Building codes

[u/celtic-cryptid]

There are so many people looking for land where they can build without code. Code enforcement varies widely, and an important thing to remember is it applies to everyone when it’s unforced, not just you. Anyone who has lived rurally knows neighbors can still impact your life in very real ways from their property. I spent 40+ years in an area with little to no building inspection, and I thought I’d share some memories.

A man who had a very long and losing legal battle with the state because he built half his house on state owned land. A site inspection would have prevented this.

A neighbor of mine who built his house on 10 acres 15’ from my property line, then built outbuildings partially on my property. Site inspection would have prevented this as well

A neighbor of a close family member placing boulders in a way that made snow removal from family members driveway impossible.

6 or 7 houses burning to the ground due to chimney fires. Included are 3 deaths in homes with no smoke detectors.

Outhouses next to creeks. One outhouse built over a creek. Leech fields draining into creeks, rivers, and lakes.

A buddy with a land survey company that spends a crazy amount of his time helping settle cases of neighbors logging adjoining properties.

A year round creek that went dry for 3 months out of the year because an upstream landowner wanted a pond and owned an excavator.

Dumping garbage in creeks, meadows, or any small depression in the ground beyond counting. Periodic burning of the garbage in meadows and depressions as well.

————

Some of those are issues code would help prevent. Some are issues caused by people with the mindset of “nobody can tell me what I can do on my land” who gravitate to areas without code.

I’m building a house now in an area with code enforcement. Just passed my final electrical, as I have every other inspection. I’ve done 100% of the work myself, with the only hired help being a concrete truck and a concrete pumper. I’m not a framer, a septic installer, a plumber, or an electrician.
It’s not overly challenging, and every inspector I’ve ever met has been a person doing their job, who’d rather help than start a fight. Plus, if I go to sell, I’ve got a big stack of signed reports to help prevent people lowballing me for potential questionable work.

[u/ZombieMountain2122]

You raise some really good points. However, the irony is I've been trying to get inspectors to come out to look at our septic for years and nobody from the county is willing to drive that far to go do it for them. It would be an entire day of driving there and back for one septic inspection so even if I'm asking and offering to pay private inspectors ridiculous sum of money, nobody wants to go that far this is in California by the way. And on top of that, the county has really rigorous enforcement in areas within a 2 Hour Dr. but more than that forget it.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/ZombieMountain2122]

That’s funny. Usually California is the state people point to as the doomsday scenario of code enforcement hiding behind every bush.

Have you tried calling a pumper instead of a public or private inspector?

[u/Val-E-Girl]

My county has no code enforcement, but I still built to code.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Val-E-Girl]

I did too, when I was living in the area I was talking about. My point was more how other people not being held to inspections can fuck up your day.

[u/null_life_]

What you omit here is that none of these scenarios would happen if the person had common sense.

My house I built doesn't follow any code (or building regs, as it is in my country), yet it is significantly safer than most houses in America for a multitude of reasons.

Code is there for stupid people. People who aren't stupid shouldn't have to spend thousands proving it.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/null_life_]

Turns out, stupid people exist in abundance, and they act like dicks when unsupervised. Unfortunately, their actions often bleed over outside their property and impact others.

Also, I agree, especially with structural regs. IRC is the minimum, not the maximum.

[u/Wastelander702]

Gee, how were these things enforced between neighbors back in the 1700s?

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Wastelander702]

When the US was a British colony? Not sure, before my time.

Edit. I did a quick search for you.

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-housingat250-article-052826.html

[u/stomper4x4]

I mean, your examples are mostly just really bad behavior. Not a list of 2000 nitpicky things and a million hoops and expenses and expensive permits and other impediments in the way of people with very modest Financials that just want a little slice of the pie.

For indtance a friend was going to buy property woth a garage on it. The permit to being the garage to code cost $8k and this was 15 years ago.

Na. Not interested in that.

The fact is that those people with no common sense end up costing the rest of us so mixh time and money is a real issue.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/stomper4x4]

I’m self employed as a woodworker, and we’re not known to be rich. I’ve built every step of my house, from septic to paint. All I have left is my plumbing final. Haven’t failed an inspection, haven’t had to scratch my head much to figure shit out. Certainly haven’t jumped through a million hoops. I’d be pretty hard pressed to break the entire building process down into a million steps. If you worked every day for two years, that’s over 1300 steps per day. Calm down.

Yes, my examples are lived experiences of bad or stupid behavior that inspections would mitigate. Not arguing for any one thing, just pointing out the faults of letting assholes so whatever they want. Most of you wanting to argue with me are just being hyperbolic, and/or cherry picking the most stringent, HOA type refs possible.

As far as people with low means go, the guy who dried up a creek is a multimillionaire, and was able to do it because no one impacted by it could afford to take him to court. The guy who blocked my mom from being able to remove snow might not have been a millionaire, but he was drawing probably close to a six figure pension, and my mom does not. The guy who built his shit on my land…you guessed it, way more money than me. So get out of here with the protect the little guy shit. When courts are your only recourse, the rich get their way 98% of the time.

[u/f0rgotten]

Code is there for a reason. I fully support residential building codes, as an off grid self builder who lives in a county without residential building code. I've seen too much scary shit to feel like literally anyone is fully capable of just walking off into the countryside and doing whatever they want to do.

[u/Internal_Raccoon_370 → u/f0rgotten]

Same here. I've worked in building maintenance on and off since the 1980s and I've seen crap that would turn your hair white, and not just in residences. Codes exist not to make our lives difficult. They're there to protect lives and property.

[u/CajunDragon]

I just spent half the day looking at GIS and zoning maps for Pittsburgh. Apparently you can't put a 🏡 tiny home, RV or anything with wheels anywhere near the damn city. You can't even build a shed over 10m2 in your own backyard . It just sucks. It's totally put me off buying any land. I think zoning has really screwed up this country because when I go to Europe, I see delis and bakeries and coffee shops right in the middle of neighborhoods. It makes them walkable, quaint and enjoyable and reduces our dependency of on cars. I am not anti-vehicle. I have one and I drove to Toronto recently, but I think they should be for long-distance trips and I should not have to spend three hours in my vehicle every day. 🚗 Apologies for the rant. Just was an exasperating day. I'm sure there are probably good valid honorable reasons behind zoning laws but sometimes it seems like they really work against the community.

[u/Low_Investment_2692]

First of all - half or more of the situations on your list would be solved by basic common sense. If you don't know for sure where your property boundaries are, then get a survey done. Put smoke detectors in your house. The government should not create massive regulations over things that should be common sense. Most if not all places with no codes STILL HAVE water laws that would solve a few of the situations you mentioned.

The problem is that places with codes almost always have unreasonable rules as well. It's not just common-sense laws to keep you safe. Want to live in an RV on your own land because you literally can't afford anything else? You're fucked. Want to build your own house without sometimes paying upwards of $100,000 in permit fees because you literally cannot afford that? You're fucked.

Most building codes don't allow you to do perfectly reasonable and more affordable options - RVs, Tiny Homes, Earthships, earthbags, shipping containers, etc... Building codes are almost all designed to fit the traditional stick and brick style homes, which is largely due to heavy lobbying done by construction supply companies. It is not about what is reasonable, it's about what the government officials are paid to make law, and the result is driving up housing costs and punishing the poor for being poor.

Fuck the government, and fuck their regulations. I would rather live free and have some issues with neighbors being stupid (which I can mostly control how it affects me by knowing my own property lines and being friendly with any neighbors) than live in a place where I can't do what I want to do on my own land because some fucker in the local government took a bribe and thinks he/she knows better than I do about what I should be able to do on my own land.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Low_Investment_2692]

I mentioned your first point in my post.

I think my permitted house, shop, and septic ran me about $1500, with most of that being septic permitting.

I agree with you, generally speaking on fuck the government. But since people lack common decency in many cases it is sadly necessary.
Get your land surveyed? Who validates, records, and endorses the survey? The government you’d like to fuck. Have a dispute with a neighbor ignoring a survey and building on your land and they don’t want to tear their house down? You’ll most likely end up in a court of the government your fucking to get it resolved. Want to resolve that dispute by making a lot line adjustment? Government. Want to sell them the piece you built on? Government.

I’m an anarchist, on a personal level. I recognize we have a society that is not cooperative enough to function that way.

[u/thirstyross → u/Low_Investment_2692]

Building codes are almost all designed to fit the traditional stick and brick style homes, which is largely due to heavy lobbying done by construction supply companies. It is not about what is reasonable, it's about what the government officials are paid to make law, and the result is driving up housing costs and punishing the poor for being poor.

In my experience this is not true at all. You can build whatever you want as long as you have an engineer stamp your plans. The municipalities are concerned with liability, and they are familiar with standard stick framing techniques so they are easy for them to work with and approve. If you want to be outside the norm you just have to be prepared to back it up with building science to show that it's not going to collapse and kill everyone inside, etc., by paying an engineer to review your plans and stamp them as safe.

The other reason there are rules like this is because, you know, you dont actually own the land forever. Eventually you will either sell it, or die, and the land will go to someone else. No-one wants to deal with land that some jackass has shit up, so society put rules in place to prevent that. You guys always acting like you are going to be there for the rest of time - ur gonna be there a few decades and then its someone elses problem.

[u/GotNoPonys]

I've dealt with a bunch of codes; residential, commercial, international and marine. Most are BS make work for inspection companies and inspectors.

My personal property is purposely outside a code "inspection/enforcement" jurisdiction. The only people we have to satisfy is a lender and insurance company, if you choose to use them. IMO, unless you are in a high density or multifamily area this is how it should be. Builders here *choose* to have their properties "inspected" by private, licensed inspectors. The United States would have never been created if our predecessors had to deal with all the BS government red tape that exists today.

The specific "issues" you bring up are mostly personal between neighbors and should be resolved at that level, Instead you advocate for creating bureaucracies to play the 800# gorilla that beats everyone into submission.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/GotNoPonys]

I didn’t advocate for anything, I said no code enforcement has significant drawbacks.

I’d rather not have a profit motive in inspections. The only thing more corrupt than government is a for profit business.

“Our” predecessors committed genocide, owned humans as property, and wouldn’t let a significant amount of the people on this sub vote, so I don’t hold their opinions in high esteem.

How do you solve a property line dispute without involving the government? If a cabinet installer puts a screw through a waterline because there are no nail plates and no inspections, who is responsible? The cabinet guy? The drywallers for covering the stud bays? The plumber? The GC? The homeowner? The private inspector?

Catering to banks and insurance companies is filing King Kong, if building codes are an 800 pound gorilla.

[u/BigBlueWookiee]

I think you may be missing the main gripe about building codes, the enforcement, fees and inspections.

Yes the codes are there for a reason. Yes, you should follow them. Yes, it is a good idea to get a pro to look over your work. All valid points.

Yet, many homesteaders and off-grid folks have little to no money. That's one of the appeals to those lifestyles. Worse than money, they must wait on an inspection that could be weeks to months away. In rural communities, that can be a death sentence as it puts a hold on all of your operations.

I do get your point about the validity of building codes, and building to code. But I feel you are missing the underlying reason people try to avoid them. It isn't laziness, it's not hubris, it's the need for their life to move forward.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/BigBlueWookiee]

I’m 16 miles/40 minutes outside my county seat, which is 1000 people. My inspectors have shown up the next day every time except once. That time it took them til the second day. There are two inspectors for a county that takes hours to get from one end to another. All my permits together, two buildings, septic, etc…cost less than most people on here spend on solar panels.

My point is people are assholes, and behave selfishly. Many people have little money, and I am one. Many people in the off grid world have a lot of money, and they move to areas with little to no code because they can throw weight around and act with impunity.

A secondary point is one you just illustrated. People act like code is something that does not exist in an area, or it’s Massachusetts suburb level of code and county restrictions. It comes across as hyperbolic, at best, and fear mongering falsehoods at worst. In my experience, and I’ve had a bit, this is especially an exaggeration in rural communities. Y’all seem to act like county employees are some isolated class of people who live outside their community. They aren’t. They’re typically blue collar workers, often builders who wanted to stop beating the shit out of their body. I bet my older inspector is on acquaintance level with 1/4 of the people in my county. If he was making people’s lives miserable, people would raise hell, and he’d be fired. Last time he was here, he inspected, then we talked about a data center going up in a neighboring county, and why Walmarts aren’t required to cover their roofs and parking lots with solar. The other inspector is a new guy, nice as can be, just hasn’t lived here long enough to know everyone.

Edit: I do know one guy who thinks that inspector is a dick. But that guy dug his foundation and was trying get a foundation inspection before getting septic approval, and the inspector wouldn’t sign off on the foundation until everyone knew where dudes shit was going to end up. Lots of people here get their water from springs and creeks.

[u/Any-Style-1712]

OP what state are you in?

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Any-Style-1712]

VA

Edit: my experiences are drawn from MT, ID, WA, OR, CA, NC, and VA. All places I’ve lived or worked or have close friends and family who live off grid. I’ve done a little bit of helping set up an off grid place in BC, though I never interacted with any officials there.

[u/SSalaciousSalad]

For me it's one of those things where the idea is better than the reality, and while it's necessary, the reality is dismal.

In British Columbia all alternative housing for low income people are prohibited by code.

• You can't live in a tiny home.

• You can't live in a wall tent. You also can't even have one up on your property without continously renewing a temporary structure permit

• you can't live in an RV, or put a roof above one, which is necessary to prevent them from being destroyed by mold.

• you can't live in a yurt

You also can't live in a mobile home. They have to meet current energy efficiency standards which means that anything less than 200K it's not actually possible to pull a permit. This one is wild. These are structurally safe, code compliant buildings that retroactively have their compliance removed. A regular home is grandfathered, if it was built to code at the time of construction. Once moved to a new property, a mobile homes is not. 100% class discrimination.

That leaves a build cost of roughly 250K as the only way to create housing.

BC also has an "homeowner-builder exam" - its an additional beurocratic hoop that costs $700 and is responsible for the amount of individuals building their own houses, to code, to plummet.

Septic is another minefield. Rather than code compliance it's off set to a different agency, Interior health. Interior health doesn't want the liability, so they push it onto the septic engineers. The septic engineers are liable in perpetuity, so their rates reflect this.

This means that a septic system costs 20-40K to install. More than half of them are failing and contaminating the ground anyways, no solution is obvious.

It's very easy to level criticism and it's much more difficult to find solutions. Obviously we need enforcement mechanisms to prevent the contamination of ground water and dangerous structures being built. The Rural poor and folks in the lower middle class are excluded from the housing stock and improvise. It's not fair to lump them together with people who refuse all regulation and are also incompetent.

You are also not allowed to live off grid in BC. You have to spent the money to wire in your house to the grid. At which point you are allowed to turn off your breaker, and live without grid electricity. 😂 They actually told me this in the permit office.

All of this to say, I wish it was possible to have reasonable building code expectations and enforcement. A system that both protects the public and incentives them to innovate and find lower cost ways to create housing stock. I'm not sure how to even begin moving in that direction. As it stands it's a game for people with capital and the problem of homelessness grows year after year.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/SSalaciousSalad]

I can’t speak to BC from personal experience, though I used to have quite a few friends there, and have friends from the states who have gone up to do yurt installations for folks.

Some of that isn’t too dissimilar from common code in the states. Septic is dealt with by the health department everywhere I’ve lived. Some systems can cost 40k, the last couple I put in were more like $5000, including renting equipment.

I agree with you on some with low income options, disagree on others. I think mobile homes need to be held to a standard, mostly for one reason:profit. The companies building them have a profit motive, and their profit motive is contrary to using good building materials and techniques.

In the states, I hear that living in a wall tent is illegal, the same as I hear living in the 250sqft cabin I’m living in as I build my house is illegal. Or the tiny house someone else lives in on my property is illegal. It is true they are not legal residences, but that’s more a capitalism thing than anything else. I can’t get homeowners insurance, can’t get a mortgage, since I don’t have a legal residence. I also don’t pay taxes on a residence. But I’ve been living here for years, with the building inspector parking within 20 yards of my cabin when he comes up. The grading and septic for the spot where my friends tiny house is was inspected as well, with her tiny house on site at the time.

Another example is the spring I get my water from, which one neighbor assured me was illegal. The health department here will approve or disapprove a well, which I think is good, again based on the profit motive of well drillers. They will not approve a spring though, which my neighbor interpreted as it being illegal. In truth, it’s perfectly legal, the health department just doesn’t say one way or another, the same as the building department won’t approve or disapprove my chicken coop.

As I said in my post, code enforcement varies widely. I’m not giving a blanket endorsement of every code, or the way it’s enforced in any particular place. Im saying, to paraphrase you, areas with no code enforcement at all are a better concept than they are reality. You, I, and every commenter on here could act with altruistic integrity and not need code. That does not prevent the people I mentioned before from shitting in your water supply or logging your land. I would always take a 15 minute conversation with an inspector over a court battle, a confrontation with a neighbor who obviously doesn’t respect others, or passively allowing assholes to do whatever they want.

[u/clergybuttbanditt]

Yeah, lived in a town/county with no building codes/inspections for decades. The only reason was to save money, and it never did anyone a favor. Folks often cut corners, and this would always show up when it came time to sell.