The building permit is the county's. The zoning is the town's.
The Grayson County Building Department states its own reach without hedging: it is responsible for the issuance of permits within Grayson County, the Town of Independence, the Town of Fries, and the Town of Troutdale. A footing poured in Independence and a footing poured out on a farm road go to the same desk, at 129 Davis Street in Independence, 276-773-2322, open 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.
Zoning does not travel with it. The county's Application Submission Requirements checklist, revised October 2021, says that if the proposed building or structure lies within the incorporated town limits of Independence, Fries or Troutdale, you must contact that Town Office for zoning requirements. The zoning ordinance says the same thing from the other side on its own page two: the incorporated towns of Fries, Independence and Troutdale administer their own zoning.
The three town desks are priced differently and one of them is not published at all. Independence Town Administration, 317 East Main Street, 276-773-3703, issues zoning permits at no cost, and the town's own page says the applicant must first obtain that permit whenever a project needs the county building inspector. The Town of Fries publishes its own zoning permit application, which lists 276-744-2231, and the form prints a $10.00 fee in its office use block. For Troutdale the county says to contact the Town Office and then prints no address and no number for it, and we found no town website either. Start that one at the county's zoning desk rather than guessing at a number.
Who actually answers at 129 Davis Street
The county staff directory lists two people in the Building Department. Keith Anderson is the Residential Building Inspector, at 276-773-2322. Becky Kirk is the Permit Technician, at the same number, extension 103. Neither title is Building Official, and the county publishes no name in that role anywhere on its site.
The office still signs itself that way. The Third Party Inspection Policy and the Veneer Inspection notice both print on a letterhead whose only heading is the phrase Building Official. So the chair exists and the public does not get a name for it. Ask for the desk that handles your question rather than for a person. Mail goes to P.O. Box 217, Independence, VA 24348, and applications can also go in through the county's online permitting tool, which carries a public permit search by permit number, date, parcel address and proposed work.
The county's $15 zoning permit stands in front of every building permit
Grayson County has a county-wide zoning ordinance, adopted December 8, 1998 and last amended September 12, 2024, applying to all land in the county outside the incorporated towns. The Zoning Administrator, Jada C. Black, at 276-773-2000, reviews your application before a building permit can issue. Item 2 on the county's checklist calls for an approved Grayson County Zoning Permit, reviewed for compliance with the zoning ordinance before the issuance of permits for buildings or structures.
The fee is double sourced. The county's zoning and subdivision fee sheet, which prints Effective May 8th, 2014 on its own face, lists the Zoning Permit Application, Form 0100, at $15.00, and the October 2024 revision of the form prints the same $15.00 fee in its office use block. Two other applications on that sheet cost nothing: Floodplain Development, Form 0500, and the zoning Agricultural Exemption, Form 1200.
What the form wants is a drawing. Form 0100 requires a site plan sketch, and says that without a recorded survey plat an aerial map from Google Earth or the county GIS has to come in with it. The sketch has to show the distance from the new structure to the centerline of the public road and to every property line. Two of its questions carry real numbers: whether the structure will be placed at least 35 feet from the centerline of the public road or street, and at least 10 feet from all adjoining property lines. Fries asks 25 feet from the centerline on its own form and the same 10 feet on the sides.
One block on that form is unusual enough to mention. Under a heading reading MOUNTAIN RIDGE CONSTRUCTION INFORMATION, Form 0100 asks for the elevation above sea level of the project and the building height from adjacent grade. Grayson County's own plans sheet sets the design wind speed at 110 mph under 4,000 feet and 140 mph over 4,000 feet, which is Virginia's statewide amendment for high ground restated on a county sheet. The county's older permit FAQ, dated 2016 and still posted, puts the 110 figure on the wrong side of it. Read the January 2025 sheet.
Seven requirements, numbered one through eight
The gate document is the Application Submission Requirements and General Information Checklist, footer dated Revised 10/25/2021. Its opening line is in capitals: the following must be submitted with the building permit application before permits can be obtained. The numbering runs 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8. There is no item 4. That is an error in the county's own document, not a slip on our end, so it is seven requirements even though the list reaches eight.
In the county's order: a 911 address posted and visible from the road, because zoning, building and health department inspectors have to be able to find the site, issued from 353 North Main Street, Galax, 276-236-5122. A county zoning permit, or the town's requirements inside the three towns. Virginia Department of Health septic and well approval where no public sewer or water is available, for new construction and additions only, from the county Health Department at 186 W. Main Street, Independence, 276-773-2961. A VDOT entrance permit for new buildings served by new access drive connections to a Virginia secondary highway. Building plans, one paper set and one PDF set. An erosion and sediment affidavit or an approved plan. And the most recent Grayson County tax ticket, with property taxes current with the Treasurer's office.
That entrance piece has a clean answer here, and it is worth saying why. The county's checklist and VDOT's own districts page name the identical office: the Area Residency Office at 2843 Chapman Road, Wytheville, VA 24382, 276-228-2153, covering Bland, Grayson and Wythe. Locality and state agency publish the same address and the same number, and the county's checklist says entrance permits may be applied for and obtained through that office. What the permit is, and when a new or widened drive triggers one, is laid out on our page about VDOT entrance permits.
The tax ticket is the one that catches people off guard. It has nothing to do with concrete and it will stop a permit anyway. Form 1000, the residential application, carries a Tax Ticket Review line reading Paid or Unpaid in its office use block, which is how it gets enforced. If the taxes on the parcel are behind, sort that out before booking a pour date.
A fee schedule with no date on its face
The money document is the Grayson County Building Permit Fee Schedule, a five page scan. It calls itself an ordinance to establish fees for permits required to enforce the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code, says be it ordained by the Grayson County Board of Supervisors, and then never prints a date anywhere on its five pages. The only date attached to it is the day the file was scanned, June 2025. So the figures below are what the fee schedule Grayson County published as of June 2025 says, and it is worth asking on the phone whether it is still the current one.
Two lines matter to a concrete job. Line M is a residual: Other Construction, not listed elsewhere, at $5.00 per $1,000 of estimated cost, minimum permit fee $60.00. The schedule never names a driveway, a patio or a freestanding slab, so line M is what such a pour could land on if the Building Department decides it needs a permit. It is not a published rule that it does. Line P prices starting early: in the county's own words, any person or corporation failing to obtain a required building permit prior to initializing construction shall pay a pre-inspection fee of $60.00 or 20 percent of project permit, in addition to the required building permit fees.
One correction while we are on this document. The $60.00 minimum appears so often on that schedule that it gets mistaken for the county's minimum building permit fee. It is not. Sixty dollars is the minimum for an accessory structure, for line M and for each trade permit. On the county's fee schedule, new residential construction never pays less than $275.00, and an addition to a residence never less than $125.00.
Where the 10,000 square foot line sits, and the handout that says 2,500
The Grayson County Erosion and Sediment Control Program Ordinance was adopted June 13, 2024 and took effect July 1, 2024. Its exemption list, at section 1.5.A.1, exempts disturbance of a land area of less than 10,000 square feet in size. The county's own program page says the same in plain words, telling anyone whose project involves more than 10,000 square feet of disturbed area to contact the Grayson County Planning Department before work begins.
There is a contradiction on the county's website and it runs in the direction that would cost you money. That same page links a handout titled What is a Land-disturbing Activity, and the handout puts the exemption at 2,500 square feet and cites a code section number that does not exist in Grayson's ordinance. It is boilerplate lifted from somewhere else and it is live today. Go by the adopted ordinance and the county page, both of which say 10,000. If you see 2,500 for Grayson County anywhere, that handout is where it came from.
The fee and its timing are both in section 1.8.C: an administrative fee of $100.00 plus $15.00 per acre is paid to the program authority at the time of submission of the erosion and sediment control plan. Note when that falls due. At submission, not when the permit issues. Section 1.7.D then closes the obvious loophole, so that a disturbance under 10,000 square feet on an individual lot in a residential development is not exempt if the development's total reaches 10,000.
For a one or two family dwelling the county accepts Form ES-1200, an Agreement in Lieu of Plan. Its three minimum measures all show up on a concrete site: silt fence or other sediment trapping measures on every downslope perimeter, a temporary stone construction entrance or stable driveway wherever traffic will enter onto a paved surface or public road, and denuded areas stabilized within seven days of final grading. At one acre and over, stormwater coverage belongs to the Department of Environmental Quality.
Zoning and erosion control are one desk here. Jada Black is listed as Zoning Administrator and as Erosion and Sediment Control Administrator, both at 276-773-2000, so the setback question and the land disturbance question are a single call. What we could not establish from either side is whether Independence or Fries runs its own erosion program or leaves it with the county. Ask that when you call.
The one footing number Grayson prints, and the number it leaves blank
Two county documents carry the same footing specification. The Overview of Minimum Requirements to Construct a New Home says the footing must typically be 18 inches deep, wide enough for a minimum 2 inch projection on all sides of a foundation wall or post, with a minimum concrete thickness of 8 inches, and that in most cases two runs of number 4 rebar suspended in the lower third of the concrete are required as well. The Building Plans and Construction Drawings sheet repeats it.
The hedge has to travel with the number. The county's own wording is that minimum footing requirements are determined based on the size and type of structure as well as the square footage, that this is decided case by case once the information is provided on the construction drawings, and that typically the footing must be 18 inches deep. That is what Grayson publishes as typical, not a depth you can count on for a particular job before the drawings go in.
Now the part that is easy to miss. Grayson County publishes no frost line depth. Its January 2025 design criteria sheet lists a ground snow load of 30 psf and two wind speeds and no frost line at all, so the 18 inches cannot be read as a frost number just because it happens to look like one. What actually sets footing depth, and which desks around here publish a number and which publish none, is not this page's argument to make: our page on frost depth and footing codes works that mechanism through jurisdiction by jurisdiction. What belongs here is the desk. Whether Grayson's 18 inches is a local requirement or a working rule of thumb is not published anywhere on the county's site, and that is a question for 276-773-2322. On our side, the depth we are digging to goes on the written estimate for your address before anybody breaks ground, and our footings and foundations page explains what that depth is doing.
Requesting an inspection is not the same as having one scheduled
Grayson takes inspection requests through its online portal, and the portal warns about them in the county's own words: submitting an inspection request does not schedule an inspection, and the county will review the request and follow up with you. No notice period is published, and the state code sets none either. All it says is that the permit holder notifies the building official once construction reaches a stage that requires an inspection. So put the request in early and let the county's answer set the pour date, not the other way around.
On top of whatever the state list calls for, Grayson adds one of its own. It requires a veneer inspection for all commercial and residential projects requiring a permit, when applicable, on permits issued on and after April 1, 2020. One of the eleven items on that notice names concrete directly: approved flashing where concrete or mortar abuts a rim or band joist, such as at a masonry stoop. It is worth knowing about before you form a stoop, because Carroll County next door publishes no equivalent.
If a third party inspector is in the picture, Grayson is narrow about who counts. Its policy, dated March 17, 2020, requires that all third party inspectors be either a Virginia registered design professional, meaning an architect or an engineer, or be working under the direct supervision of one. That use has to be pre-approved, except where the department has not performed an inspection within two full working days of the request.
Driveways, patios and walks: nobody wrote the rule down
Grayson County publishes no rule on driveways, patios, sidewalks or on-grade slabs. We read the county's web pages, its permitting portal and its Building Department and Planning documents looking for one. The closest thing to an answer is one sentence in the 2024 Overview of Minimum Requirements, which tells anyone building a deck, porch, ramp or patio to see the county's Deck Guide. The Deck Guide is not published on the county website, not on the Building Department page and not on the Planning page. That is a reason to pick up the phone rather than a gap in our search, and it is worth asking for by name when you do.
In Virginia this is a judgment call, and the judgment has a home. Section 108.2 of the statewide building code lists sixteen kinds of work that need no permit application, and item 13 is the catch-all: construction work deemed by the building official to be minor and ordinary and that does not adversely affect public health or general safety. Driveways, patios, walks and on-grade slabs are not named anywhere on that list. Item 13 is the provision that decides them, and in Grayson County the official exercising it works at 276-773-2322. We will not tell you your pour is exempt and we will not tell you it needs a permit, because neither the state list nor the county says so.
There is a trap in the county's own material on exactly this point. Grayson's Building Permit FAQ reproduces the state exemption list as its own sixteen items, and its sixteen are not the state's sixteen. The county's version drops the state's item 13 and adds an agricultural structures item that is not on the state's list at all. A homeowner reading that FAQ would come away believing the building official's discretion does not exist. It does. Read the state code for the state rule, and the county's documents for what the county itself says.
And no permit is not the same as no rules. The county wrote that principle down in its own words on its portal, about small accessory buildings: buildings under 256 square feet without trades are not required to have a building permit, but must still meet zoning setbacks. A patio or a widened drive placed inside a 10 foot side line is the same problem wearing different clothes. The Virginia permit guide covers the state side of this, and the Carroll County page puts the same set of questions to the county next door. Ask them county by county. Nothing on this page carries across a county line on its own.