A still, dark blackwater river channel with buttressed bald cypress and knees in the shallows, loblolly pine and gum on the far bank and a flat grassy field edge in front.
Pender County 2018 NC Residential Code, statewide

Barndominium Builders in Pender County, NC

Pender County is Wilmington's land county, and on the numbers it is the best-fitting county in North Carolina for this building type: 871 square miles at 83 people per square mile, 354 farms across 78,903 acres, 14.1 percent of the county, at a median farm size of 33 acres — one of the smallest medians in the state outside the metros — and 19.8 percent population growth between 2020 and 2025. Burgaw is the county seat and holds the courthouse and the main permitting office; Hampstead, which the county lists among its seven communities rather than its six towns, has 7,016 people and no town government at all, so everything there is county jurisdiction and the county runs a second permitting office at the Hampstead Annex. Three things shape a build here. The design wind speed is not one number: Table R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code gives Pender three zones, keyed to the Township of Topsail and the Intracoastal Waterway rather than to the county line. The permit fee runs on a cost-recovery factor applied to an ICC valuation, and the county's own schedule footnote pins those values to the February 2018 Building Valuation Table. And the ground is the real gate. This is lower Coastal Plain flatwoods and blackwater bottom — high seasonal water tables, poorly drained flats and organic soils that behave nothing like Piedmont saprolite — so the septic answer often decides the lot before the house design does. Pender County publishes its own bona fide farm exemption application and answers the question that matters about it directly: a farm exemption does not remove the need for a zoning permit to build a house, and it does not remove the trade permits.

Pender County at a glance

County
Pender County
City rules outside city limits
Burgaw, Surf City, Topsail Beach and Pender's other towns can enforce zoning and the building code past their limits under G.S. 160D-202 — but Hampstead, the county's largest community, has no town government at all, so it is county jurisdiction throughout.
Population
72,111
ZIP codes
28425, 28435, 28443, 28445, 28447, 28454, 28457, 28478, 28421
Site visits
Same week across Pender County
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Building conditions in Pender County

The building code does not change at a county line here. Under § 143-138(e) the North Carolina State Building Code applies throughout the state, and a city or county may adopt only a fire prevention code and floodplain regulations of its own — there is no general local amendment power, so there are no county amendments to look up. The edition in force is still the 2018 NC Residential Code, effective 1 January 2019; the 2024 edition has been delayed three times and carries no effective date at all. What genuinely differs is who issues the permit and inspects the work, what that office charges, how the parcel is zoned, what the local floodplain ordinance requires of the foundation — and two design numbers the code publishes county by county, the ultimate design wind speed and the seismic design category. The rest of Table R301.2 is set once for everyone: a flat 20 psf roof live load, a 12-inch frost line, Moderate weathering, and termite protection required everywhere in the state with no exemption. There is no ground snow load column in the residential code at all.

Build conditions for Pender County , North Carolina : ultimate design wind speed 130 / 140 / 150 mph. BUILD CONDITIONS PENDER COUNTY, NCPender County2018 NC RESIDENTIAL CODEULTIMATE DESIGN WIND SPEED130 / 140 / 150 mphTable R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code splits Pender County three ways: 140 mph in theTownship of Topsail west of the Intracoastal Waterway, 150 mph east of the waterway, and 130 mph…ZONING · RA / RP35 ft maximum heightPender County states that a zoning permit is always required — forhomes, sheds, signs, businesses, shops, personal storage and office…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITPender County Inspections & Permitti…Offices in Burgaw and at the Hampstead Annex, applications throughthe PORT portal. Environmental health water and sewer intention…
Build conditions for Pender County, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.
Three wind zones in one county, and none of them is the county line
Table R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code — the edition in force — splits Pender County three ways: 140 mph ultimate design wind speed in the Township of Topsail west of the Intracoastal Waterway, 150 mph east of the waterway, and 130 mph in the remainder of the county. Three different figures inside one county, set by a township boundary and a waterway rather than by anything visible from the road. The 2024 edition, adopted but carrying no effective date, redraws it again into 150 mph in the Township of Topsail and 140 mph in the remainder, dropping the 130 mph zone entirely — so Pender is one of six counties where the two editions genuinely disagree, and the difference on a Burgaw-area parcel is 130 mph today against 140 mph under a pending edition. A set of drawings for a Pender build should name the edition, the township and the side of the waterway, not a county.

2018 NC Residential Code Table R301.2(4) with its Pender footnote, and the 2024 edition's replacement footnote, NC Office of the State Fire Marshal.

The county's own answer on the bona fide farm exemption
Pender County publishes a Bona Fide Farm Exemption Application, states there is no fee for it, and reproduces the four items G.S. 160D-903 treats as sufficient evidence that property is in bona fide farm use: a farm sales tax exemption certificate from the Department of Revenue, a property tax listing showing eligibility for the present-use value programme under G.S. 105-277.3, the owner's or operator's most recent federal Schedule F, or a forest management plan. Then it answers the two questions a barndominium buyer actually has. Asked whether a bona fide farm still needs a zoning permit to build a house on the property, the county says yes. Asked whether trade permits are still required, it says yes — electrical, plumbing and HVAC. That is the whole shape of North Carolina law stated by a county in its own words: the exemption is a land-use right, and code compliance is the price of it.

Pender County Planning and Community Development, Bona Fide Farms, pendercountync.gov/524, read 6 September 2026, reproducing G.S. 160D-903; UNC School of Government commentary quoted on that page.

A zoning permit is always required, shed or shop included
Pender County's Current Planning page states the rule without qualification: you always need a zoning permit in Pender County, and while some structures may be small enough to be exempt from a building permit, zoning permits are always required — the county lists homes, sheds, signs, businesses, shops, personal storage and offices. That matters for the way barndominiums are usually built, because the shop very often goes up first and buyers assume a farm building or a small outbuilding is invisible to the county. It is not. Two more figures from the same source: in the Rural Agricultural and Residential Performance districts, structures carry a maximum height of 35 feet, and setbacks come from Section 4.14 of the county's Unified Development Ordinance and vary by district and housing type — with different answers again if the parcel is in a flood zone or inside an Area of Environmental Concern buffer. Zoning and subdivision applications cannot be filed through the county's online portal and go by email or hard copy.

Pender County Planning and Community Development, Current Planning, pendercountync.gov/518, read 6 September 2026. A control request for a non-existent path on that host returned a genuine 404.

The state processes CAMA permits here, not the county
Pender County states in its own words that the NC Department of Environmental Quality processes CAMA permits for properties in Pender County, and describes its Areas of Environmental Concern as generally those close to water — the ocean, the Intracoastal Waterway, creeks — or to marsh. That is a different arrangement from New Hanover County next door, where the county's Planning and Land Use department administers CAMA minor and major permits itself, and different again from Brunswick County, whose published jurisdiction table shows CAMA falling to the town in some municipalities, to the county in others, and to Wilmington in two. So the same statute produces three different front doors within one commuting radius. The trigger is identical everywhere: not the county, but whether the parcel is inside an AEC. The Estuarine Shoreline AEC runs 75 feet landward of normal high water under 15A NCAC 07H .0209(a)(1), and 575 feet where the adjoining water is classified Outstanding Resource Waters.

Pender County Planning and Community Development FAQ, pendercountync.gov, read 6 September 2026; New Hanover County Current Planning and Zoning Overview, nhcgov.com/534; Brunswick County Municipal Jurisdictions, brunswickcountync.gov/192; 15A NCAC 07H .0209, NC Office of Administrative Hearings.

Septic soil evaluation is priced two acres at a time
Pender County Environmental Health prices an Improvement Permit at $300 for up to 600 gallons per day or five bedrooms and $600 above that, a Construction Authorization for new construction at $300, and a new private well permit at $320 — stated on the form as $250 plus the cost of the sampling kit. The line that matters on a large parcel sits between them: each site evaluation consists of up to two acres per fee. On a 33-acre median Pender farm, having the soil scientist look at more than a two-acre window costs more than one fee, which turns the question of how much siting flexibility you want into a priced decision before the house is designed. A revisit fee of $50 applies if the office is told the site is ready and it is not. The county's own form states plainly that a Construction Authorization is needed to obtain a building permit and install a septic system, which is 15A NCAC 18E .0201(c) restated on a county application.

Pender County Health Department, New Structure Application for Environmental Health Permits, pendercountync.gov, read 6 September 2026 — extracted in two independent modes that agree on every figure quoted here; 15A NCAC 18E .0201, NC Office of Administrative Hearings.

The permit fee runs on a valuation table frozen in February 2018
Pender County's FY 26-27 Permitting and Inspections Fee Schedule prices work as total square feet times an ICC value per square foot times a county cost-recovery factor — .00067 on residential major remodels and crawl space repair, .00175 on uncovered decks and porches, .0040 on commercial new construction. At the foot of the schedule is a footnote that no other county in this market prints: ICC values are based on the February 2018 Building Valuation Table published by the International Code Council. Brunswick County, one county south, runs the same mechanism against a 2026 ICC matrix it posts alongside its schedule. Same method, eight years apart in the input. Two other lines on the Pender schedule are worth budgeting for: a $25 administrative fee if the application is submitted in the office rather than through the county's PORT portal, and double the original fee for beginning work without a permit.

Pender County FY 26-27 Permitting and Inspections Fee Schedule, pendercountync.gov, read 6 September 2026 — extracted in two independent modes, and only pairings both modes agree on are stated here; Brunswick County Permit Fee Schedule — Building and its posted 2026 ICC matrix, brunswickcountync.gov/197.

Also worth knowing before you build in Pender County

Hampstead is the biggest place in the county and has no town government
Pender County's own Towns and Communities page draws the distinction plainly: the county is host to six towns — Atkinson, Burgaw, St. Helena, Surf City, Topsail Beach and Watha — and seven communities, of which Hampstead is one, alongside Currie, Maple Hill, Penderlea, Rocky Point, Scotts Hill and Willard. Hampstead has 7,016 people, more than any of the six towns except Surf City, and it is a census-designated place rather than a municipality. There is no Hampstead council, no Hampstead zoning ordinance and no Hampstead inspections department. Everything there is Pender County jurisdiction, and the county runs a second permitting office at the Hampstead Annex alongside the main office at 805 S. Walker Street in Burgaw. That is worth stating because a buyer looking at a Hampstead address will reasonably go hunting for a town hall's rules, and Surf City is the reverse case — an incorporated town that straddles the Pender-Onslow line, with 4,712 of its people on the Pender side and 430 in Onslow.

Pender County, Towns and Communities, pendercountync.gov/469, read 6 September 2026; Pender County Inspections and Permitting, pendercountync.gov/254, read 6 September 2026; U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 place and census-designated place population estimates.

The ground here is water, not rock
Pender sits on the lower Coastal Plain, and the governing site problem is where the water table sits rather than how strong the soil is. USDA's Norfolk series — the well-drained inner Coastal Plain soil under much of the farmland an eastern buyer looks at — carries a seasonal high water table at 40 to 72 inches from January through March, which is deep enough that a conventional slab or crawlspace is straightforward. The Belhaven series, the organic soil of the lower Coastal Plain flats and depressions, is a Histosol with 16 to 51 inches of decomposed organic material over loamy marine sediment, very poorly drained, with a seasonal high water table between 0 and 12 inches from November through May. Its official description records that excessive drying causes the material to shrink into hard peds and that this drying is irreversible. Organic soil is the one material that has to be undercut and replaced rather than compacted, and it is the case where a building official can require a soil investigation under Section R401.4. On this ground the septic answer routinely decides the lot before the floor plan does.

USDA NRCS Official Series Descriptions for NORFOLK and BELHAVEN, soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov, read 5 September 2026; 2018 NC Residential Code Section R401.4.

Wilmington's land county, by a wide margin
Pender County grew from 60,203 people in 2020 to 72,111 in 2025, a 19.8 percent gain, across 871 square miles at 83 people per square mile. The 2022 Census of Agriculture records 354 farms on 78,903 acres — 14.1 percent of the county — at an average farm of 223 acres and a median of 33, which is among the smallest medians in North Carolina outside the metropolitan counties and is close to the ideal parcel size for this building type. New Hanover County, immediately south and home to Wilmington, ranks 99th of the 100 counties for land in farms with a median farm of 10 acres and 1,279 people per square mile. Brunswick, across the river, has more land but a 50-acre median and a 27.8 percent growth rate that is pushing prices. Pender is the county where a Wilmington buyer with a shop in mind can still find a parcel at a size that suits it, on ground that is genuinely rural and genuinely permitted by the county rather than by a town.

U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 county population estimates and 2025 Gazetteer land areas; USDA NASS 2022 Census of Agriculture county profiles.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes, a drainage swale and a silt fence along the downhill edge.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

What moves a North Carolina budget is usually below grade, and the thing most often got wrong is which clay to worry about. Cecil — the red Piedmont clay everyone pictures, and the state soil — is kaolinitic and low shrink-swell; it does not heave. The soil that does is Iredell, formed over diabase and gabbro, which the USDA describes as vertic, very high shrink-swell, with a perched water table a foot or two down from December through April. The tell is colour: Cecil is red and Iredell is dark grey-brown, and they sit within a few miles of each other across the central Piedmont. West of that the question stops being clay and becomes slope, rock and colluvium; east of the fall line it becomes water, and in the Tidewater it becomes organic soil that subsides irreversibly once it is drained. Then the same ground decides the septic system, and North Carolina rewrote those rules recently enough that most of what is published about them is out of date. 15A NCAC 18E replaced the old subchapter on 1 January 2024 and was amended again on 1 June 2026: the site is classified on soil morphology — the word "percolation" does not appear anywhere in it — and there is no "provisionally suitable" any more, only suitable or unsuitable, on a single failed parameter. There is no statewide minimum lot size either; the area you need is derived from the soil result and then doubled, because a site that cannot fit both the initial field and its repair area is unsuitable. And the order matters more than people expect: the county health department's Improvement Permit and Construction Authorization come first, and the building permit is available on the strength of the Construction Authorization, not before it. One more thing that catches people: disturb more than an acre and you need an approved erosion and sedimentation control plan in hand before work starts, with penalties up to $5,000 a day, and a pad plus a drive plus a drainfield plus a laydown area crosses an acre faster than it sounds. So the site work, the foundation and the drainfield get resolved together rather than one at a time. We price the dirt before we price the building.

What we build in Pender County

All nine services are available in Pender County. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.

Barndominium Kits

Engineered shell packages drawn to your own county's wind and seismic numbers under the 2018 NC Residential Code, with the exclusions written down.

Custom Plans

Barndominium floor plans drawn for your parcel, your county's design figures and the septic system your bedroom count will actually need.

Metal Homes

Metal building homes finished to live in — envelope, insulation, condensation control and interior finish specified to your NC county's climate zone.

See all nine services

What a build looks like

Three stages every Pender County project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Aerial view of an undeveloped rural lot with cleared grass, a mixed oak, hickory and pine treeline, exposed red clay in one corner and a pale gravel access track.
Stage one

The parcel

Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes, a drainage swale and a silt fence along the downhill edge.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the septic authorization and the building submittal work through whichever offices cover your parcel.

A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.

Those are the rules where you are building in Pender County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Pender County

Pender County and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the town limits — which does not automatically put it under the county, because a town's zoning and building-code enforcement reach one to three miles past its limits into its extraterritorial jurisdiction. Inside the limits, in the ETJ, or in neither are three different answers to who issues your permit.

The Pender County service area, including the rural acreage outside the built-up edge, which is where the parcels big enough for a build like this usually sit. The map marks the territory we build in. It is not a branch location, and there is no office at this pin.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what Pender County allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

What the named, dated sources actually publish for North Carolina, with a calculator built on the same figures.

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Is It Legal in North Carolina?

Why a "farm building" is defined as nonresidential, and the ten-acre right § 160D-903(b) gives you in exchange for building to the code.

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How Long Does It Take?

Census build-duration data, and what actually sets the permit clock where you are building.

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Nearby areas we build in

Others we cover nearby. Every North Carolina municipality sits inside a county — there are no independent cities here — but that does not settle who regulates a given parcel. A town's zoning, subdivision rules and building-code enforcement extend one to three miles beyond its limits, by population, into what the statute calls its extraterritorial jurisdiction; town taxes and town elections do not follow. So the office that issues the permit, what it charges and how the land is zoned can all differ from one card to the next, and the mailing address will not tell you which case you are in.

Wilmington

New Hanover County
Onslow County

Onslow County
Duplin County

Duplin County
Brunswick County

Brunswick County

Building in Pender County: common questions

6 questions we get asked most often about building in Pender County. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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What wind speed does a Pender County barndominium have to be designed to?
It depends on where in the county the parcel is, and Pender is one of the more finely divided counties in the state. Table R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code — the edition in force — sets three zones: 140 mph ultimate design wind speed in the Township of Topsail west of the Intracoastal Waterway, 150 mph east of the waterway, and 130 mph in the remainder of the county. So a Burgaw parcel and a Surf City parcel are twenty miles and twenty miles per hour apart, and the boundary that matters is a township line and a waterway rather than anything you would notice driving. The 2024 edition has been adopted but has no effective date at all, and it redraws the county again as 150 mph in the Township of Topsail and 140 mph in the remainder — dropping the 130 mph zone entirely. Pender is therefore one of six counties where the two editions genuinely disagree, and plans should name which one they were drawn to. Pender is not on Table R301.2(7)'s list of Seismic Design Category C counties, so it falls into Category A or B under that table's note. Statewide and worth knowing: a flat 20 psf roof live load, no ground snow load column at all because Section R301.2.3 is deleted, a 12-inch frost line, and termite protection required across the whole state — with frost-protected shallow foundations under R403.3 deleted here, so the insulate-instead-of-dig route is unavailable.
Does a bona fide farm exemption mean I can build a barndominium without permits?
No, and Pender County answers this on its own website more directly than most counties will. The county publishes a Bona Fide Farm Exemption Application, charges nothing for it, and sets out the four items G.S. 160D-903 accepts as sufficient evidence of bona fide farm use: a farm sales tax exemption certificate from the Department of Revenue, a property tax listing showing present-use value eligibility under G.S. 105-277.3, the owner's or operator's most recent federal Schedule F, or a forest management plan. Then it answers the two follow-up questions directly. If the property is deemed a bona fide farm and you want to build a house on it, you still need a zoning permit. And you still need trade permits — electrical, plumbing and HVAC. That is the correct reading of the law and it is worth understanding why. G.S. 143-138(b4)(1) defines a farm building as a nonresidential building, so a dwelling never enters the building-code exemption in the first place. And G.S. 160D-903 grants the farm-residence zoning exemption only to residences constructed to the applicable residential building code, while barring a county from prohibiting a dwelling on an agricultural lot over ten acres, or requiring road frontage or public water and sewer, only for one built in accordance with the State Building Code. The land-use right is real and valuable. Code compliance is what the legislature charged for it.
Who issues permits in Hampstead?
Pender County does, all of it, because Hampstead is not a town. The county's own Towns and Communities page lists six towns — Atkinson, Burgaw, St. Helena, Surf City, Topsail Beach and Watha — and separately lists seven communities, among them Hampstead, Currie, Maple Hill, Penderlea, Rocky Point, Scotts Hill and Willard. Hampstead has 7,016 people, which is more than every one of those towns except Surf City, but it is a census-designated place: a Census Bureau statistical boundary rather than a municipal corporation. There is no Hampstead council, no Hampstead zoning ordinance, no Hampstead inspections department and no Hampstead extraterritorial jurisdiction, and no town hall to ask. Pender County Planning and Community Development handles zoning and land use there, Pender County Inspections and Permitting handles the building permit, and the county runs a permitting office at the Hampstead Annex as well as the main office in Burgaw. Two practical consequences follow. First, the county fee schedule and the county Unified Development Ordinance govern a Hampstead build with no municipal layer on top of them. Second, when you check jurisdiction on any other Pender parcel, those six towns are what to watch for — plus their extraterritorial jurisdictions, which under G.S. 160D-202 reach a mile past the town line on the town's own decision and further only with the county board's approval.
What does the ground do in Pender County, and will it take a septic system?
On the lower Coastal Plain the governing question is water rather than strength, and it is entirely different from the clay-and-saprolite problem inland. On the better ground, USDA's Norfolk series — well drained, kaolinitic and not expansive — carries a seasonal high water table at 40 to 72 inches from January through March, deep enough that a slab or crawlspace is uncomplicated. On the flats, depressions and blackwater bottoms the picture changes: the Belhaven series is an organic soil with 16 to 51 inches of decomposed organic material over loamy marine sediment, very poorly drained, with a seasonal high water table between 0 and 12 inches from November through May, and its official series description records that excessive drying makes it shrink into hard peds irreversibly. Organic soil is the one material that has to be undercut and replaced rather than compacted, and it is squarely the questionable soil condition that lets a building official require an investigation under Section R401.4. On the septic side, 15A NCAC 18E classifies sites on soil morphology, and the word percolation does not appear in it — any page still offering you a perc test is describing repealed law. There is no longer a provisionally suitable classification either: a site is suitable or unsuitable, and one failing parameter is enough. That is why on this ground the soil evaluation belongs before the purchase. Pender charges $300 for an Improvement Permit up to 600 gallons per day and evaluates up to two acres per fee.
How much is the building permit in Pender County?
Pender prices work by valuation rather than by a flat rate, and its FY 26-27 Permitting and Inspections Fee Schedule states the method as total square feet times an ICC value per square foot times a county cost-recovery factor. The published factors include .00067 on residential major remodels and crawl space repair, .00175 on uncovered decks and porches, and .0040 on commercial new construction. What makes the Pender schedule distinctive is its own footnote: ICC values are based on the February 2018 Building Valuation Table published by the International Code Council. Brunswick County, immediately south, runs the identical mechanism against a 2026 ICC matrix posted alongside its schedule and applies a .0045 factor to residential new construction of occupancy R-3, construction type VB. Same method, very different input. Two Pender lines to budget for regardless of the calculation: a $25 administrative fee if you submit the application in the office rather than through the PORT portal, and double the original fee for beginning work without a permit. And one procedural item that will hold everything up if missed — the county requires environmental health water and sewer intention documentation to accompany a construction permit application before it will be processed at all.
Which Pender County code amendments do I need to look up?
None exist, and that is the honest answer even though it is the opposite of the advice most sites in this trade give. G.S. 143-138(e) provides that the North Carolina State Building Code shall apply throughout the State from the time of its adoption. The only two instruments a city or county may adopt of its own are a fire prevention code — which requires Residential Code Council approval and may not reach one- and two-family dwellings beyond what the Residential Code prescriptively requires — and floodplain management regulations. There is no general power to amend the building code locally, so no county in this state can require a stronger foundation, a different structural system or a tighter envelope than the statewide code does. What is genuinely local, and what this page is about, is a different list: the Unified Development Ordinance and its districts, setbacks and 35-foot height limit; the fee schedule and the valuation table behind it; the health department and its per-acre site evaluation; extraterritorial jurisdiction; floodplain regulation; who administers CAMA; and the wind figures that the one statewide code publishes county by county and, in Pender's case, township by township.

Building in Pender County?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm which office issues the permit for your parcel, what it will let you put there, and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.

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