Oregon now polices solar and fire hardening by different rules
Oregon now polices solar and fire hardening by different rules
2026-09-15 · Oregon · Compliance
Oregon has two statutes voiding covenants that block an exterior change a homeowner wants to make for safety or energy reasons. They were written nine years apart, and they are not the same rule. The gap between them is the clearest available evidence of what the Legislature learned about how architectural committees actually operate.
The 2017 rule: solar panels
ORS 94.778 has been on the books since 2017 and was untouched by the 2025 and 2026 sessions. Subsection (1) voids a planned-community provision prohibiting an owner from installing solar panels, “as a violation of the public policy to protect the public health, safety and welfare of the people of Oregon.” Then subsection (3):
“A homeowners association may adopt and enforce a provision that imposes reasonable size, placement or aesthetic requirements for the installation or use of solar panels described in subsection (1) of this section.”1
That is a broad carve-out. “Aesthetic requirements” is doing a great deal of work, and the statute attaches no deadline, no written-reasons duty and no consequence for delay.
The 2026 rule: fire-hardened materials
Section 4 of chapter 86, Oregon Laws 2026, in force since June 5, 2026, voids a governing-document provision that limits “the design, dimensions, placement, maintenance or external appearance” of fire-hardened building materials in a way that “has the practical effect of prohibiting the use of all fire-hardened building materials” or requires materials that “cost substantially more than other fire-hardened building materials of similar quality.”2
The vocabulary overlaps almost exactly — design, placement, appearance — and the conclusion is opposite. Where the solar statute preserves aesthetic control, the fire-hardening statute treats aesthetic control as the thing to be policed.
The clock is the real difference
Neither statute forbids a board from having standards. What separates them is what happens when the board does nothing.
Under ORS 94.778, nothing happens. There is no statutory response deadline for a solar application in either Oregon Act. The declaration sets the process, and if it sets none, the owner's remedy is the ordinary one: a covenant-enforcement action, or the petition procedure in ORS 94.778(2) to remove the offending provision from the instrument under ORS 93.272.
Under section 4(2) of chapter 86, an unanswered fire-hardening application is deemed approved after 90 days, and the written opinion that stops the clock must demonstrate “in reasonable detail the basis for the denial and the scope of any necessary modifications” and must not be “arbitrary or capricious.”
Oregon now has exactly two statutory approval clocks running against association architectural review, and they cover different things:
- Electric vehicle charging — 60 days, under ORS 94.762 for planned communities and ORS 100.627 for condominiums. A complete application must be approved, or reasonable conditions stated in writing, within that period.
- Fire-hardened materials — 90 days, planned communities only, under section 4 of chapter 86, Oregon Laws 2026.
Solar sits outside both. So does everything else an architectural committee reviews. See our Oregon solar rights and Oregon EV charging pages for how each of those regimes operates on its own terms.
Where the two rules meet on one roof
The overlap is not hypothetical. A Class A fire-rated roof assembly and a rooftop solar array occupy the same surface, and a re-roofing project in a wildfire-exposed community will often involve both. On the same application, an Oregon planned-community board would be operating under a tight test with a hard deadline for the roofing material and a permissive aesthetic standard with no deadline for the panels.
Nothing in chapter 86 addresses the interaction, and nothing in ORS 94.778 does either. A board processing a combined application has no statutory guidance on whether the 90-day clock runs against the whole application or only the hardening component. The conservative reading — and the only one that does not risk a deemed approval — is to treat the clock as running from the date the application is filed and to answer the whole of it inside 90 days.
What to watch next
Whether the 2027 session harmonises the two. The pattern in Oregon has been to legislate one exterior-modification category at a time — solar in 2017, EV charging before that, portable cooling devices at ORS 94.779(6), manufactured dwellings in 2025, fire hardening in 2026 — each with its own test, its own carve-outs and its own or no deadline. There is no general Oregon statute on architectural review, and after 2026 the case for one is stronger than it has ever been.
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