With just a few exceptions – any kind of new construction is going to have requirements by the city, county, state, and/or HOA/CC&Rs that will dictate the terms of the build. The HOA/CC&R requirements are going to vary wildly and be incredibly specific to a certain property. Thus, we won’t cover any of those here. The government agencies however all exist for one main reason – to ensure the health and safety of the building occupants. We’re going to say this several times; it is in your best interest as the homeowner to ensure all permits are pulled, codes followed, and inspections passed.

The standards building departments will hold work performance to are likely going to be from the International Codes Council (ICC) with the most referenced being the International Residential Code (IRC). Every three years the ICC puts out a new edition (i.e. IRC 2024). It’s pretty typical for building departments to be one or several editions behind. And even more common for them to have amendments to the code they’ve adopted. A pretty common example would be to enforce a newer code with an amendment to allow for poorer performance energy codes (i.e. IRC 2018 with amendments to follow IRC 2012 energy codes). We’ll dive into how codes should not be the standard you’re building to for this reason below.

That all said and in summary – codes are the rules and permits are the device to have the jurisdiction you’re building within make sure you’re at least meeting code in both plan and work product (through inspections).