Dacono building permits

Tips & gotchas

• Dacono is a home-rule city that issues its own building, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical permits, but plan review and inspections have been performed under contract by SAFEbuilt, Inc. since June 1, 2016. Direct code/plan-review questions to SAFEbuilt (970-545-3512) and permit-administration/account questions to the City's Permit Technician, Raquel Chavez (303-833-2317 ext. 128, rchavez@daconoco.gov).
• Dacono adopted the full 2024 I-Codes cycle (IBC, IRC, IFGC, IPC, IMC, IEBC, IPMC, ISPSC, IECC, IFC) plus the 2023 NEC, effective December 17, 2025 under Ordinance 1002, subsequently amended by Ordinance 1010 (March 23, 2026). The prior cycle was adopted under Ordinance 949 (October 9, 2023) — confirm which ordinance governs a given permit application date if working on a project that spans the transition.
• The City is a registered 'Inspecting Entity' under BOTH Colorado's electrical contemporaneous-review law (CRS 12-23-116(10), per HB 2016-1073) and its plumbing counterpart (HB19-1086) — meaning Dacono runs its own local electrical and plumbing permitting/inspection programs and verifies contractors' Colorado state (DORA) licenses itself at application and inspection, rather than deferring those trades to the state.
• All building permit fees are computed from the ICC Building Safety Journal's Building Valuation Data (BVD), updated bi-annually (August/February) — not a locally-authored valuation table. Plan Review is a flat 65% of the computed building permit fee, and a 1.5% Construction Use Tax applies to material costs. These three components (permit fee, 65% plan review, 1.5% use tax) apply across nearly every permit type in this file.
• 'Almost Free Building Permit Month' runs every June and temporarily discounts building permit, plan review, and inspection fees for OWNER-APPLIED (not contractor-applied) alteration/repair/improvement projects on existing residential structures and their accessory structures — explicitly excludes new residential construction and non-residential projects. For the 2026 cycle, all discounted work must be completed and inspected by September 30, 2026.
• Fire-code plan review/permits (Mountain View Fire Protection District, 303-772-0710 ext. 2251) and sanitary sewer taps (St. Vrain Sanitation District, 303-776-9570) are handled DIRECTLY by those special districts, not by the City or SAFEbuilt, and carry entirely separate fee schedules from the City's own building permit fees.
• Water tap fees vary enormously by provider: City of Dacono's own water tap fees run $1,530-$4,075 by meter size, while Central Weld County Water District's tap fees for the same meter sizes run $12,000-$180,000 — confirm which water provider serves a given parcel before budgeting a project.
• General/sub-trade contractor licensing uses a three-tier local category system (Category A $150 general/$1,000-and-up projects; Category B $100 covering Roofing, Masonry, Excavating, Plumbers, Hot Water, etc.; Category C $50 covering Fences, Siding, Painting, Alarms, Fire Protection, and many other specialty trades) — in addition to any required Colorado state trade license (electrical and plumbing specifically).
• No numeric plan-review turnaround (days or weeks) is published anywhere on the City's Building Codes & Permits page, Fee Schedule, Almost Free Building Permits page, or any of SAFEbuilt's homeowner building guides (Re-Roof, Home Additions, Basement Finish, Decks, Patio Covers and Carports, Accessory Structures, Pole Barns, Swimming Pools, Window Replacement) — checked all directly. Colorado is home-rule with no statewide review-time clock, and every permitType in this file is honestly null/unverified with a documented chase trail.
• Dacono's primary domain migrated from cityofdacono.com to daconoco.gov (301 redirect confirmed on both the homepage and the seed Building-Codes-Permits URL) — some older internally-linked documents on daconoco.gov still reference the legacy cityofdacono.com domain in their hrefs (e.g., the Building Permit Application and electrician registration form links), though the files themselves resolve correctly.
• The SAFEbuilt-published Photovoltaic System Submittal Requirements document is a regional multi-jurisdiction template (contains a visible '20203 NEC' typo, last revised 10/22/2021) rather than a Dacono-specific design-criteria chart — its stated 30 psf ground snow load / 115 mph wind baseline should be treated as general guidance pending direct confirmation with SAFEbuilt/the City for a specific project, which is why the rooftop-solar-pv-permit and adu-permit entries in this file carry 'partial' confidence.
• Dacono sits in the 'Carbon Valley' area near Firestone and Frederick (both separately covered in this corpus) but operates its own independent SAFEbuilt-contracted building department rather than a shared regional building program with those neighboring towns.