Alternative building and county/city codes (Snohomish: home, construction, move to)

[daoren]

Hopefully, someone out there will be able to give me some idea about how painful the process is to build your own alternative style (read "green", or energy efficient) home on rural property. By painful I mean what hoops do you have to jump through to get your plans approved by the county? I'm interested in locating somewhere in the following counties: Clallam, Whatcom, Skagit or Snohomish. Any tales of problems or successes would be greatly appreciated, especially earth berm, solar passive construction.

[509]

Originally Posted by daoren

Hopefully, someone out there will be able to give me some idea about how painful the process is to build your own alternative style (read "green", or energy efficient) home on rural property. By painful I mean what hoops do you have to jump through to get your plans approved by the county? I'm interested in locating somewhere in the following counties: Clallam, Whatcom, Skagit or Snohomish. Any tales of problems or successes would be greatly appreciated, especially earth berm, solar passive construction.

Well, you could move to Stevens County in the northeast corner of the state. Last I heard and it has been a few years you did NOT have to build to code. You do have to disclose that when you sell the property that the structure was NOT BUILT TO CODE.

Not sure if the county commissioners have changed the law.

Stevens County has a large counter-culture community and a large don't tell me what to do community. So the left and the right finally agreed on something and this was the result.