The code is written once, enforced at your county desk
Virginia runs one building code statewide, the Uniform Statewide Building Code, adopted as regulation 13VAC5-63. Counties and cities do not write competing codes of their own. What they do is administer this one. Your locality appoints a building official, and that office takes applications, decides what needs review, issues the permit, and sends an inspector out.
That split is the whole reason permit advice from a buddy two counties over is worth about what you paid for it. The rule text is the same. The person applying it is not, and the discretion the code hands that person is real.
The part everybody wants is Section 108.2, the list of work that does not need a permit application. It is a numbered list and it is specific. Small detached storage sheds and playhouses under a size cap. Fences at any height. Concrete or masonry walls up to six feet above finished grade. Retaining walls holding back less than three feet of unbalanced fill. Swimming pools with 150 square feet or less of surface area. Flagpoles 30 feet or less. Tents 900 square feet or less. Ordinary repairs that are not structural. And one catch all item we come back to below, for work the building official deems minor and ordinary.
Driveways, patios and walks are not named on that list
This is the part that gets written wrong all over the internet. Several sites state flatly that Virginia exempts on grade patios and slabs that will not carry a future building. We went and read the regulation instead of the summaries. Driveways, patios, sidewalks, walkways and on grade slabs are not named anywhere in Section 108.2.
So there is no statewide sentence you can print out and hand to an inspector. That does not mean every walk needs a permit. It means the exemption people quote does not exist in the form they quote it, and a crew telling you flatwork is exempt in Virginia is telling you something the code does not say.
What is really happening is the catch all. The last thing on that list before ordinary repairs is construction work the building official deems minor and ordinary, and routine flatwork is the textbook example of what that item was written for. Most straightforward driveway and patio pours around here get a same day answer over the phone rather than a formal review. But that answer belongs to a person holding a job title, not to a statute, and a person can look at your particular job and say no.
The practical version we give every customer is short. Call the building department before you pour. It takes five minutes, it costs nothing, and it converts a maybe into a yes or a form. Write down who you spoke with and the date, and keep it with your estimate.
When flatwork usually clears without friction
None of the following is a rule you can rely on statewide, but these are the jobs that most often come back from the building department as a quick yes. They share a pattern. Nothing structural sits on them, they do not change where water goes, and they stay on your own property.
If your job reads like this list, expect the call to be short. Make it anyway.
- Tearing out a failed slab and replacing it in the same footprint at the same elevation
- A patio poured on grade behind the house with no roof over it and no footing under it
- A walk from the drive to the front steps on a residential lot
- A parking pad or turnaround inside your property line that does not touch a state road
- A slab under a detached storage shed that is itself small enough to land on the exemption list, though the slab is worth asking about separately
When it stops being minor and ordinary
The other direction is easier to predict, because these jobs stop being flatwork the moment you look at what they are doing. Something is going to stand on the concrete, or the concrete is going to change how the ground behaves.
Grade and drainage are the quiet trigger. A slab that fills a swale, raises one corner of a yard, or turns runoff toward a neighbor gets attention even when nobody would call it structural, and some localities look at land disturbance under a separate process from the building permit. That is a question for the same phone call, not something we will state as a rule for your county.
The one commercial case worth naming is the walk on a commercial site. A commercial walk is the flatwork most likely to draw a real review rather than a wave through, so treat it as a call to the building official before you set forms.
- A slab poured now that is meant to carry an addition, a garage or a sunroom later, which makes it a foundation, not flatwork
- A retaining wall holding back three feet or more of unbalanced fill, since the code only names walls under that height as exempt
- A freestanding concrete or masonry wall taller than six feet above finished grade
- A covered porch or carport slab, because the posts holding the roof land on footings
- Any pour inside a road right of way or a recorded easement
- A commercial walk or parking area
Footings and foundations always need a permit and an inspection
Here the hedging stops. Nothing on the exemption list covers work that carries a structure. A footing under a garage, an addition, a pole barn wall, a covered porch, a retaining wall past the exempt height, or a poured foundation wall needs a permit, and it needs a footing inspection before concrete goes in the trench. That is standard code administration anywhere in Virginia, not a gray area, and it is not something a friendly official waves through.
The order of operations is the part people get wrong, so here it is plainly. You or your builder apply with a plot plan and drawings. Your permit gets posted where the inspector can find it, so ask the building department how they want it displayed. The trench gets dug to the depth on the permit, below the local frost line for your address and elevation. Forms and reinforcing steel go in. Then somebody calls for the footing inspection and waits for it to pass. Concrete is the step after that, not before it.
The reason the sequence matters is that once concrete is in a trench, nobody can see the depth, the steel, or the soil the footing is bearing on. An inspector who shows up to a poured footing has one honest option left, which is to have it opened back up. We have never met a customer who enjoyed that week.
So we schedule around the inspection rather than hoping it lands. We do not book concrete or set a pour time until the inspection is on the calendar, and we settle in writing who is making that call, you or us, before we start. Running our own trailer mounted line pump with an operator and a hose guy helps here, because when an inspection slides a day we are moving our own equipment, not renegotiating with a second company's dispatcher.
Ask at permit issue what other inspections your permit calls for. Some jobs add an under slab or a slab inspection on top of the footing one, and finding that out on pour morning is the expensive way to learn it.
The VDOT entrance permit is a separate thing entirely
If your driveway ties into a road the state maintains, the county building permit is not the only paperwork in play. VDOT issues a Land Use Permit for Private Entrance, the LUP-PE, and it is required to install or modify an entrance connecting to a state maintained road. New entrance, relocated entrance, or a widening of the one you have, all count as modifying it.
It does not apply everywhere. Entrances off a private road, or off a street a town or city maintains itself, are outside it. That is worth checking rather than assuming, because plenty of roads people call county roads are state maintained in practice.
The permit authorizes an entrance serving up to two private residences, or an entrance for agricultural use. You apply through VDOT's online Land Use Permit Portal, or through the VDOT Residency Office covering the county where the work happens. They will want a copy of the property plat showing the proposed entrance, a completed Commonwealth of Virginia W-9, and proof of ownership, which is usually a deed copy when the plat does not show the current owner.
Treat it as its own track with its own timeline. A new drive that ties into a state road can need the entrance permit from VDOT and county review of the drive work itself, and the two offices do not talk to each other on your behalf. Start the entrance permit early, because it is the one most likely to move a pour date.
Who to call, three worked examples
These are the three offices we deal with most often, and the contact information here is confirmed. If you are pouring in one of these counties, this is your five minute phone call.
For anywhere else in our working radius, including Smyth County around Marion and the City of Salem, call your county or city building department to confirm. We are not going to print a phone number we have not verified ourselves, and neither should anybody else's website.
Have your details ready before you dial. The person on the other end can usually answer on the spot if you can tell them the address and parcel, what you are pouring and how big it is in square feet, the thickness, whether anything is going to sit on it now or later, whether the grade changes, whether the drive touches a state maintained road, and roughly which week you want to pour.
- Carroll County, our home county, covering Hillsville and Woodlawn. Department of Inspections, (276) 730-3016, 605-1 Pine Street Suite C115, Hillsville, VA 24343.
- Wythe County, covering Wytheville and the surrounding area. Building Inspection, (276) 223-4505.
- Grayson County, covering Independence. Building Department, (276) 773-2322 ext. 103, 129 Davis Street, Independence, VA 24348.
- Any other county or city: call the local building department and confirm before you pour. No guessed numbers, no borrowed rules from the next county over.
How this lands on your written estimate
When we come out and measure, permits are part of the conversation, not an afterthought at the end. We will tell you plainly which parts of your job we already know need a permit, which parts come down to what your building official calls minor and ordinary, and whether your entrance work puts VDOT in the picture. Who applies for what gets written down, along with who is calling in the footing inspection, so that lives on the page instead of in somebody's memory of a conversation in a driveway.
What we will not do is tell you a permit is not needed because it is faster for us that way, or quote you a permit fee we have not confirmed. Fees are set locally and they vary, so ask when you make the call. Everything on our side, the scope, the mix, the joint plan, and the workmanship warranty in writing, gets confirmed on your free written estimate before anybody pours anything.