Clovis building permits

Tips & gotchas

• THIS RECORD IS CLOVIS, CALIFORNIA. The corpus also holds Clovis, New Mexico, in Curry County, which keeps the bare slug; this one is filed as clovis-ca. Two real cities share the name and they share nothing else - check the state before quoting a figure from either.
• THE CITY PUBLISHES TWO INSPECTION-REQUEST PROCEDURES THAT DO NOT AGREE, AND BOTH ARE CURRENT PAGES. The Building Division page routes you through the CSS portal to Today's Inspections, tells you to find your assigned inspector and "Call the inspector to see what times are available." The FAQs page tells you requests "can be called for at (559) 324-2337" and "must be made 24 hours in advance." One is a same-day negotiation with a person, the other is a day-ahead booking with an office. This record carries both because the city does; ring (559) 324-2390 before you rely on either.
• EIGHT DESIGN VALUES ARE PUBLISHED, AND THE SNOW LOAD IS THE POINT. Clovis states "Snow Load - 0" and three inches of yearly rain alongside Climate Zone 13, Seismic Design Category D, soil at 1500 psi, a 20 PSF roof live load and "Wind Exposure 85 V asd/ 110 V alt". Victorville, the other California city added in this batch, publishes a 5 lb ground snow load. Two cities in the same state with a real difference in what the roof is expected to carry - which is why these values belong per jurisdiction and not in a state-level guide.
• THE AUTOMATED SOLAR ROUTE EXCLUDES THE PEOPLE MOST LIKELY TO WANT IT. Clovis runs SolarApp under SB-379, but "The 3rd method is for contractors only (Owner builders are required to use method 1 or 2)." Elsewhere in this corpus - Oceanside, Pomona, Santa Clara, Visalia, Victorville - the automated route is the headline convenience. Here a homeowner doing their own installation is sent back to the counter or the ordinary online process.
• PAPER IS STILL REQUIRED FOR COMMERCIAL WORK, IN FOUR COPIES, WET SIGNED. "Commercial: Four sets for commercial projects", with drawings and calculations "wet signed and stamped by a licensed California Architect or Engineer." Oceanside abolished paper plans in January 2025 and Torrance in January 2026, both without exceptions; Visalia takes a flash drive in a drop box; Clovis wants four physical sets. California has not converged, and a guide that said it had would be wrong in at least three directions.
• THE FAQ STILL CITES THE UNIFORM BUILDING CODE. On the garage conversion answer the city writes that "the conditions of UBC Section 1204" must be adhered to, and the pool exemption is written for "a Group R, Division 3 Occupancy" - both Uniform Building Code forms, a model code California replaced with the California Building Code. The substance of a light-and-ventilation requirement for a habitable room survived the renumbering; the citation did not, so do not go looking for UBC 1204 in the 2025 code. Read that as a dating signal on the FAQ page rather than on the city's current practice, which the Building Division page states in 2025 terms.
• THE CITY'S CODE-CHANGE CHANNEL IS A NUMBERED LETTER TO INDUSTRY: three for the 2025 cycle (2025-03, 2025-04 and 2025-05, one concerning AB-130), plus recurring "Notice to Industry Valuation Update" letters, the latest dated 2025-08-18 in its filename. Where a city routes changes through numbered letters rather than page edits, the letters are the current source and the pages lag.
• FEES MOVE WITH A VALUATION TABLE THAT IS UPDATED BY NOTICE. Successive valuation update letters, a published Letter to Industry Proposed Fee Increase and an AB 602 Development Fee Transparency item mean the number that matters lives in a periodically reissued document rather than on a page. Quote it by the date in its filename and re-check before relying on it.
• RECORDS RESEARCH IS STILL OFFERED BY FAX. "Building inspection files are public records and requests for research can be done by FAX, mail, or in person at the Permit Counter" - no email or online route is given for it, which is unusual for a city that otherwise runs permits through a self-service portal.
• THE COUNTER KEEPS ONE UNBROKEN WINDOW: Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 4:30 PM, with no published lunch closure. Roseville, added in the same batch, shuts for an hour in the middle of the day and runs different counter and phone hours; Clovis publishes a single span for the division.