Fountain Hills Residential Zoning and Setbacks: District Yards for a New Home

In Fountain Hills, your zoning district sets how far the house must sit from each property line, a distance called the setback. The town's single-family districts are named for their minimum lot size, from R1-6 (6,000 square feet) up to R1-190 (190,000 square feet). As the lots get bigger, the required yards get deeper and the lot-coverage cap gets tighter, so the district decides how much house the lot can hold and where it goes.

What the districts require

Section 10.09 of the Fountain Hills Zoning Ordinance sets the lot size, yards, height, and coverage for each single-family district. The districts share a 30 foot building-height limit but differ in their yards and coverage:

• R1-190: 190,000 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 60 ft, side yard 30 ft, lot coverage 5%.
• R1-43: 43,560 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 40 ft, side yard 30 ft, lot coverage 20%.
• R1-35: 35,000 sq ft lot, front yard 40 ft, side yard 20 ft, rear yard 40 ft, lot coverage 20%.
• R1-18: 18,000 sq ft lot, front yard 20 ft, side yard 10 ft, rear yard 30 ft, lot coverage 25%.
• R1-10: 10,000 sq ft lot, front yard 20 ft, side yard 7 ft, rear yard 20 ft, lot coverage 30%.
• R1-6: 6,000 sq ft lot, front yard 20 ft, side yard 5 ft, rear yard 20 ft, lot coverage 40%.

The table title states what it governs:

Density, Area, Building and Yard Regulations.

That single chart in Section 10.09 carries the minimum lot, lot width, height, front, side, and rear yards, and the coverage cap for every single-family district, so it is the one page that decides the buildable footprint on a Fountain Hills lot.

When setbacks come into play

Setbacks and coverage shape the build before the floor plan is final:

• Build-on-your-lot. Your designer subtracts the yards from the lot to find the buildable area. For example, on a 145 foot wide R1-43 lot, the 30 foot side yards alone take 60 feet, leaving an 85 foot building width before the 40 foot front and rear yards trim the depth.
• Lot coverage. Fountain Hills pairs the setbacks with a lot coverage cap that tightens as lots shrink, from 5% on R1-190 to 40% on R1-6. The setbacks and the coverage cap are separate tests, and the house has to pass both.
• Hillside and corner lots. Footnotes adjust some yards for hillside, canyon-side, and corner conditions, which is common on the town's sloped desert terrain.

A setback miss on the site plan is a common reason a Fountain Hills plan gets corrected, so the town checks each yard before the permit issues.

What this means for you

Confirm your exact district before you design, because the side yard alone swings from 5 feet in R1-6 to 30 feet in R1-43, which reshapes the whole footprint. Plan the house against the lot-coverage cap early, since 20% on an R1-43 acre limits the combined building footprint even when the lot looks large. The 30 foot height cap applies across the single-family districts, so a taller roofline is not an option without relief. We map the yards and coverage cap together on day one of a Fountain Hills project, because they decide whether a plan fits the lot.

This entry pairs with the rest of the Fountain Hills module. The codes your plans are checked against are in Fountain Hills Adopted Building Codes , and the filing steps are in Fountain Hills Residential Building Permit Requirements . For the full sequence, see the steps to building a custom home in Arizona .

Source

The district lot sizes, setbacks, height limit, and lot-coverage caps are published by the Town of Fountain Hills in Section 10.09 of the Zoning Ordinance: View the Density, Area, Building and Yard Regulations on the Fountain Hills Zoning Ordinance . The town's planning hub is at Fountain Hills Planning & Zoning .

This page is general information, not a zoning determination. Setbacks change with hillside overlays, corner-lot rules, and amendments, so confirm your lot's district and standards with Fountain Hills Development Services before you design.