Ten volumes, two councils, one name
The statute that spells out what the phrase covers is G.S. 143-138(a), and what it gives you is a list rather than a book: an administrative volume, then the Building, Electrical, Energy Conservation, Existing Building, Fire, Fuel Gas, Mechanical, Plumbing and Residential codes. Ten volumes under one name. So when a source tells you what the North Carolina code says, the first useful question back is which of the ten it means.
That same statute names who writes them, and it is two bodies rather than one. The volumes are prepared and adopted by the Building Code Council or by the Residential Code Council. The split matters more than a piece of org chart usually would, because one of the two conditions the next edition waits on is that the residential council be fully constituted. A staffing question, not a technical one.
The administrative half is its own book, which is why sections look missing
Turn to the permit chapter in the residential volume and there is nothing in it. Section R105 reads Deleted, with a pointer off to the North Carolina Administrative Code and Policies. The building volume empties its own run of administrative sections the same way. So a section number that reads Deleted here is not a hole in the book. It is a forwarding address, and the answer is sitting in the other volume.
What the administrative volume puts in their place is short. Its Section 106.1 requires a current permit for everything the technical codes describe, unless a General Statute or one of those codes specifically lifts the work out. With the residential and building volumes' own permit sections deleted, we found no numbered roster of exempt work in either. The relief is a cost threshold sitting out in the statutes instead, and our permits pages are where that side is laid out.
One trap lives inside the document itself. The 2018 administrative volume's own commentary under 106.1 sends a reader to G.S. 153A-357 and G.S. 160A-417 for exemptions. Both of those were repealed effective June 19, 2020. The live statute is G.S. 160D-1110. A code book quietly pointing at dead law is a good reason to open the statute rather than the commentary printed beside it.
Which edition is in force, and the one waiting behind it
The edition being enforced is the 2018 one, effective January 1, 2019, and the Office of the State Fire Marshal names those volumes as currently effective on its codes page. Do not assume all ten carry the same year, though. That same page carries the 2020 Electrical Code, effective November 1, 2021, as the current electrical volume. Ten books, and they do not move together.
A 2024 edition is adopted and published and is not yet in force. Its effective date hangs on a certification by the State Fire Marshal, described in his letter of March 31, 2025: the code takes effect 12 months after he certifies that its publication and distribution are complete and that the Residential Code Council is fully constituted. As of September 28, 2026 his codes page announced no such certification. So nobody has a date to plan around, and in the meantime the older edition is what gets enforced. That same letter says the 2018 code stays in full force unless a building owner or their agent asks for the 2024 Code to be applied to their project. OSFM takes questions on 919-647-0000.
Editions also shuffle item numbers, which is why it pays to name an inspection out loud instead of citing a number when the job is in North Carolina. The inspection list in the administrative volume is not numbered identically between the edition in force and the adopted one, so a number quoted out of the wrong edition points at the wrong inspection. Say footing inspection and every person in the conversation knows what you mean.
The exemption everybody quotes comes out of a chapter North Carolina deleted
The model residential code carries a list of work exempt from permit, and one item on the building half of that list is three words long: sidewalks and driveways. It is the most quotable line on the internet for this question and it carries no weight in North Carolina, because the section it lives in is one of the ones that reads Deleted here.
So a source that hands you a numbered North Carolina exempt-work list has quoted a model book and put a state's name on the front of it. That is the same failure mode that walks footing figures across the state line in both directions. Where plain flatwork actually lands in North Carolina is a question for the county inspections department that would send the inspector, and it is worth asking before anybody forms. What sits underneath a building is the easier half, because footing and foundation work under a building that needs a permit is permitted work on either side of the line.