Unincorporated Sevier County building permits
Department contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for Unincorporated Sevier County, Utah.
Last verified 2026-07-08 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history
Building department
- Address
- 250 North Main Street, Suite 131, P.O. Box 517, Richfield, UT 84701
- Phone
- (435) 893-0420
- Office hours
- Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM (lunch 12:00–1:00 PM, per the county's official 'Applying for a Building Permit' cheat sheet)
- Website
- Official site
Inspection guide
See how inspections work in Unincorporated Sevier 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.
- 2024 International Building Code (IBC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(a); the statewide 2024-cycle code update took effect July 1, 2026, superseding the 2021 IBC previously in force.
- 2021 International Residential Code (IRC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(b); the IRC remains the 2021 edition, unchanged by the July 1, 2026 statewide update cycle.
- 2024 International Plumbing Code (IPC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(d); effective since July 1, 2026, superseding the 2021 IPC.
- 2024 International Mechanical Code (IMC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(e); effective since July 1, 2026, superseding the 2021 IMC.
- 2024 International Existing Building Code (IEBC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(i); effective since July 1, 2026, superseding the 2021 IEBC.
- 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) with Utah amendments — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(h); effective since July 1, 2026, superseding the 2021 IECC. The statute adopts a single IECC edition with no residential/commercial split.
- 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC) — current statewide electrical code, unchanged in the July 1, 2026 statewide update.
- 2024 International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(f), effective since July 1, 2026. Not separately listed on Sevier County's own Building/Planning/Zoning webpages as of the sources checked (2026-07-08 and re-checked 2026-07-16) — added here because the statute adopts it statewide regardless of the county page's omission.
- 2024 residential provisions of the International Swimming Pool and Spa Code (ISPSC) — Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(n), effective since July 1, 2026. Not separately listed on Sevier County's own Building/Planning/Zoning webpages as of the sources checked (2026-07-08 and re-checked 2026-07-16) — added here because the statute adopts it statewide regardless of the county page's omission.
- Sevier County Code Chapter 150 (Buildings and Construction), §§ 150.01–150.47 — local building-permit administration ordinance; the county's official code-hosting site (codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/seviercountyut) is a fully JavaScript-rendered platform that returns only the section-title table of contents (confirmed section numbers 150.01–150.08, 150.20–150.22, 150.35–150.47) to automated fetch tools, not the underlying section body text, so specific ordinance language beyond section titles/numbers could not be independently rendered. Section 150.20 (Building Permit Required for All Buildings) and its penalty language ('investigation fee...same as the permit fee...double fee') are independently confirmed via the county's own official 'Obtaining a Building Permit' webpage, which quotes this requirement directly.
- NOTE (added 2026-07-16): The July 1, 2026 statewide code-edition transition (2024 IBC/IPC/IMC/IFGC/IECC/IEBC/ISPSC replacing 2021 editions) took effect 15 days ago per Utah Code § 15A-2-103 (version effective 7/1/2026, superseded 1/1/2027; next version's editions confirmed identical). 2021 IRC and 2023 NEC are unchanged by this transition. Live-checked the Sevier County 'Obtaining a Building Permit' page today — it cites no code edition years at all, so no page-lag discrepancy to flag there. The International Fire Code is NOT adopted by § 15A-2-103 (it lives in Title 15A Chapter 5) and is not referenced elsewhere in this file.
Permit types & fees
Residential Building Permit
Required for new single-family dwelling construction, additions, and any structural, electrical, plumbing, or mechanical alteration in unincorporated Sevier County. Sevier County Building, Planning and Zoning administers permits countywide for unincorporated areas via the utah.cityinspect.com online portal; applicants select 'SINGLE FAMILY DWELLING' as the Permit Type for new residential construction.
Commercial Building Permit
Required for new commercial building construction in unincorporated Sevier County. The county's Building, Planning and Zoning Department administers commercial permits through the same utah.cityinspect.com portal and the same Building Official (Jason Mackelprang) used for residential permits — the department's own webpages confirm no distinct commercial process, fee schedule, or plan-review commitment is published separately from residential. The department's index page states directly: 'The building official is responsible for overseeing all commercial and residential building permit regulations, fees, and inspections.'
Commercial Tenant Improvement / Tenant Finish Permit
Required for tenant improvement / tenant finish work inside an existing commercial building in unincorporated Sevier County, processed through the same Building, Planning and Zoning Department, Building Official, and CityInspect portal as new commercial construction — the county publishes no separate tenant-improvement fee tier or process.
Sign Permit
Required for erecting, moving, reconstructing, enlarging, or structurally altering a sign in unincorporated Sevier County, governed by a dedicated sign subchapter of the county's Buildings and Construction chapter (Sevier County Code §§150.35-150.44, Ord. 2020-9-1, passed 9-14-2020). Non-attached advertising structures (billboards/outdoor advertising) are permitted only in Commercial and Industrial zones (not AG, GRF-20R, GRF-20S, or RA) and must be issued a building permit prior to construction per §150.44(4). No separate sign-permit fee schedule is published; sign permits are processed and fee-assessed through the same Building Department building-permit mechanism as other construction (the county's own Residential Building Permit page/fee data in this file likewise publishes no dollar fee table).
EV Charger / EVSE Permit
Sevier County does not publish a distinct EV charger / EVSE permit type, fee, or process. EV charger (EVSE) installation is treated as standard electrical work under the county's general Residential (or Commercial) Building Permit — the county's official 'Obtaining a Building Permit' page and Building/Planning/Zoning webpages (live-checked 2026-07-19, re-checked 2026-07-20) list no distinct EV-charger or electric-vehicle-charging line item anywhere on the county's site. Sevier County itself publishes no building-permit dollar fee table at all (only a zoning/land-use fee schedule), so no fee figure — distinct or general — can be reported for this permit type.
Solar PV Installation Permit
Sevier County does not publish a distinct solar / solar-PV installation permit type, fee, or process. Rooftop or ground-mount solar photovoltaic installations are treated as standard structural (roof/mount attachment) and electrical (wiring, inverter, interconnection) work under the county's general Residential (or Commercial) Building Permit — the county's official 'Obtaining a Building Permit' page and Building/Planning/Zoning department index page (both live-checked 2026-07-21) list no distinct solar, solar-PV, or photovoltaic line item anywhere on the county's site. Sevier County itself publishes no building-permit dollar fee table at all (only a separate zoning/land-use fee schedule), so no fee figure — distinct or general — can be reported for this permit type.
Fire Sprinkler & Fire Alarm Permit
Sevier County does not publish a distinct fire-sprinkler or fire-alarm permit, application, fee, or issuing authority separate from the standard Building Permit. Sevier County Code § 150.08 adopts the 2021 International Fire Code (IFC) with Appendix Chapters A-G by reference as the county's Fire Code, and the county's own Fire Warden 'Fire Code' webpage (live-checked 2026-07-22) states that 'the State of Utah has adopted the International Fire Code as well as the Utah Wildland Urban Interface Code to which counties shall adhere,' but neither page identifies who reviews sprinkler/alarm plans or issues a permit for them. Sevier County contracts fire suppression response (not building plan review) with the three largest municipal fire departments in the county (Salina, Richfield, Monroe); the county's Fire Warden position is documented elsewhere on the county site as handling wildland burn permits, not building fire-protection-system plan review. The Utah State Fire Marshal's Office is a possible fallback reviewer under the statewide 'authority having jurisdiction' definition (Utah Code Title 15A Chapter 5 / Utah Admin. Code R710-9), but its own published scope is limited to state-owned buildings, public/private K-12 schools, and institutional facilities (hospitals, jails, prisons) plus complex/high-risk projects — not general private commercial construction in a rural unincorporated county — so it cannot be confirmed as the applicable AHJ for a typical Sevier County commercial sprinkler/alarm project. In practice, sprinkler and alarm system installation appears to be reviewed as part of the standard Commercial Building Permit's plan review by the County Building Official under the fire-protection-system provisions of the adopted 2024 IBC (Chapter 9), the same office and portal used for all other Sevier County commercial permits.
Change of Use / Certificate of Occupancy
Sevier County does not publish a standalone Change-of-Use Permit or Certificate-of-Occupancy application/fee separate from the standard Building Permit. The county's Fee Schedule (Appendix C, land-use/zoning fees) lists Board of Adjustment Appeal ($200), Conditional Use Permit (tiered $35/$100/$175), Excavation Bond, PUD ($300), Subdivision, Temporary Use Permit ($75), Youth Home ($450), and Zoning Change ($300) — no 'change of use,' 'occupancy,' or 'certificate of occupancy' line item appears anywhere in it (re-confirmed 2026-07-22, matching the finding already documented in this file's commercial-building-permit entry). For new construction, a Certificate of Occupancy is issued as the outcome of the standard Final inspection under the general Building Permit, per the Certificate of Occupancy provisions of the adopted 2024 International Building Code (IBC), Chapter 1 Section 111 — the county's own Required Inspections page lists only a generic 'Final inspection' with no separate CO application step. For an existing building, Sevier County's Zoning Ordinance (Chapter 14.28, Nonconforming Uses) only requires a Board of Adjustment special permit to EXTEND or ENLARGE a legal nonconforming use (§ 14.28.010, citing § 14.20.040); it does not create a distinct fee or application for an ordinary conforming-to-conforming change of use, which is expected to be handled through the standard Building Permit process under the adopted IBC's own change-of-occupancy provisions.
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)
- 14units
14 buildings · $4.5M valuation
- Trailing 12 months
- 102units
12 of 12 months reported · #50 in Utah coverage by units
- Year to date (2026 YTD through 2026-05)
- 52units
52 buildings · $23.9M valuation
- Full year 2025
- 97units
97 buildings · $43.6M valuation
County-wide figures: BPS reports county-wide totals; jurisdiction is the unincorporated remainder of Sevier County outside incorporated cities/towns (Richfield, Salina, Monroe, Aurora, Elsinore, Redmond, Sigurd, Central Valley, Annabella, Koosharem, Glenwood, Joseph, Sevier). Richfield is a separate jurisdiction file (richfield.json) using the same countyFips (049/041) confirmed via US Census Bureau county FIPS reference.
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
- Sevier County Building, Planning and Zoning administers building permits directly for all unincorporated areas of the county — it is a genuine county-run building program, not a contracted-out or city-delegated function. Incorporated cities/towns within Sevier County (Richfield, Salina, Monroe, Glenwood, Sigurd, and others) either issue their own permits (e.g., Richfield) or require their own municipal zoning approval before a county building permit is processed.
- Applicants must obtain zoning approval FIRST, before applying for a county building permit — for parcels inside Glenwood Town, Monroe City, Sigurd Town, or Richfield City, use that municipality's own zoning permit; for other incorporated towns, use the county's 'Municipality Zoning Permit' form; for unincorporated land, the Unincorporated Area Signature Sheet substitutes for municipal zoning sign-off.
- Building permits and inspection scheduling are both handled online via the utah.cityinspect.com portal (registration link on the county's Obtaining a Building Permit page).
- No building-permit fee schedule with dollar amounts is published on the county's website as of 2026-07-08. The only public 'Fee Schedule.pdf' (linked from the Planning and Zoning page) is Appendix C of the county's Land Use ordinance and covers zoning/land-use fees only (Board of Adjustment appeal $200, Conditional Use Permit $35–$175, PUD Application $300, Subdivision Application $100–$300+$25/lot, Temporary Use Permit $75, Zoning Change $300, etc.) — none of these are building-permit fees. Commission Resolution 2025-3-1 (adopted 3/24/2025) updated 'the County Fee Schedule' but its itemized exhibit was not independently locatable. Call the Building Department at (435) 893-0420 for current building-permit fee amounts.
- Sevier County's own Code of Ordinances Chapter 150 (Buildings and Construction) is hosted on a client-side-rendered platform (codelibrary.amlegal.com) that returns only the section-title table of contents to automated fetch tools, not body text — only section numbers/titles (150.01–150.08, 150.20–150.22, 150.35–150.47) could be independently confirmed.
- Failure to obtain a permit before starting work triggers a double fee: an investigation fee equal to the permit fee is added on top of the permit fee itself, per the county's official Building Permit page.
- New residential construction in the unincorporated county requires the 'Unincorporated Area Signature Sheet,' collecting sign-offs from County Planning/Zoning/Flood, the Road Department (road encroachment and addressing), the Utah State Division of Water Rights (Order of the State Engineer as proof of water), the Central Utah Health Department (septic tank approval), the applicable power utility (Rocky Mountain Power, Monroe City Power, or Garkane Energy), the applicable gas utility (Enbridge Gas Utah or propane), and — if within Venice Drainage District #1 or Aurora Drainage District #4 boundaries — that district's board.
- No Sevier County-specific plan-review turnaround time is published; the statutory floor of Utah Code § 17-36-55(3)(a) — 14 business days after a complete building-permit application is submitted, for one/two-family dwellings and townhomes — is used as the verified reviewTimelineDays basis, consistent with the county-specific statute (not § 10-20-909, which binds only municipalities).
- 2026-07-16 codesAdopted refresh: this file previously described the 2024-cycle codes in future tense ('takes effect July 1, 2026') though the date has now passed — flipped IBC/IPC/IMC/IECC/IEBC to state 2024 editions as current, 2021 IRC and 2023 NEC unchanged. Added IFGC and ISPSC (2024), which were missing from this file entirely, sourced directly to Utah Code § 15A-2-103(1)(f)/(n) since the county's own pages don't enumerate them either.
- 2026-07-23 exhaustive partial-chase: discovered that codelibrary.amlegal.com's Sevier County pages DO render full section body text (not just the TOC previously documented) when loaded in a real browser rather than fetched with plain HTTP tools — this surfaced § 150.01's locally codified '2018 edition' IBC text (corrected in the commercial-building-permit and change-of-use-permit entries to lead with the governing 2024 IBC), § 150.20's 120-square-foot permit threshold and no-charge agricultural exemption, § 150.21's storage-container rule, and Chapter 35 (Fee Schedules) §§ 35.01-35.04, whose Editor's Note ('The fees will be published separately') confirms itemized department fees are deliberately kept out of the code and set by separate Commission resolution instead. That separately-published fee schedule remains unlocated despite this new avenue plus a Wayback CDX orphan-file scan, a check of the utah.cityinspect.com portal (confirmed login-gated with no public fee page), and the March 24, 2025 Commission agenda packet (no exhibit attached) — the county-wide building-permit fee gap (affecting residential, commercial, tenant-improvement, fire-sprinkler/alarm, and change-of-use permit types in this file) remains open. Fire-sprinkler/alarm reviewing-authority gap strengthened but not closed: Utah Admin. Code R710-9-8 was read in full and confirms its SFM/LFA plan-review split does not address ordinary private commercial construction. Top-level confidence remains 'partial' — not all partial fields closed.