[Zymer]

Originally Posted by inthewoods

Okay, looking at the Atlas, I'm not in an Urban compact, as the location of my property is not in the orange (town) section (I'm a couple miles outside of the town).

So... earlier NMLM, you said that outside of the Urban compact, the Maine law is 10-foot setback from property line? If so, can you cite that reference? I've tried to research on the Maine statutes on Maine.gov, and I have not come up with any references to property line setbacks (other than wetlands, LURC, etc.)

I realize that the Code Enforcement Officer 'should' know. But he's referring to 'this town' does not have any ordinances that specify setbacks -- which I don't think we do. But I wonder if Maine has such requirements even though a municipality does not.

OK, here we go...after some sleep and a couple of gallons of coffee, I found the fortitude to attempt to pierce the veil of the maine.gov website in order to find some concrete (pun intended) information:

In 2004 Maine adopted a voluntary statewide building code.

...The new law creates the Maine Model Building Code ("MMBC"), which is composed of the InternationalResidential Code and International Building Code, both of which are part of the International Codes Council ("ICC") family of codes. The law does not mandate thatany municipality adopt the MMBC, but requires that, if a municipality does voluntarily choose to adopt a new residential or non-residential building code, it must adopt the MMBC. The law allows municipalities the flexibility of adopting only portions of the MMBC and of amending the MMBC locally if it wishes to do so...


http://www.maine.gov/legis/lawlib/buildcode.htm


However, there has since been an update to this action, in which there has been a mandate to adopt the Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code (MUBEC) with a statutory deadline of June 1st of this year.


In 2008, the Legislature enacted Public Law 2007, chapter 699 calling for the repeal of existing town-by-town adopted building codes and instead establishing a statewide building code no later than January 1, 2010 with an effective date of July 1, 2010.


The original law was slightly modified and clarified in 2009 with Public Law 2009, chapter 261. Included in those changes was an extension of the deadline to adopt the code to June 1, 2010, with an effective date of December 1, 2010...


...Statutory Background. The most significant element of the statewide building code (known as MUBEC) is that it is statewide. Despite some confusion over this issue, the MUBEC will be the law of the land in every municipality in Maine.


The confusion regarding this point stems from the fact that enforcement of the code will only be required (one way or another) in municipalities that have a population over 2,000. However, even in smaller communities where enforcement is not required, construction will be governed by the MUBEC...


...You can read the rest of the update here:


http://www.memun.org/public/MMA/svc/SFR/Publications/LB/2010/2-19-10.pdf


I'm not going to attempt to read the entire MUBEC in order to find out if it includes property-line setbacks. I've done the groundwork to get you off in the right direction, the rest is up to you.