Before You Start Building A Haunt

Most of you that are involved in haunts are already planning for this years haunt, or soon will be. One thing that you need to do is check with local officials to see what type of permits, if any, will be required. Permits and codes vary from place to place; some places require a permit and have ordinances that have to be followed even for home haunts.

Here is one such ordinance from Topeka Kansas http://www.topeka.org/pdfs/codebook/CH014-AMUSEMENTS-AND-ENTERTAINMENTS.pdf.

It's under Article VI Haunted Houses starting on page 8 and applies to haunts whether an admission fee is collected or not. It’s also a good idea to check with the local Fire Marshal to see what type codes you will need to follow and if you’ll have to submit plans for review. It would be bad to spend all that time and money to set up a haunt and then told it can’t be opened or has to be shut down because of code or ordinance violations.

One thing major haunt operators may want to look into are clean agent fire extinguishers for your haunt, clean agent is different from the old halon extinguishers. Clean agent extinguishers are safe for electronics, props, humans and environment. The agent is in liquid state while stored under pressure in the extinguisher, it’s released as a gas. I have seen several clean agent demonstrations done on a laptop that was on without any harm done to the laptop. There are also clean agent fire suppression systems for those of you who may be interested in a full system.

-Psychoterror