundreds of ideas like literally over 300 ideas but if you have something I want to hear from you and see what you need help with so I can create videos that are going to be helpful specifically to you in the moment that you're working through I also want to remind you to get over to the website assisted Liv investing. net get access

00:11:26
to our free underwriting calculator over there we have a bunch of other free goodies down below we'll link those here on the YouTube video a bunch of other free resources so make sure you go and grab those and if you need some help and need some guidance as you're trying to get your business started I'd love to see if I can help you out and the way I do that is through an application process go to Alim mastermind.com application fill out the application takes 5 minutes I'll review it and see

00:11:49
if there's some alignment there and if there is I'll send you all the details on the program and and it warrants a call at that point if you have other questions or you want to feel more comfortable about working with me we can jump on a call and I can answer your questions very quick non- pressure type of a call does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at assisted Liv investing. net I'm here to help people help beginners like you

00:12:10
launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months I want to thank you for watching and remind you that it doesn't take a lot just a little bit keep going keep making progress step by step by step I promise that if you do and you're consistent and persistent you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]

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