We are Lone Star Fire Extinguisher Co., family owned since 1993, with Arlington customers since 1994. Arlington sits west of Dallas in Tarrant County, which is much of why its rulebook reads differently from the cities across the Metroplex. We schedule Arlington work as planned visits, so a licensed technician arrives with a stocked truck and walks the whole building in one trip. Inspection, certification, recharging, mounting and equipment, all on site.
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Arlington’s recurring commercial inspection has a published name, the Annual Fire Inspection, and its inspectors regularly check businesses, schools and public buildings. If one of those visits has produced a write-up, the extinguisher findings almost always fall into four buckets, and all four are same-visit work.
Call us with the write-up in front of you. We service or replace whatever failed, tag every unit and leave dated records you can hand an inspector. Replacement units, cabinets and signage ride on the truck, so a shortfall is filled the same visit.
A building or tenant space in Arlington may not be occupied, and the business may not operate, until the certificate of occupancy is issued. The Building Official issues it, but the fire inspection is one of the sign-offs that has to land first, scheduled separately from Building.
What surprises people is how little has to change to pull a fire inspector into the building. A first occupancy, an expanding lease space, a shell building and a temporary certificate all draw both a building and a fire inspection. Two more are worth reading twice. A change of ownership needs a new certificate even if, in the city’s own wording, no changes are made to the space. And when the same owner simply puts a new business name on the door, Arlington runs a fire inspection with no building inspection at all. A rebrand, nothing else, and an inspector walks your floor.
The city is also candid about how the day goes: its inspectors do not give exact appointment times, one may arrive at any point during regular business hours, and someone will need to be there all day.
So an extinguisher finding at this stage is not a citation. It is a delay on the day you planned to open, plus a second all-day appointment to staff. Size, mount and tag the building before you apply, not after.
The fire marshal’s office publishes a construction guide whose certificate of occupancy final inspection section asks, on portable extinguishers, for a minimum 2A-20BC per 3,000 square feet, a maximum travel distance of 75 feet, and service and tagging within the last twelve months.
The coverage geometry is ordinary and the rating is not. The 20 on the B rating is heavier than the 2A-10BC that fire marshals in several other cities in the region specify, so a portfolio standardized on a 10-B unit elsewhere can pass everywhere else and come up short in Arlington.
Two more specifications from the same office matter to particular tenants:
Worth flagging: these are the fire marshal’s published inspection expectations, not ordinance text, and the guide says so itself. It is still what Arlington’s inspectors check against, which makes it the number that counts on the day. We size to it, supply at wholesale and bulk pricing, mount and tag on the spot.
Arlington enforces the 2021 International Fire Code with one local change that matters to anyone running storage. The model code lets some storage occupancies skip fixed extinguishers where forklift and powered industrial truck operators are the primary people in the building, mounting extinguishers on the vehicles instead. Arlington deleted that option. In an Arlington storage building extinguishers have to be fixed in place and spaced on travel distance, whether or not your operators are on equipment all day.
Arlington did not get there by way of a regional package. Its fire code ordinance runs to 195 separately numbered local amendments written by the city and never names a regional council of governments anywhere. Several cities across the Metroplex reach the same rule by adopting a regional model amendment; Arlington reached it by drafting its own, so a vendor who assumes Arlington sits outside the regional pattern gets this backwards.
There is a paper trail behind it. Arlington’s previous fire code ordinance deleted every exception in that section, not just the forklift one. The current ordinance restores the others and keeps only the forklift deletion. This is a city that has read this particular paragraph more than once.
Higher racking pulls in a second program. Arlington sets its high-piled combustible storage trigger at more than 500 square feet including aisles, with high-piled defined as stock above 12 feet for ordinary commodities and above 6 feet for high hazard. Crossing it brings a permit, plan review, an engineered analysis, rack load plaques and a floor plan, with extinguisher coverage reviewed alongside.
If your facility was set up under a vehicle-mounted arrangement elsewhere, it does not carry here. We walk the building, tell you how many fixed units you need and where, supply them and keep them on an annual tagging schedule.
Arlington carries roughly 10,000 active sales tax permits at city addresses, and that count leaves out most professional services and healthcare. Under it sit 11 licensed hospitals, 10 nursing facilities and 32 assisted living facilities, a school district of more than 50,000 students on roughly 70 campuses, and two college campuses: extinguisher fleets counted in the hundreds per owner.
Every service line is on-site work at your Arlington property, on a scheduled visit, by a licensed technician:
We also stock ABC dry chemical, Halotron and CO2 extinguishers, cabinets, commercial first aid kits and fire safety signage.
Three decades of Metroplex work and the Brantley family name behind every tag. Our field technicians, Branden Cook and Zack Tapp, hold state-issued Fire Extinguisher Licenses, which is what stands behind a tag an Arlington inspector will accept.
Standard on every Lone Star job:
Yes. Arlington’s certificate of occupancy application types include one for the same owner under a new business name, and that type triggers a fire inspection with no building inspection attached. The city is equally direct about a change of ownership: a new certificate is required even if no changes are made to the space. Tag and mount everything before you apply.
The published certificate of occupancy final inspection sheet calls for a minimum 2A-20BC per 3,000 square feet on a maximum travel distance of 75 feet, serviced and tagged within the last twelve months. That is the fire marshal’s checklist rather than ordinance text, and the 20 on the B rating runs heavier than the 2A-10BC several other cities in the region specify. We size, supply and mount to it.
That is the city’s own published position: the inspector may arrive at any point during regular business hours on the date you pick, so someone needs to be there all day. We do not try to meet the inspector. We schedule ahead of your date, service, tag and mount every unit and leave the dated records, so that part of the sheet is finished before anyone walks in.
No. A city ordinance effective February 1, 2026 requires third-party inspection companies to file annual inspection, testing and maintenance records for sixteen categories of fire protection system with a city-designated reporting service. Portable fire extinguishers are not on that list, so nothing about your extinguisher schedule changed, and the tags we leave stay your own proof.
A licensed technician inspects and tags each unit once a year, and your own staff should check gauges, pins and access monthly. Internal maintenance and hydrostatic testing come due on longer cycles that ride on the tag, and our annual plans keep that calendar in one place.
We cover cities across the Metroplex, and each runs its own fire code:
