Redding building permits

Tips & gotchas

• THE ONLINE OFFERING IS A CLOSED LIST OF ELEVEN AND THE DEFAULT IS THE COUNTER: "You must come to the Permit Center at City Hall to fill out your permit application, submit the required documents, and pay applicable fees for all other building permits." Carlsbad locks you into whichever channel your permit type falls in and keeps you there for the life of the permit; Redding simply has a short list and a front desk for everything else. Check the list before planning a digital submittal.
• THE PERMIT CENTER SHUTS AT 3 PM - "Monday-Friday 8 am-3 pm" - which is seven hours a day and the earliest closing time in this California batch. Napa's counter closes to new business at 3:30 and is shut on Fridays; Redding is open five days but the afternoon is mostly gone.
• AND THE INSPECTORS START AN HOUR BEFORE THE COUNTER DOES: inspections run "from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM" against counter hours of 8 am to 3 pm. If an inspector raises a question at 7:15 there is nobody at the desk to answer it for another forty-five minutes.
• ANYONE WITH AN ACCOUNT CAN BOOK AN INSPECTION AGAINST YOUR PERMIT: "you do not need to be listed as a contact on the permit record to request an inspection." That is genuinely convenient on a multi-trade job where the electrician is not the permit holder - and it is worth knowing that the permit holder is not the only person who can move the schedule.
• THE CITY IS HONEST THAT NEXT-DAY IS AN AIM, NOT A SERVICE LEVEL: "Inspection requests may be limited based on workload and staffing levels. Inspection capacity is generally set to accommodate next-day inspections whenever possible." Antioch withdrew its next-day guarantee on a named date; Redding never offered one and says why.
• AFTER-HOURS WORK IS A FIVE-DAY PLANNING ITEM, NOT A PHONE CALL: "Requests for after-hours inspections must be submitted at least 5 working days before the requested inspection date", with a 2-hour minimum charge and anything longer requested in writing. A Saturday pour that needs an inspection has to be decided the Monday before.
• THE FENCE ENTRY CONTAINS TWO DIFFERENT HEIGHTS AND ONE EXTRA CONDITION: "Fences not over seven feet in height and not within 10 feet of a public right-of-way. (The town limits most fences to 6 feet.)" The state exemption is seven feet; Redding adds a right-of-way proximity test the state list does not have, and then notes its own zoning limit is six. Build to seven because the building code exempts it and you may still be in breach of the zoning code.
• EXEMPT FROM A BUILDING PERMIT IS NOT EXEMPT FROM THE CITY, and Redding is unusually specific about which items: "Items 1 through 4 and 7 through 9 generally require Planning Division review and approval even if no building permit is required." That covers sheds, fences, retaining walls, driveways, pools, playground equipment and awnings - most of the things a homeowner assumes are free of process.
• A PLUMBING REPAIR CAN PROMOTE ITSELF INTO PERMITTED WORK MID-JOB. Clearing a stoppage is exempt, but if a concealed pipe "becomes defective and it becomes necessary to remove and replace the same with the new material, such work shall be considered new work, a building permit must be obtained, and inspections must be made and approved." The exemption ends the moment the repair becomes a replacement, which is a decision made with the wall already open.
• EMERGENCY REPAIRS HAVE A ONE-DAY PAPERWORK CLOCK: "the permit application shall be submitted to the Building Official within the next working business day." The work may proceed; the application cannot wait until the invoice.
• THE CITY PUBLISHES DIRECT NUMBERS FOR TWO NAMED OFFICERS - a Deputy Building Official and a Senior Building Inspector - rather than routing everything through a switchboard. This record carries the roles and the numbers but not the individuals' names, because a name in a guide goes stale faster than a desk does; the names are on the city's Inspection Services page if you want to ask for someone by name.
• NO CODE EDITION IS PUBLISHED ANYWHERE ON THE PAGES READ. Redding names "the California Building Code" without a year, and no adopting ordinance or local effective date appears on the Building, Inspection Services or FAQ pages. Every other city in this California batch states an edition; here you have to go to the Municipal Code on Municode to find out which one applies.