Disclaimer

When a page says a project does or does not need a permit, that is a statement about the building permit in that jurisdiction, read from what that jurisdiction publishes. It is not a statement about everything standing between you and legally completed work. In particular it does not tell you about:

• Zoning. Setbacks, lot coverage, height limits and district rules apply whether or not a building permit is required, and they are set per district rather than per jurisdiction. Our own researchers recorded permit offices making this exact point dozens of times: an exemption from a building permit is not an exemption from zoning.
• Other permits and approvals. Electrical, plumbing and mechanical work often sits with a different authority than the building office, and in some jurisdictions with a state agency, a health department, a utility or a private inspection agency. Where we know that, we say so on the page.
• Private restrictions. Homeowners association rules, deed restrictions and easements are not government rules and are not in our data.
• Your specific facts. Flood and wind zones, historic districts, shorelines, septic fields and the conclusions of a plans examiner reading your drawings can all change the answer for your property.

Every rule shows the date we last read it from the official source. That is exactly what the date claims and nothing more. It means a person opened that jurisdiction's page on that day and confirmed the rule said what we publish. It does not mean the rule is still current today, and it does not mean the jurisdiction has not amended its code since. Ordinances take effect on dates nobody announces to us.

Treat an older date as a prompt to check, not as an error. If you find one that has gone stale, the correction form is the fastest way to get it fixed.

35 of our 1,418 rules are published as unresolved, because the jurisdiction does not state an answer we could find and we will not manufacture one. Those pages say what we checked and point you at the office to call. They are excluded from search results so an unanswered question cannot pose as an answer.

Jurisdictions also contradict themselves. We have found a single county publishing three different exemption figures across its own pages, and a city FAQ answering the opposite of its own ordinance. Where we can tell which source governs, we follow the ordinance and quote it. Where we cannot, we record the conflict rather than pick a side quietly.

Some pages may include advertising. Some pages may include sponsored links, such as contractor quote forms. They are always labelled "Sponsored" where they appear, and PermitNotebook may earn a fee if you use them.

Sponsored partners never influence our permit data. No advertiser or partner has ever seen a verdict, a threshold or a fee before it published, and none can request a change to one. The official permit office linked on every page is always the free path, and on every page where a paid option appears the government option is the primary link by construction.

Three pages carry no advertising and no sponsored placement of any kind, by a rule we set for ourselves when we published them: the fee study, the turnaround study and the inspection pass rate study. They are original research and we did not want the question of who paid for them to arise.