Pinal County Residential Building Permit Requirements: What You File for a New Home

A new custom home on unincorporated Pinal County land needs a county building permit before any work starts. You file with the county Building Safety Division and submit your plans for review against the 2018 codes the county adopted. No footing gets poured until that permit issues. This page walks through how you apply, what you file, and what happens next.

How you apply

Pinal County takes building permit applications two ways. You can file online through the county's Accela Citizen Access portal, or in person at the Community Development Department. Building Safety runs out of 85 North Florence Street in Florence. The phone numbers are 520-509-3555 and 888-431-1311. The county is the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) for unincorporated land only. This process applies when your lot sits outside every city boundary. Inside Casa Grande, Maricopa, Apache Junction, or another city, you apply to that city instead.

What you submit

The county reviews a set of documents before it issues a permit. For a new single-family home, plan to file:

• A building permit application plus a property owner authorization form. The county now asks for that second form with every application.
• A site plan showing the house, driveway, and other features on the lot. Dimension the distance to each property line so reviewers can check your setbacks.
• Construction drawings, meaning floor plans, elevations, and structural details for the house.
• Engineered drawings for specific elements. Structures like retaining walls above a set height need plans prepared by an Arizona registered engineer.

The county spells out the exact document set in its bulletin 004R, Residential Submittal Requirements. It also publishes sample drawings you can build from:

Some of these pages can be used in your actual submittal; for instance, write in the correct dimensions on the sample drawings and incorporate them into your own drawings.

Two more items are common on rural county land. Most parcels sit off city utilities, so your well and septic approvals move alongside the building permit. If the lot falls in a mapped floodplain, the county also asks for grading and drainage plans and an elevation certificate.

What the county checks your plans against

Your plans get reviewed against the editions Pinal County adopted, currently the 2018 International Residential Code and the rest of the 2018 family. Drawing to a newer or generic code earns a correction and costs you a review cycle, so confirm your designer is working from the 2018 books.

Plan review, fees, and getting the permit

For example, say you are building a 2,600 square foot home on a two-acre parcel near Florence. You file the application and the owner authorization form. With it goes a site plan showing the house set back from each line, stamped structural drawings, and your well and septic paperwork. Staff check the package against the 2018 IRC. They may send back a short correction list to fix and resubmit. Once the plans are approved and the fees are paid, the permit issues and you break ground. Plan review time turns on how complete your submittal is and how many correction rounds it takes. A clean, engineer-ready package is the fastest path through.

Fees are due before the permit issues. Pinal County takes checks, money orders, online payments, and credit cards. Cards add a 2.29 percent processing fee, and the county takes cash only up to 150 dollars. On a custom home that card surcharge is real money, so plan to pay by check. How the dollar amount is calculated, and the separate impact fees that come due the same day, are worked through in Pinal County building permit and impact fees.

What comes before and after the permit

The permit is the gate between design and construction. Before it, your plans have to match the county's adopted codes and clear well and septic review. After it, the county inspects the build in stages and issues a certificate of occupancy at the end. If you are still mapping the full journey, start with the steps to building a custom home in Arizona. Check the current document list on the county's Applications and Information Bulletins page before you file.