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[Bobitis]

A little background: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5270202/ns/us_news/t/where-theres-smoke-theres-fire/#.XGhOe3mWx9A

I bought my condo about 15 years ago and there was no mention of bbq'rs on the balcony in the HOA rules. Then this ^ comes along.

I'm on the 2nd floor of 3, so I have a balcony above mine. I have a Weber WSM that I used for years before turning to pellets. No one ever said anything.
A couple years ago, the HOA sent out a letter stating that charcoal grilling was banned, and electric or gas was ok.

Sooo.... I have no idea where 'pellet' cookers fall into this rule. Gas? No. Charcoal? No. Electric? Kindasorta?

I've smoked during a burn ban and seen the local fire dept. roll down my street (60' away-I'm in the corner unit closest to the street). No one blinked.
Did they not see or smell it? Yer not supposed to burn anything during a burn ban. Did they just ignore it (look the other way)?

I've never received a complaint/warning from the HOA, despite some other neighbors witnessing a flame out and restart without cleaning out the pot (huge amounts of ugly smoke). 

I know I've stepped across the line at times (air quality wise). My bad. As far as the every day cooking goes, I monitor my temps remotely and have a fire extinguisher 3 ft from the grill.

Any other condo/apt dwellers out there with comments?

[Canadian John]

 NOT a condo owner here.. You may want to check if insurance has anything to do with it..If not it comes back to condo rules that as far as I know can be changed, an involved process.. Good luck!

[Bentley]

It sounds like you are not annoying your neighbors, the rest is a matter of conscience and rolling the dice..

[Jon515]

Have you talked to the neighbors it "could”effect? Maybe bribe them with some delicious BBQ!

[MysticRhythms]

That article is from 2004, if they haven't talked to you by now I would think you are OK.
On the one hand I can see their point. If I place my grill too close to the house and have a hopper fire or something like that then my family is impacted. If I do the same thing in an apartment complex or condo then I am potentially impacting a great number of people.
It seems like there should be a way for people to take steps to lessen the potential for disaster. Maybe lining the balcony with fire bricks, or install fireproof drywall?

[JoeGrilling]

Air quality may be part of it too.  Gas grills produce far less pollution than charcoal.  In the SF bay area, they keep getting stricter on air pollution.  You can't build a house here now with a wood burning fireplace.  Tobacco smoking prohibition in multi-unit housing is becoming very common now.  I am amazed the air resources folks haven't discovered pellet grills yet.
     

[Hank D Thoreau]

I think there is a problem if you are on the second of three floors using a smoker. I have to shut my windows and sliding doors when I am using my smoker. What about the folks on the third floor?

I was secretary of a self managed town home complex for ten years (nobody likes taking notes so volunteering to be secretary kept me from having to be president or treasurer).

There are more than likely limitations in the CC&R's on how you can use balconies. They don't have to specifically call out barbecues or smokers. They can focus on what you can do rather than what you cannot.

I used to teach boomerang throwing at a company park. There was no posted rule against it. Ten years later I went back and found "no boomerang throwing" on their park rule sign. I guess I left an impression. The park decided that they needed to be more specific.

[LowSlowJoe]

a year or two ago, there was a video circulating of police coming to a home, indicating that the neighbors had complained of the cooking/smoke coming from a BBQ.  Some folks in BBQ/grilling groups I participate in were outraged, some thought it was just a local thing and that that unfortunate guy just lived in the wrong city.

I started looking into things myself for other reasons.  Ok, well a guy few houses away was firing a gun off one day, and another neighbor was outraged and put up a big fuss about it.  Supposedly she had a bullet lodged in her siding at her home, and called the police about it.  Now, this particular person and story , I was skeptical about, because IMHO, if she really had a stray bullet lodged in the side of her house, I would fully expect the police to actually site the guy shooting his gun , for something like wreckless discharge of a gun.   I started looking at local laws... first to see exactly what laws there were in our township about shooting a firearm and such. I didn't find anything about guns really, presumably the rural township doesn't really have their own laws about guns, and basically state laws are what matters for guns. 

 But anyway, the guns not the point.  While I was looking up local ordinances, I realize that there's a ordinance in my township, that in theory could be used to stop a person from BBQing, if the 'wrong' set of people started complaining. Basically there's a nuisance law, that effectively says ( among other things ), that if you produces smells that are deemed to be a nuisance,  you could be in violation of the ordinance.  ( loud sounds can also be nuisance ).  The way I read the law, and think about it, if you had a neighbor who was annoyed with the smell of your grilling/smoking, and complained, and the local officials sided with the neighbor, you could very likely be told you can't continue to grill/smoke.  Now, maybe cooler heads would prevail and you wouldn't get cited , but it made me realize that many of us, are basically at the mercy of our neighbors with regard to what we can and can't do.

[yorkdude]

Kind of reminds me of a guy I read about that lived in Phoenix when we did. The city stipulated something to the affect that no recreational vehicle could be parked at your home on non paved areas.
This guy had a boat that apparently he had parked like that for a long time, anyway a neighbor complained and kept it up, he fought it to no avail. Turns out they don't enforce it UNLESS someone complains about it. He exhausted all his avenues and moved the boat. In retaliation he started collecting junk and filled his yard with it, it made the paper and took several months for the city to write a specific ordinance about that. He then had 180 days to comply so basically the complainant got to stare at trash instead of a boat for nearly a year. The guy that complained then moved as I understand it.

[LowSlowJoe]

I once knew a guy who lived in a fancy neighborhood with a rule similar to that.  He ended up putting  paving stones ( concrete paving things ) where his boat got placed, apparently that got around the issue for him.