One state code, applied by your county
Virginia works off the Uniform Statewide Building Code. The state writes the rules, and your county or city building department administers them, takes the application, issues the permit and sends the inspector. The code is statewide. The judgment on your job is local.
That code carries a written list of work exempt from applying for a permit at all: fences of any height, concrete or masonry walls up to 6 feet, retaining walls holding back less than 3 feet of unbalanced fill, small detached storage sheds, pools with 150 square feet or less of surface. It is a specific list of specific things, and what is not on it matters more to most homeowners than what is.
Driveways, patios and walks: what the exemption list actually says
Driveways, patios, sidewalks, walkways and on-grade slabs are not named anywhere on that list. Several websites claim Virginia blanket-exempts flatwork. The regulation itself does not say it, so there is no statewide rule we can point you to and no blanket exemption to claim.
What is really happening is one line further down that list: work the building official deems minor and ordinary is exempt. Routine flatwork commonly lands there, and most plain driveway and patio pours in our home counties get a same-day answer rather than a formal review. That is a person in your county making a call on your job, though, not an automatic pass written into the code. Five minutes on the phone settles it and costs nothing.
Some flatwork draws a closer look: work that changes how water leaves the property, a slab cut into a slope, or a sidewalk that forms part of an accessible route. Our full Virginia concrete permit guide walks through those cases and the order things happen in.
Footings and foundations need a permit and an inspection
This part is not a gray area. Nothing on the exemption list covers concrete that supports a structure. A garage foundation, an addition footing, a poured wall under a building, a retaining wall holding back more than 3 feet of unbalanced fill: that work needs a permit, and the footing gets inspected before any concrete goes in it. Pouring first and asking later is how a footer ends up dug back out.
Plan the calendar around that inspection, because concrete runs on its own clock. We schedule the pour after the inspection clears, and we schedule our own line pump the same way when a job calls for one: a foundation, roughly eight or more cubic yards, or a lot too tight for a chute.
A new entrance on a state road: the VDOT LUP-PE
A lot of people find out about this one late: VDOT, not the county, controls where a driveway meets a state road. Installing or modifying that entrance calls for a Land Use Permit for Private Entrance, the LUP-PE. It comes from VDOT rather than the county, and it does not apply to entrances off a private road or a street the town maintains. It authorizes an entrance serving up to two private residences, or one for agricultural use. You apply through VDOT's Land Use Permit Portal or the Residency Office for your county, and the guide below lists exactly what VDOT wants with the application.
Who to call
These three departments handle the counties we are in and out of most, and they are the fastest way to a real answer on your address:
- Carroll County (Hillsville), Department of Inspections, (276) 730-3016, 605-1 Pine Street Suite C115, Hillsville, VA 24343
- Wythe County (Wytheville), Building Inspection, (276) 223-4505
- Grayson County (Independence), Building Department, (276) 773-2322 ext. 103, 129 Davis Street, Independence, VA 24348
Everywhere else we pour
Our radius runs about an hour to an hour and a half in every direction from Hillsville, which reaches plenty of counties we have not listed a number for. Smyth County around Marion, the City of Salem, Floyd, Montgomery, Pulaski and the Roanoke area all run their own departments. Call your county building department to confirm before you pour. We would rather send you to the right desk than hand you a number we have not checked.
Permits and engineering, when a job needs them, sit outside the per square foot number on your quote, and your free written estimate spells out what is inside the price and what is not. We pour concrete. We are not the permit authority, and we will not call a job exempt when the county has not.