Frederick building permits

Tips & gotchas

• Frederick is a Statutory Town (not a full home-rule charter city) with its own Building Department (401 Locust Street) that issues its own building, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing permits — inspections are performed by Town staff or by CAA (Code Administration & Associates), described by the Town itself as its 'private building inspection partner.'
• Frederick contemporaneously verifies BOTH electrician and plumber Colorado DORA state licenses at building-permit application (per its own published Contemporaneous Review Guidelines citing CRS 12-23-116 for electrical and CRS 12-155-120(1)/HB19-1086 for plumbing) — this is the standard statutory pattern layered on the Town's own local permit issuance, not a case of Frederick deferring issuance entirely to the state boards.
• The Town's live Building Codes page lists 2024 IBC/IRC/IFC/IMC/IFGC/IPC/IEBC/IECC/ISPSC/IPMC plus 2023 NEC as currently adopted, alongside the 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code and the Colorado Model Electric Ready and Solar Ready Code — but the Town's own Residential New Construction Checklist still separately references a '2021 IECC Energy Code' compliance path (REScheck/energy rating/prescriptive HERS). Both editions meet or exceed Colorado's HB22-1362 statewide energy floor (2021 IECC minimum, July 2023-July 2026 window); confirm current governing edition directly with the Building Department if timing is ambiguous for your specific project.
• All contractors (including electrical Class E and plumbing Class P) need BOTH a Colorado state trade license/DORA registration AND a separate Town of Frederick contractor license via the Town's OpenGov portal — the portal treats every submission as a new license application, with no distinct renewal workflow.
• The Town publishes NO numeric plan-review turnaround (days or weeks) for any permit category anywhere on its Building Department page, Submittal Requirements page, Solar Submittal Requirements page, Residential New Construction Checklist, 2026 Fee Schedule, or general Permits page — checked all of these directly. Every permitType in this record is honestly null/unverified with a documented chase trail rather than an invented figure.
• Frederick's 2026 Fee Schedule includes several distinct FLAT fees that sit outside the general valuation-based Building Permit Fee table: Residential AC/Furnace/Evaporative Cooler ($200), Residential 'Like for Like' Water Heater ($200), Residential Service upgrade 200A max ($100), 200A-or-less Temporary Electrical Service/Construction Meter ($150), Residential Solar Device ($500), Commercial Solar Device ($1,000), and a Foundation Only Permit Fee ($1,000 per $500,000 of total building valuation, or fraction thereof) — confirm which line item applies to your specific scope before budgeting from the general valuation table alone.
• Solar photovoltaic submittals in Frederick require a stamped structural engineering letter on every project, not just non-flush-mounted arrays — budget for one even on a simple flush-mount residential roof job. The Solar Submittal Requirements page shows no fee; the separate 2026 Fee Schedule carries the actual $500/$1,000 flat solar fees, so price from the Fee Schedule.
• Fire alarm and fire sprinkler plans in Frederick route to the Frederick Fire Department separately from the Building Department's commercial plan review — do not bundle fire-protection plans with a Building Department commercial/TI submittal.
• Water Dedication Requirements apply to new single-family and commercial projects located east of I-25 (per Frederick Municipal Code Title 13, Article II, Division 2), coordinated with the St. Vrain Sanitation District and St. Vrain Valley School District — this is a separate utility/water-rights process from Building Department plan review and is not modeled as its own permitType in this record.
• Frederick does not publish separate checklists, applications, or fees for re-roofs, decks/covered patios, residential additions/remodels, or commercial tenant improvements — the Town runs ONE unified permit-application-and-checklist track scaled by project scope. The Town's New Residential, New Commercial, and General Permit Application PDFs are text-identical ('GENERAL CONSTRUCTION PERMIT' with a free-text PERMIT TYPE field and a built-in 'Deck' field); the All-Commercial checklist explicitly covers 'Class of work - New, addition, alteration, repair, move, other' as one unified list; the Town's public OpenGov permitting portal (frederickco.portal.opengov.com) publicly lists only 'Contractor License Application' as a standalone record type; and no re-roof-, deck-, or tenant-specific page has ever existed on frederickco.gov. The demolition fee is $200.00, per the 'Demolition of Structure' line on page 8 of the 2026 Fee Schedule PDF. Call the Building Department (720-382-5516 / building@frederickco.gov) to confirm exact document expectations for a specific active project, as several permit types' checklists explicitly scale documentation to the nature of the work.