While there are a lot of well-meaning people on this post, there are quite a few reasons that finding places that don’t require building permits and the accompanying inspections, and meeting IRC building code can be highly valued. For me, the value lives in alternative and tiny homes. For many alternative homes and nearly all tiny homes there is no IRC building code. This is why up to this point, most tiny homes have to be built as mobile. So that they’re not required to meet building code. But what if you own land and you want to build a tiny home on that land, and you don’t want to be mobile. I design tiny homes. I have been watching the code conventions for several years in regards to tiny homes. Thus far we have been unsuccessful at getting code specific to tiny homes passed.
There is a difference between sharing what you believe and sharing what you know. Until this week I thought I knew that you would have to pass code and inspection on any home you build anywhere in the United States. But that is not true. As it turns out I own a piece of land in Missouri in a county that has no current requirements for building permits, meeting building code, inspections, or even zoning. I didn’t know this existed. My piece of land is tiny. I want to build a storage container home on it. I can do that within the requirements of the IRC, but I will lose a lot of space, a lot of money, and a lot of time. Now, having finished my entire basement, two cabins, and designed for a very near-future build of our new home, all to code, all with permits, and all passing inspections, I have no intention of building my storage container home in an unsafe, structurally unsound, or even in an inefficient manner. But, there are a lot of new technologies and building practices and designs that do not yet have a code written for them or meet current conventional IRC building code. I have seen many of these on tiny home shows, house hunting shows and other such venues. Sometimes these were in the United States, sometimes they were in the UK or Europe, but I am very excited to be able to utilize some of these. I would watch the shows and think “that’s awesome, but that doesn’t meet code.” How are they doing this.? Now I know. And my storage container home is going to be totally awesome.
Also, when we went through the permitting process for our cabins, it took over six months. They nitpicked the stupidest things but completely missed some very serious and obvious things that we had to remedy later once we were already building. So I am so glad to not have to wait an additional six months to even be able to start and to be able to do things that my engineer says are perfectly sound but the building department says oh no way!
And between the application for my building permit and then the building permits with inspections fees it cost us $2000 in permitting for just the house itself so when you’re building a container home that’s going to cost somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000, $2000 is a lot of money.
