Unincorporated San Juan County building permits
VerifiedDepartment contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for Unincorporated San Juan County, Utah.
Last verified 2026-07-08 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history
Building department
- Address
- 117 South Main Street, P.O. Box 9, Monticello, UT 84535
- Phone
- (435) 587-3829
- Office hours
- Monday–Friday 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM (San Juan County Administration Building, 117 South Main Street, Monticello — per San Juan County's official Contact Us / Administrative Office pages; the Building Department's own page does not separately publish office hours)
- Website
- Official site
Inspection guide
See how inspections work in Unincorporated San Juan County — sequence, scheduling & re-inspection fees.
Codes adopted
Utah adopts construction codes statewide under Utah Code Title 15A (State Construction and Fire Codes Act), enforced by every jurisdiction. Chapter 4 of Title 15A codifies Legislature-enacted amendments for specific named jurisdictions (e.g., Park City, Salt Lake City, Sandy City) as part of the state construction code. Through June 30, 2026, the editions in force under Utah Code § 15A-2-103 are the 2021 IBC (with Appendices C and J), 2021 IRC, 2021 IPC, 2021 IMC, 2021 IFGC, 2021 IECC, 2021 IEBC, and 2021 ISPSC (residential provisions), together with the 2023 NEC. Effective July 1, 2026, § 15A-2-103 adopts the 2024 editions of the IBC, IPC, IMC, IFGC, IECC, IEBC, and ISPSC; the IRC remains the 2021 edition and the NEC remains the 2023 edition. Note: residential energy requirements are modified by statewide amendments, and several Utah jurisdictions document their residential energy provisions at the 2015 IECC level rather than the adopted IECC year — confirm the applicable residential energy code with your local jurisdiction. Always confirm the edition in force with your local jurisdiction.
- State of Utah construction codes adopted by reference — San Juan County's official Building Code Information page states verbatim: 'San Juan County has adopted the State of Utah codes as established in Title 15A, Chapters 1-5 of the Utah Code Annotated, as amended.' The county page does not enumerate individual code editions (IBC/IRC/IPC/IMC/IFGC/NEC/IECC) by year, so the current statutory statewide editions are cited directly below.
- 2024 International Building Code (IBC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- 2021 International Residential Code (IRC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026 (edition unchanged from prior cycle)
- 2024 International Plumbing Code (IPC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- 2024 International Mechanical Code (IMC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- 2024 International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- 2024 International Existing Building Code (IEBC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC) — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103, effective 07/01/2026
- Residential provisions of the 2024 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code — statewide per Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(n), effective 07/01/2026
Permit types & fees
Residential Building Permit
Required for new residential construction, moving a trailer or pre-built home onto a lot, and any addition or remodeling in unincorporated San Juan County (which also covers the Town of Bluff, whose Planning & Zoning Commission issues a prerequisite Land Use Clearance before the county issues the actual building permit). Plan review for one- and two-family dwellings and townhomes must be completed within the 14-business-day statutory window required by Utah Code § 17-36-55(3)(a).
Commercial Building Permit
Required for new commercial building construction in unincorporated San Juan County. The county bills commercial construction under the same combined Plan Review & Building Permit formula published for residential construction (1.75 × the structure's square footage) — San Juan County's official Building Department webpage publishes no separate commercial valuation track or fee tier. The county's own Building Permit Checklist states verbatim: 'All commercial Buildings must, by Utah Law, be designed, drawn and stamped by a Utah Licensed Architect or Engineer. A building can be considered commercial by the building use, occupancy, or construction type,' and: 'ALL WORK TO BE PERFORMED ON ANY COMMERCIAL PROJECT MUST BE DONE BY LICENSED CONTRACTORS. THE OWNER OF A COMMERCIAL PROJECT C[A]NNOT ACT AS THEIR OWN CONTRACTOR IN THE STATE OF UTAH.'
Commercial Tenant Improvement / Tenant Finish Permit
Required for tenant improvement / tenant finish work inside an existing commercial building in unincorporated San Juan County. The county publishes no distinct tenant-improvement fee tier — TI/remodel work is billed under the same 1.75-times-square-footage combined Plan Review & Building Permit formula applied to the affected square footage, and remains subject to the same statewide requirement that commercial plans be stamped by a Utah Licensed Architect or Engineer and that all work be performed by licensed contractors.
Sign Permit
Required for constructing a sign in unincorporated San Juan County. The county publishes a dedicated Sign Permit Application (separate from its building permit forms), reviewed by the Planning & Building Department, with a real, published fee structure: free for most signs, but $10 for a commercial sign placed on state highway frontage (because approved applications for those signs are forwarded to UDOT District Four). Sign categories and dimensional standards are set out in the County Zoning Ordinance § 12-5 (Signs).
EV Charger / EVSE Permit
San Juan County does not publish a distinct EV charger, EVSE, or electric vehicle charging station permit or fee. The county's official Building Permits process document confirms electrical work is inspected as part of the general Building Permit process — its required "4-Way Inspection" explicitly includes "Rough Electrical" alongside framing, rough plumbing, and rough mechanical — and the Plan Requirements checklist requires an "Electrical Layout" (switches, lights, outlets, service size & location, panel size & location) as part of the same building permit plan submittal. A new dedicated EV charger circuit is therefore processed under this same general Building Permit administered by the San Juan County Planning & Building Department, with no separate EV-specific fee line item.
Solar PV (Photovoltaic) Permit
San Juan County does not publish a distinct solar, solar PV, or photovoltaic installation permit or fee. The county's official Building Department webpage (sanjuancountyut.gov/building, live-checked 2026-07-21) and its Building Permit Checklist / Plan Requirements PDF do not mention solar, PV, or photovoltaic anywhere; the county's separate Planning & Zoning Fee Schedule (sjcpcfeesched16.pdf, which covers only planning/zoning services, not building-trade permits) likewise contains no solar line item. A rooftop or ground-mounted solar PV installation is therefore processed under the same general Residential or Commercial Building Permit administered by the San Juan County Planning & Building Department, with its Rough Electrical inspection (part of the required 4-Way Inspection) covering the PV system's electrical work under the 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC Article 690, Solar Photovoltaic Systems, adopted statewide by Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(g)).
Fire Sprinkler / Fire Alarm Permit
San Juan County's Planning & Building Department publishes no distinct local fire sprinkler or fire alarm permit, application, or fee — its Building Permit Checklist / Plan Requirements document, its Planning & Zoning Fee Schedule, and its Building Department webpage contain no fire-suppression or fire-alarm line item, and the county's own Fire Policy for Approved Development/Construction ordinance (adopted 2/1/2022) addresses only wildfire/defensible-space compliance as a precondition to building-permit issuance, not interior fire suppression or alarm system plan review. The verified statewide fallback is the Utah State Fire Marshal's Office (SFM), which publishes dedicated Automatic Fire Sprinkler Plan Submittal and Fire Alarm Plan Review Submittal forms, each carrying an identical fee of $0.022 per square foot (minimum $75), payable before plan review is released. However, per Utah Admin. Code R710-9-8, the SFM's/Local Fire Authority's statutory plan-review structure is expressly scoped to state-owned buildings, public/private schools, publicly owned buildings, privately owned colleges/universities, and institutional occupancies — no provision was found extending that statutory scope to routine private commercial construction in a county like San Juan that has no independent local fire-marshal plan-review program of its own, so this permit type is built as genuinely partial rather than fully verified.
Change of Use / Certificate of Occupancy
San Juan County does not publish a standalone 'change of use' permit or a separately priced Certificate of Occupancy (CO). Per the county's Zoning Ordinance (Amended Sept. 2011) §§ 1-6, 1-9, and 1-11, any change in the use of land or a building is folded into the county's general permitting authority — no officer may issue any permit or license for a use that would violate the Ordinance, and the Zoning Administrator 'shall not issue any permit unless the plans of the proposed erection, construction, reconstruction, alteration and use fully conform to all zoning regulations then in effect.' Where the new use is not an outright-Permitted use in the applicable zoning district's Use Regulations table (Zoning Ordinance Chapter 11, § 11-2), the applicant must instead obtain a Conditional Use Permit (Chapter 6) — which carries a real, published, project-value-tiered fee — before the use or any associated building permit is approved. A Certificate of Occupancy itself carries no distinct fee: the county's Building Permit Checklist confirms it is issued by the Building Department as the final step of the standard Final Inspection under the Residential or Commercial Building Permit already documented in this file: 'The completed building should not be occupied until a written "CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY" is issued by the Building Department.'
New residential construction activity
New privately-owned residential construction onlyHousing units authorized by building permits for new privately-owned residential construction — this is not total permit volume (no commercial permits or remodels).
- Latest month (2026-05)
- 6units
6 buildings · $2.2M valuation
- Trailing 12 months
- 49units
12 of 12 months reported · #66 in Utah coverage by units
- Year to date (2026 YTD through 2026-05)
- 21units
20 buildings · $7.5M valuation
- Full year 2025
- 55units
52 buildings · $19.8M valuation
County-wide figures: StateFips '49' and countyFips '037' (San Juan County, UT) verified directly against the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 ANSI county reference file (www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/codes2020/cou/st49_ut_cou2020.txt: 'UT|49|037|01448032|San Juan County|H1|A') — the same countyFips already used and verified in this corpus's monticello-ut.json. countySlug reuses 'san-juan-county-ut' (already present in data/counties.json, cities: ['monticello-ut']) — disambiguated from this corpus's separate 'san-juan-county' slug, which is bound to San Juan County, New Mexico (see data/jurisdictions/unincorporated-san-juan.json, whose own 'state' field reads 'New Mexico'). No place FIPS applies; this file covers the unincorporated county (plus the Town of Bluff, which routes its building permits through the county — see localAmendments and tipsAndGotchas).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey (BPS), 2026-05 vintage. Census survey data — separate from the permit-requirements verification above. All Utah building activity
Tips & gotchas
- BLANDING/BLUFF SCOPE — VERIFIED, PARTIALLY CONFIRMS AND PARTIALLY CORRECTS the prior plan doc's claim: Blanding operates its OWN independent building department (its own Building Official, Taylor Francom, tfrancom@blanding.city, using the CityInspect online permitting platform per the city's official blanding-ut.gov/build and /development pages) — Blanding is NOT covered by San Juan County's building program and is out of scope for this file. The Town of Bluff, by contrast, IS effectively covered: Bluff's own Planning & Zoning Commission issues a prerequisite Land Use Clearance (LUC) for zoning/land-use sign-off, but the Town of Bluff's own official LUC Application states verbatim that 'A Land Use Clearance (and subsequent Building Permit) must be obtained' — meaning the actual building permit itself is issued by San Juan County's Planning & Building Department, not by a separate Bluff building department. No independent Bluff building department, building official, or building-permit fee schedule was found on townofbluffutah.gov.
- San Juan County's Building Code Information page explicitly lists a Bluff-area frost-depth design parameter (24 inches, versus 36 inches for most of the county) — corroborating that the county's Building Department administers construction standards for the Bluff area as part of its normal jurisdiction.
- San Juan County has adopted the State of Utah's codes as established in Title 15A, Chapters 1-5 of the Utah Code Annotated, by reference — the county's own Building Code Information page does not enumerate specific code-edition years, so the current statutory statewide editions (effective 07/01/2026 per Utah Code § 15A-2-103) are cited directly.
- This file is a COUNTY file (not a city/municipality) — the review-timeline statutory citation used is Utah Code § 17-36-55 (County Land Use, Development, and Management Act's construction-approval provision), NOT § 10-20-909, which is Title 10 (Municipal Code) and binds only cities/towns.
- San Juan County requires the building lot to be deeded in the applicant's name and recorded with the San Juan County Recorder's Office (or a notarized owner-permission statement) before permit issuance — a local prerequisite layered on top of the state's own application-completeness requirements in § 17-36-55(8).
- Only a single permit type (Residential Building Permit) was built with verified confidence. No distinct published fee, requirement set, or review timeline for standalone electrical, plumbing, mechanical, roofing, fence, pool, ADU, or other trade/accessory permits was found on San Juan County's official Building Department pages or its Planning & Zoning Fee Schedule (sjcpcfeesched16.pdf, which covers only planning/zoning services — Conditional Use Permits, appeals, variances, subdivisions, plats, PUDs, sign permits — not building-trade permits) as of 2026-07-08. Rather than fabricate figures for those types, only the well-documented Residential Building Permit was built.
- Investigation fees for unpermitted work: 200% of the permit fee (per the county's Planning & Zoning Fee Schedule) or 2× permit price plus $150/week beyond a 30-day notice (per the Building Department's own webpage) — two slightly different figures published in two different official county documents; both are cited in the permit type's fee notes for transparency.