We are Lone Star Fire Extinguisher Co., family owned since 1993. Our shop and our parts stock sit on the I-30 frontage, and I-30 runs along Rowlett’s southern edge, so a stocked truck reaches a Rowlett property on the same road it leaves on. Inspection, certification, recharging, mounting and equipment, handled on site at your building.
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If a Rowlett inspector has already written you up, the fix is usually smaller than the letter makes it sound. Most extinguisher findings fall into four buckets, and all four are same-visit work:
Call us with the notice in front of you. We walk the property, service or replace what failed, tag every unit and leave you with dated tags you can show. Replacement units, cabinets and signage ride on the truck, so a shortfall found during the walkthrough gets filled the same visit.
Rowlett does not issue a business license. The Certificate of Occupancy is the document that lets you operate, which makes it the moment your fire protection gets looked at.
What is unusual is how easily a new one is triggered. Rowlett requires a new Certificate of Occupancy when a building is newly built or occupied, when a space is remodeled, enlarged or altered, when any new use, tenant or occupant is established, when the use or tenant of a lease space changes, and when a tenant’s name or ownership changes. That last one is worth reading twice. A business that keeps the same space, the same fixtures and the same staff, and only changes hands or changes its name on the door, still needs a new Certificate of Occupancy, and the fire department inspection that comes with it.
The city is direct about why. In its own words, when a building already exists and has an ownership change, tenant change or change in use, a new Certificate of Occupancy is required to establish that the building is still safe to occupy.
The application routes to four departments. Planning and Zoning confirms the use is allowed. The Health Department signs off if you serve food or drink. Building Inspections issues the final certificate. And the Fire Department performs its own inspection and issues its approval only on full compliance with the code. On new construction that fire approval is a numbered step: the Fire Marshal has to inspect and pass the project before any certificate can be issued.
That is the practical reason to have your extinguishers right before you apply rather than after. An extinguisher finding at that stage is not a fine. It is a delay on the day you planned to open.
Rowlett enforces the 2021 International Fire Code. It adopted the whole thing, including every appendix, along with NFPA Standard 1, and it applies that code not just inside the city limits but for 5,000 feet beyond them and throughout the extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Rowlett then made one change to the portable fire extinguisher section, and it matters if you run a warehouse or a storage operation.
The model code lets some storage occupancies skip fixed extinguishers where forklift or powered cart operators are the primary people in the building, mounting extinguishers on the vehicles instead. Rowlett deleted that option. In a Rowlett storage building, extinguishers have to be fixed in place and spaced on travel distance, the ordinary way, whether or not your operators are on equipment all day.
If your facility was set up under a vehicle-mounted arrangement somewhere else, or by a vendor working from the unamended code, that arrangement does not carry here. We size and place fixed units to the travel distances the code sets, supply them at wholesale and bulk pricing, and keep them on an annual tagging schedule.
Rowlett’s commercial base runs to retail, restaurants, service businesses and small multi-tenant buildings rather than heavy industry. Its designated employment district on the north side is planned as the city’s major employment hub and is still largely undeveloped, so most of what is open today sits in shared buildings. The city’s own code amendments follow that shape, and two of them change what we install:
Two more Rowlett conditions are worth knowing. Because the city sits on the lake, it carries a fire permit category for open-flame devices in marinas that its inland neighbors have no use for. And Rowlett’s hood rule is written wider than most: it reaches commercial cooking appliances and domestic appliances used commercially, in fixed locations and in mobile and temporary ones, naming trucks, trailers and any roofed enclosure. If you cook under a hood in Rowlett, in a building or out of a trailer, the Class K extinguisher and the semi-annual hood system service both apply.
Rowlett’s rental ordinance does something most cities leave to the fire code: it names annual fire extinguisher inspections as the owner’s own duty, in so many words.
Under the city’s rental housing standards, a short-term rental owner has to provide working smoke detectors, working Type A fire extinguishers and carbon monoxide detectors, and, in the ordinance’s own language, the owner is responsible for obtaining annual independent inspections of all fire extinguishers. The city’s published short-term rental checklist repeats it as a line item, and those properties are inspected quarterly.
“Independent” is the operative word. It means a licensed extinguisher company, not the owner and not the cleaning service. That is exactly what we do. A short-term rental is a small enough job that most owners assume nobody will come out for it, and if the unit on hand is the wrong type or out of date, we sell the replacement as well as inspect it.
Note that this rule is specific to short-term rentals. Rowlett’s published inspection checklists for apartments and for hotels and motels do not carry an extinguisher line, though the fire code still governs what those buildings need.
Every service line runs out of the Mesquite shop and onto your Rowlett property in one visit:
We also stock ABC dry chemical, Halotron and CO2 extinguishers, cabinets, commercial first aid kits and fire safety signage.
Three decades in the Metroplex, licensed technicians on the trucks, and the Brantley family name behind every tag. Our field technicians, Branden Cook and Zack Tapp, hold state-issued Fire Extinguisher Licenses, which is the credential Rowlett’s ordinance is pointing at when it asks for an independent inspection.
Standard on every Lone Star job:
Yes. Rowlett’s published list of triggers includes a change to a tenant’s name or ownership, with nothing else about the space changing. The fire department inspection is part of that process, so the practical answer is to have every extinguisher tagged and correctly mounted before you apply. Call us first and it is one visit.
Not on its own. The model code allows that arrangement in some storage occupancies, and Rowlett specifically deleted the exception that permits it. Fixed extinguishers, placed on travel distance, are required. We walk the building, tell you how many units and where, and supply and mount them.
A licensed extinguisher company, annually. The city ordinance makes the owner responsible for obtaining an independent inspection of every extinguisher on the property, and the city inspects short-term rentals quarterly. It is a small job and we do them.
Rowlett’s own fire department guidance is a multi-purpose unit rated at least 2A-10-BC with ABC on the label, which covers the small fires a house is likely to see. We sell them, and we service them.
The city does not take them. Rowlett Fire Rescue tells residents to contact a fire extinguisher contractor for disposal, which is us. Bring it by the shop or mention it when we are out on a job.
A licensed technician inspects and tags each unit once a year. Your own staff should give gauges and pins a look monthly. Beyond that, units come due for internal maintenance and for hydrostatic testing on fixed schedules that depend on the type of extinguisher. Those dates ride on the tag, so you are never guessing which unit is due. We offer annual inspection and maintenance plans that keep the whole calendar handled.
The same trucks, the same technicians and the same pricing cover Rowlett’s neighbors, and each city runs its own fire code:
