Do I need a building permit?

Andy J.

Andy J.

Doin’ it LIVE
Joined
Nov 5, 2005
Location
Winston
I've stumbled my way through the City of Winston Salem website and can't seem to find any sort of cut and dry "you need a permit for this type of work:" document. I want to take a large room in my finished basement and split it into two separate rooms, a bedroom and a TV room. The bedroom will have 2 large above ground windows, so egress isn't an issue. I would have to move/add a couple of electrical outlets also.

Do I need a permit for this?

P.S. FWIW, the realtor counted this space as a bedroom when I bought the house, but the appraisal did not. The appraisal called it a finished basement den and actually didn't count any of the "below grade" square footage in the house size. I thought that was odd since it's a split level house and the basement is only about 3' below grade.
 
If your goal is to be all above-board - just call the Permits division and ask them. Explain the above, and they'll tell you.
Its been many years now, but my interactions with them when I finished my basement were all very collegial.
My guess is that since you're altering or adding electrical they'll say yes. The good news is you can do it yourself as the homeowner.
 
id say yes all electrical has to have a permit pulled if you move plugs or switches. if you plan on hiring an electrician to do it, I bet he wouldn't touch It if there wasn't a permit.
 
I'm with Rat-Lab of cut the chase and just call for every municipality is different and you may get a different answer daily. So be SURE to take down a first and last name and a date you talked to them. Call either Planning or Zoning to get started for it may be a straight forward answer. But 9 times out of 10 you will be directed to a building inspector which you will have to leave a message for them to call you back for they are usually out of the office all day. And then be available to man your phone all day.

A bedroom can get tricky fast. First, it must have a closet before it can even be considered a bedroom. And then if you are on a septic, the size of it determines how many bedrooms you can have total.

Also the number of bedrooms adds to tax value and resale value. So if you plan on selling or doing anything major down the road, it would hurt you later on without pulling a permit for an investor will walk away and an inspector will simply wear you out on anything he finds later on.

Look up your tax records by navigating through W-S GIS to determine the final say to how many bedrooms you have right now. You can do that online yourself. You have what the tax records say you have regardless...

And I will add "since this is a car site" :smokin: that whatever someone don't know ain't going to hurt them. So if you decided to do some electrical yourself, just do it professionally where no one can tell. There's no record on file anywhere that says where you have partition walls or electrical outlets.

And also, realtors will try to sell another bedroom always. It takes a smart buyer to look into it to see if the sale is legit. I would think realtors would have the same intentions as used car dealers. But different.
 
Anything that you would need a professional electrician for is typically a good rule of thumb for a permit.

You need a permit for a deck as well as putting up a ceiling fan. You can bet your ass you would need a permit for your project.
 
Yes. It won't be expensive, and it will be worth your time to get it. If you're on septic, you'll also need to go to your Environmental Health Department too.

On the topic of taxes, technically any time you're adding value to the home that will exceed $100.00, you're supposed to report it. Almost no one does.
 
Just check with environmental health and get a copy of your septic permit. If it lists your bedrooms the same as what you intend to end up with, you are good. If it will be 1 short, then it's like you will need a new septic system to support the additional bedroom. Otherwise it's just another den/living space.
 
Thanks everyone! I'm on city water/sewer. I'll check into the current tax record for # bedrooms on record, I didn't think about that. I could do it without moving any electrical, but thought it would be nice to have electrical outlets in the new partition wall. And the new 'bedroom' does have a closet, so no issue there.
 
FrontPorchFab said:
Thanks everyone! I'm on city water/sewer. I'll check into the current tax record for # bedrooms on record, I didn't think about that. I could do it without moving any electrical, but thought it would be nice to have electrical outlets in the new partition wall. And the new 'bedroom' does have a closet, so no issue there.
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You have to have electrical outlets every 8 or 10 ft? to meet code.
 
So GIS does say its a 3 bed 3 bath house. There's 2 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs, so it looks like the basement room is counted as a bedroom (for tax purposes anyway). I kinda figured the electrical would be the kicker. I can easily do it myself, but I could get an electrician to do it just so there's no question.
 
Funny, looks like you got some work to do just to represent what you got. :) I call that luck though! Those odds never happen... Was it demo'ed at one time you think?

Hope your brother (a close friend or family member) is an electrician for it sure could save a lot of headache.
 
FrontPorchFab said:
So GIS does say its a 3 bed 3 bath house. There's 2 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs, so it looks like the basement room is counted as a bedroom (for tax purposes anyway). I kinda figured the electrical would be the kicker. I can easily do it myself, but I could get an electrician to do it just so there's no question.
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Unless things have changed, in Forsythe County you can get a permit to do electrical work yourself as long as you are the homeowner. When it's done the county inspector will come check out your work and sign off.
E.g. there's no reason you HAVE to get a licensed guy to do it.

Beats where I live now, where they require everything to be done by a licensed guy, even if it is a 1 hr job.:uzi:
 
I don't know any of the history. I bought it as a foreclosure. I'll find out about doing it myself too. If not, I have friends that have electrician friends...
 
You can do it yourself in Meck county as well. You have to list yourself as the contractor or something like that. I've got open permits for my master bath remodel and I'm doing the electrical and plumbing myself.
 
RatLabGuy said:
Unless things have changed, in Forsythe County you can get a permit to do electrical work yourself as long as you are the homeowner. When it's done the county inspector will come check out your work and sign off.
E.g. there's no reason you HAVE to get a licensed guy to do it.

Beats where I live now, where they require everything to be done by a licensed guy, even if it is a 1 hr job.:uzi:
Click to expand...

A homeowner can basically do anything themselves in this state as long as it's to your own home. You can build your own house (without a GC license), top to bottom, so long as you live in it at least one year. Like Fabrik8 said, YOU are the contractor. That said, if you pull the permits and then hire the job out to an unlicensed hack who botches the job, you're ultimately responsible for fixing the problem.

A lot of counties and cities have screwed up the permitting process. It should be simple and straight forward. Making it as complicated as they do actually encourages people to do work without permits.
 
From the sounds of the scope of work you want to do and the tax record showing there is a 3rd bedroom, I would do the work and forget about it.
I did however just pull an electrical permit to add 200A service to my garage and I'm listed as the GC. As long as it's done correctly is not an issue come inspection day.
 
I pulled all of my own permits to build my shop. I did my own electrical. It passed first time go. Inspector said my panel looked better than most of the electricans he deals with. IIRC, the town of Cary website has the NEC downloadable. I just saved it to my computer and printed the pages I needed to do my conduit fill calculations. I had those sitting on my workbench when the inspector came out. I guess he figured since I did the research and calculations and my panel was neat, that it was done right. He just checked my ground rods and a couple recepticles. Duke came a couple days later and set my meter.
 
The Durham electrical inspector (I'll withhold his name since he deals with my brother's work) approved my shop when my brother changed panel boxes out when he saw a guitar on my shirt and asked if I played. Wasn't in a hurry to leave up until then either. I had to tell him I was good, which prompted an immediate call to Duke Power to cut me back on.

Then as predicted, my helper (brother-in-law) called me while I was at home for lunch the next day to tell me "my buddy was on his way over". Dude showed up with a guitar and most definitely on company time. Even explained how he was going to use a big carved piece of Styrofoam to conceal it better in his truck.

I had to suck intentionally... Picked my rowdy-est song I ever wrote to shrill it out the worst I could and to see the disappointment for I was remodeling my house as well and had no time for an Electrical Inspector hanging around.

:shaking:
 
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