Tall pines in the East Texas Piney Woods with a sandy track cutting through green understorey.
Gregg County No county building code

Barndominium Builders in Gregg County, TX

Gregg County is 273 square miles, the eighth-smallest county in Texas by land area, and it sits on top of the East Texas oil field. That shapes the answer here more than any code does. Chapter 233 of the Local Government Code is the whole of a Texas county's authority over structures and it holds no general building-code subchapter, so out in the unincorporated county there is no plan review of a house and no county building inspector. What there is instead is a septic permit that gates the build, a driveway culvert that goes to the Commissioners Court by street address, an NRCS soil map on which one acre in five is rated frequently flooded, and a title question about who owns the minerals that most buyers never think to ask. Inside Longview, Kilgore, Gladewater or any of the county's five smaller towns, that city's own code and building official apply instead, and Longview replaced three cycles of code at once on 1 July 2026.

Gregg County at a glance

County
Gregg County
Population
126,095
Where we build
Longview, Smith County, Tyler, Wood County

ZIPs 75601, 75602, 75603, 75604, 75605, 75662, 75693, 75647 and more

Site visits
Site visits scheduled across Gregg County, Longview out to the county line
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Building conditions in Gregg County

What actually changes from one Texas jurisdiction to the next: who issues the permit, whether the residential code is enforced there at all, what the structure has to be engineered to, and what the ground is like. These are the numbers your drawings have to satisfy.

Build conditions for Gregg County , Texas . BUILD CONDITIONS GREGG COUNTY, TXGregg CountyNO COUNTY BUILDING…ADOPTED RESIDENTIAL CODENO COUNTY BUILDING…This jurisdiction publishes no design wind speed. It is settled in writing with the authority overyour parcel before the frame is ordered.ZONING ·1 acre on a private well, half an ac…Texas counties have no general zoning power, and Local GovernmentCode Sec. 233.153(d)(2) confirms that even an opted-in county may…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITGregg County Health Department (on-s…405 East Marshall Avenue, Longview, TX 75601. Office (903) 237-2621,on-site sewage contact (903) 237-2628, fax (903) 237-2608. County…
Build conditions for Gregg 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.
You may own the land and not control the surface
Gregg County is the centre of the East Texas oil field, and in Texas a severed mineral estate is the dominant estate. The Supreme Court of Texas put it plainly in 2013: a party possessing the dominant mineral estate has the right to go onto the surface to extract the minerals, including the right to use as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary, and if there is only one method of production it may be used regardless of whether it precludes or substantially impairs an existing surface use. The surface owner in that case had his house and barn on the tract and still lost.

Merriman v. XTO Energy, Inc., No. 11-0494 (Tex., 21 June 2013), Justice Johnson, read from the Supreme Court of Texas Opinions FY2013 volume on txcourts.gov; Getty Oil Co. v. Jones, 470 S.W.2d 618 (Tex. 1971)

The one code the county adopted is not a building code
In May 2019 the Gregg County Commissioners Court approved the Fire Marshal's request to adopt NFPA 101, Life Safety Code 2018 Edition, with the exclusion of the residential sprinkler requirement, on the State Fire Marshal's Office recommendation, replacing the 2012 edition the court adopted in May 2013. That is a life safety code with the residential sprinkler rule struck out by name, not the International Residential Code and not an opt-in under Chapter 233 Subchapter F. Separately, the county fire-code power at Sec. 233.061 reaches only counties over 250,000 or adjacent to one, and Gregg and every county touching it are under that; even where it applies it covers commercial establishments, public buildings and multifamily of four or more units, never a house.

Gregg County Commissioners Court minutes, regular meeting of 6 May 2019; Texas Local Government Code Secs. 233.061 and 233.062(a); U.S. Census Bureau county population figures

Ten acres buys you nothing here, in the county's own words
The widespread belief that a large tract exempts a house from the septic rules is wrong statewide, and in Gregg County the county's own order forecloses it: Gregg County shall require an application, permit and inspection of construction, alteration, extension or repair to a residential or commercial on-site sewage facility, regardless of the size of the tract of land. The order was passed and approved on 31 March 2026 and repeals every earlier Gregg County sewage order.

Order Adopting Rules of Gregg County, Texas for On-Site Sewage Facilities, Secs. 4, 10(A) and 16, approved 31 March 2026

One acre in five is rated frequently flooded
Of 176,154 acres mapped in Gregg County by the NRCS soil survey, 36,169 acres, just over 20 percent, carry a flooding frequency of Frequent. The three largest of those units are Mattex loam, Estes clay and Iulus fine sandy loam, all on nought to one percent slopes in the Sabine bottoms. That is a bigger constraint on where a barndominium can go than any building code would have been, and it is mapped before you ever buy.

USDA NRCS Soil Data Access, SSURGO survey area TX608 Upshur and Gregg Counties, county overlap for Gregg, muaggatt flood frequency summed by acre

Nine inches of sand over forty-seven percent clay
Cuthbert fine sandy loam is the most extensive soil in Gregg County at 35,362 acres, and the NRCS profile reads 8.5 percent clay for the first 22 centimetres, about nine inches, then 47.5 percent clay in the horizon below it. Kirvin does the same at twelve inches. Sacul goes from about 13 percent to 47.5 and then 48.2 percent, with a linear extensibility of 5.7 to 5.8. A hand auger at spade depth tells you nothing about what the slab and the drainfield are actually sitting on.

USDA NRCS Soil Data Access, SSURGO chorizon clay and linear extensibility values for the major components of the Cuthbert, Kirvin, Sacul and Bowie map units in Gregg County

Your driveway is a Commissioners Court agenda item
Gregg County publishes no development permit, no floodplain permit fee schedule and no building permit. What it does instead is approve every driveway culvert onto a county road individually, by street address, in open court: the property owner provides the culvert and the precinct Road and Bridge crew provides labour, equipment and fill. The minutes carry 239 culvert items over the last ten years and nineteen in 2025 and 2026 alone. It is a real gate on getting access built, and nobody looks at the building.

Gregg County Commissioners Court minutes, full-text search of the county minutes portal 2016-2026; example item, regular meeting of 14 October 2025, 565 Ronnie Brown Road

Also worth knowing before you build in Gregg County

The county runs the septic programme inside Longview too
TCEQ's authorised agent register lists four records for Gregg County. The Gregg County Authorized Agent serves the unincorporated county plus Clarksville City, Gladewater, Lakeport, Warren City and, in TCEQ's own word, Longview temporarily. The City of Longview holds its own authorised agent designation but the record says it is temporarily administered by Gregg County. No river authority or lake district appears, so the 2,000-foot band that shifts jurisdiction elsewhere in Texas does not apply here.

TCEQ On-Site Sewage Facility Authorized Agent Registry (OARS), county search for Gregg, run 1 September 2026

The shop bay does not enlarge the drainfield
Texas sizes a single-family septic system off the number of bedrooms or the living area of the home, whichever gives the larger figure, and the shop is not living area. Gregg County's own application form asks, under Single Family Residence, for Number of Bedrooms and Living Area in square feet, and marks living area as required. The county's order adopts Chapter 285 whole and lists its stricter rules exhaustively in Section 10, and none of them redefines living area the way some Texas authorised agents do.

Gregg County Health Department Application for On-Site Sewage Facility; Gregg County OSSF Order Secs. 8 to 10; TCEQ form TCEQ-0235 item 8

What the septic permit costs, and what it is stricter about
The county's order sets permit fees at $350 residential and $450 commercial, with a $100 re-inspection fee. Beyond permitting on any size tract, its only stricter rules are that all maintenance be performed by a TCEQ-registered maintenance company unless the owner qualifies under one of three named exceptions, that inspections happen no less than once every three months, and that every testing report state the sludge level in the pump tank and the condition of the spray area.

Order Adopting Rules of Gregg County, Texas for On-Site Sewage Facilities, Secs. 10(B), 10(C) and 12, approved 31 March 2026

How much land the septic rules actually require
The Gregg County Health Department applies the state minimum without raising it: half an acre with community water, or one acre with a water well. It also names the exception, telling owners to contact the office about lots that do not meet those criteria but were platted before 1 January 1988. The site evaluation and design must be done by a registered sanitarian or a professional engineer, and the technical information sheet has to be signed by a designer with a registration number.

Gregg County Health Department, How to Obtain a GCHD Permit for an On-Site Sewage Facility, and its Technical Information for Permit sheet

Longview replaced three cycles of code in one step
The City of Longview moved from the 2012 International Residential Code to the 2021 edition effective 1 July 2026, along with the 2021 IBC, IPC, IMC, IFGC, IEBC and IPMC and the 2026 National Electrical Code, keeping the 2015 IECC unchanged. The city's own adoption materials delete IRC section R313, automatic fire sprinkler systems, in its entirety, delete IRC chapter 11 and point at the 2015 IECC instead, and give the design wind speed for Longview as 104 mph, changed from the 90 mph in the code it replaced.

City of Longview Building Inspection, Newly Adopted Codes, longviewtexas.gov, and the city's 2021 International Residential Code Significant Changes and Suggested Amendments presentation

No groundwater district today, and the court is trying to change that
Gregg County lies in no confirmed groundwater conservation district, so a domestic well needs no district permit and the rule of capture governs. On 14 July 2026 the Commissioners Court approved a professional services agreement for legal work on creating a groundwater conservation district, deliberated on the creation of the Northeast Texas Groundwater Conservation District, and appointed the County Judge to a multi-county committee to create a regional district. Anyone drilling should check where that has got to.

Texas Water Development Board Confirmed Groundwater Conservation Districts map; Gregg County Commissioners Court minutes, regular meeting of 14 July 2026

The floodplain administrator is the Maintenance Director
Gregg County has no planning or development department, and the person who administers its flood damage prevention order is the county's Maintenance Director, Jeremy Hughes, on (903) 237-2581. The unincorporated county has been in the regular phase of the National Flood Insurance Program since 3 January 1990 as community 480261, and every community in the county shares a countywide effective flood map dated 3 September 2014.

Texas Water Development Board, Texas Flood floodplain administrator directory; FEMA Community Status Book Report for Texas, report dated 1 September 2026

Call 811 before you dig, and the oil-field exception is not yours
The Underground Facility Damage Prevention and Safety Act requires anyone intending to excavate to notify a one-call notification centre no earlier than 14 days and no later than 48 hours before starting, excluding weekends and holidays. Its exceptions cover agricultural operations, oil and gas exploration or production outside an easement, and excavation by someone who owns the land and operates all the underground facilities on it. A landowner digging footings over somebody else's gathering lines is in none of those.

Texas Utilities Code Secs. 251.001, 251.151 and 251.156

A clear span over 24 feet pulls in an engineer
The Engineering Practice Act exempts a private dwelling from its licensing requirements, and also exempts a one-storey building of not more than 5,000 square feet with no clear span greater than 24 feet. But where such a building has unsupported spans greater than 24 feet, the statute says only the trusses, beams or other roof-supporting members must be engineered or pre-engineered. A detached shop with a 40-foot clear span is squarely in that sentence, and it applies whether or not a county code does.

Texas Occupations Code Sec. 1001.056(a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(F) and (b)

A licensed plumber is required even where nothing else is
The rural exemption in the Texas plumbing licence law expressly excludes plumbing performed in conjunction with new construction. It is one of a handful of statewide requirements that survive the absence of any county building code, and it applies on land with no permit and no inspector. A builder working outside the limits of any municipality must also certify the house against the state energy code and keep that certification for three years.

Texas Occupations Code Sec. 1301.052; Texas Health and Safety Code Secs. 388.003(a) and 388.004

A city's code stops at the city line
In Town of Lakewood Village v. Bizios the Supreme Court of Texas held that a general-law city has no authority to enforce its building codes in its extraterritorial jurisdiction, and read Local Government Code Sec. 233.153(c) as a precedence rule rather than a grant of power. The Dallas Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion for a home-rule city in Collin County v. City of McKinney, though Gregg County sits outside that court's district, so it is persuasive here rather than binding. A city can still make you plat.

Town of Lakewood Village v. Bizios, 493 S.W.3d 527 (Tex. 2016); Collin County, Texas v. The City of McKinney, No. 05-17-00546-CV (Tex. App.-Dallas, 10 May 2018)

Climate zone 3A, whichever edition applies
Gregg County is climate zone 3A, hot-humid, on the pre-2021 map and on the 2021 and 2024 map alike. It is not one of the eight Texas counties whose insulation specification depends on which edition a jurisdiction adopted, so the zone is the same in Longview on the 2021 codes as it is on unincorporated land under the state energy code.

DOE/PNNL climate zone assignments and the published IRC county tables for the 2018 and 2024 editions

The land, and how little of it there is
Gregg County covers 273.38 square miles of land, among the smallest county areas in Texas, and held an estimated 126,095 people on 1 July 2025. Of those, 22,606 live outside every city limit, which is 17.9 percent of the county. That unincorporated remainder, roughly 113,000 acres once the towns are taken out, is where a barndominium goes, and it is not evenly usable once the flood map and the oil field are laid over it.

U.S. Census Bureau 2024 Gazetteer county file and Vintage 2025 subcounty population estimates, sub-est2025

The field under your feet, in numbers
The East Texas oil field lies in central Gregg, western Rusk, southern Upshur, southeastern Smith and northeastern Cherokee counties, and about 30,340 wells have been drilled within its 140,000 acres since October 1930. The Railroad Commission counted 3,317 oil wells in Gregg County as of February 2025, of which 2,690 were regular producing, in a county of 273 square miles. During the boom one city block in Kilgore held forty-four wells.

Julia Cauble Smith, East Texas Oilfield, Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association; Railroad Commission of Texas, Oil Well Counts by County, February 2025

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

What moves a Texas budget is usually below grade, and it is soil rather than rock: shrink-swell clay. The Blackland Prairie and the Gulf Coast clays move enough between a wet season and a dry one to drive the foundation design across the state's largest markets, which is why several DFW cities require an engineer's seal on the foundation of every new house. Those are the same conditions that decide whether a septic field passes its soil and site evaluation, so the grading plan, 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 Gregg County

All nine of our services — kits, custom plans, post-frame and steel construction, site preparation, permitting and engineering, through to turnkey builds — are available across Gregg County. What a project costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we work from your land rather than from a rate card.

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What a build looks like

Three stages every Gregg 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 live oak and cedar elm treeline, 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 and a drainage swale visible.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the submittal works through Gregg County.

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 for Gregg County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Gregg County

Gregg County and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the city limits, which is frequently what changes who issues your permit.

Our Gregg County service area, covering Gregg County and the surrounding rural acreage. This map marks the territory we serve, not a branch location.

Keep reading

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

Barndominium Cost Guide

Sourced per-square-foot ranges by tier and by size, with a calculator built on the same figures.

Read it

Is It Legal in Texas?

Classification, zoning, the HOA gate, and why "nonresidential farm building" does not cover a home.

Read it

How Long Does It Take?

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

Read it

Nearby areas we build in

Others we cover in this part of Texas. The permitting authority, the adopted design criteria and the zoning can all differ from one to the next.

Smith County

Smith County
Tyler

Smith County
Wood County

Wood County

Building in Gregg County: common questions

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

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Do I need a building permit for a barndominium on unincorporated land in Gregg County?
Not in the sense a city means it. Chapter 233 of the Local Government Code is the whole of a Texas county's authority over structures and it holds no general building-code subchapter, so there is no county plan review of a house and no county building inspector. Nothing in Gregg County's record shows the commissioners court ever adopting an order under Chapter 233 Subchapter F: the 2009 minutes around the statute's 1 September 2009 effective date were read line by line, and a full-text search of the minutes index for 2016 to 2026 turns up nothing for building code or fire code. What the county does require is a permit and inspection for the septic system, on any size tract, and a Commissioners Court order for the driveway culvert onto a county road. Inside Longview, Kilgore, Gladewater, White Oak, Lakeport, Warren City, Clarksville City or Easton the answer is completely different, because that city's own code and its own building official apply. If you want the county's own answer in writing, ask the courthouse on (903) 758-6181.
Everyone says the minerals matter in East Texas. How much?
More than most buyers expect, and this is the single thing about Gregg County that nobody explains at a showing. In Texas the mineral estate can be severed from the surface, and when it is, it is the dominant estate. The Supreme Court of Texas said in Merriman v. XTO Energy in 2013 that the holder of the mineral estate has the right to go onto the surface and use as much of it as is reasonably necessary to produce the minerals, and that if there is only one method of production it may be used even where that precludes or substantially impairs an existing surface use. Merriman had his house and barn on the forty acres, objected to the well location, and lost, because the court held he had not shown he had no reasonable alternative on the tract. The doctrine protects existing uses, and a house you have not built yet is not one. So on a tract in the East Texas field, read the title commitment for a mineral reservation and for any existing oil and gas lease before you decide where the slab goes, and if the minerals are severed, ask a Texas oil and gas lawyer about a surface use agreement while you still have leverage. The Railroad Commission counted 3,317 oil wells in this county alone.
What do I actually do first, in what order?
First, establish which jurisdiction the tract is in, because inside any of the eight cities in this county you are under that city's code and its building official, and Longview changed to the 2021 codes on 1 July 2026. Second, get the title commitment and read every easement and every mineral reservation recited in it, because in Texas that is where most of the real constraint lives. Third, check the tract against the flood map before you fall in love with it: one acre in five in this county is rated frequently flooded by the NRCS soil survey, and the countywide effective flood map is dated 3 September 2014. Fourth, buy a site evaluation for septic, because soil texture is what decides whether the tract works at all. Fifth, sort the driveway culvert, which means getting on a Commissioners Court agenda. A geotechnical report before the foundation is designed is money well spent here, for reasons the next answer covers.
Is the soil in Gregg County good to build on?
It looks better than it is, and the numbers are public. The most extensive soil in the county is Cuthbert fine sandy loam at 35,362 acres, and the NRCS profile gives it 8.5 percent clay for the first 22 centimetres, about nine inches, and then 47.5 percent clay in the horizon immediately below. Kirvin does the same thing at twelve inches down. Sacul runs from about 13 percent at the surface to 47.5 and then 48.2 percent, with a linear extensibility of 5.7 to 5.8, which is a real shrink-swell number. So the sandy surface that makes East Texas land feel easy is a thin skin over heavy clay. Texas law does remove the engineering exemption for a residential slab on expansive soil, but both limbs of that provision are written by reference to the International Residential Code as applied in the jurisdiction, and on unincorporated land where no code is applied that reference has nothing to point at. The practical answer does not depend on the statute: get a geotechnical report and have a Texas-licensed engineer design the foundation to it.
Does my shop bay make the septic system bigger?
No. TCEQ sizes a single-family system off the number of bedrooms or the living area of the home, whichever gives the larger figure, and the shop is not living area. Gregg County's own application form asks for Number of Bedrooms and Living Area in square feet under the heading Single Family Residence, and it marks living area as required, so the county is measuring the same thing the state does. Some Texas authorised agents are stricter and count a loft or an attached garage apartment as living space, but Gregg County's order adopts Chapter 285 whole and sets out its stricter rules exhaustively in Section 10, and none of them touches how the house is measured. The permit is $350 residential, $450 commercial, with $100 for a re-inspection, and it is required regardless of the size of the tract.
Is there a percolation test?
There is no percolation test in Texas at all. A registered sanitarian or a professional engineer classifies the soil by texture into classes Ia through IV, and each class carries a loading rate in gallons per square foot per day. Heavy clay at 0.10 needs a large drainfield, which matters here because the clay is usually a foot down rather than absent. A site can also fail at the other end: TCEQ's rule says Class Ia sandy and gravelly soils do not provide adequate treatment of wastewater through soil contact, and the remedy is imported soil or secondary treatment with disinfection. Gregg County's health department requires the site evaluation and the design to be done by a registered sanitarian or a professional engineer, so this is not a do-it-yourself step here even for a standard system.
I want to rent it out, or use it as a guest house. Does anything change?
Possibly, and it is worth asking rather than assuming. In some Texas counties a dwelling that is let goes through a commercial permitting track where a fire code is genuinely enforced. Gregg County has no county commercial building-permit office at all, so that particular mechanism has nothing to run on here. But the county's court did adopt NFPA 101, Life Safety Code 2018 Edition, at the Fire Marshal's request, excluding the residential sprinkler requirement, and NFPA 101 draws distinctions between a one- or two-family dwelling and a lodging or rooming house that a short-term let can cross. What the Fire Marshal's office actually enforces on a let dwelling is a question for that office, on (903) 234-3144, and it is a phone call worth making before the plan is drawn rather than after. On the septic side the county's own form treats a single-family residence and a commercial or institutional use, including multi-family, as different applications with different fees.
Do I have to plat, and does anything block the septic permit?
Gregg County publishes no subdivision regulations of its own, and the county's 2024 hazard mitigation plan, listing the jurisdictions here that have adopted subdivision regulations, names five cities and not the county. Plats in the unincorporated county are approved individually by the Commissioners Court, and the minutes routinely recite whether the tract sits in a FEMA-designated flood zone and whether the health department has been contacted about septic. Nothing published by the county conditions a septic permit on an approved plat: the health department's application accepts an abstract number, survey name, tract and acreage for land outside any subdivision. That is the opposite of some North Texas counties, where a plat exemption forecloses both the address and the septic permit. It is still worth confirming with the health department on (903) 237-2628 for your specific tract, because a division of land can pull Chapter 232 platting duties in on its own.
Is Gregg County in the coastal windstorm regime?
No. The Texas Department of Insurance designates fourteen whole counties plus part of Harris County as the catastrophe area, and Gregg County is on none of that list; the nearest is Jefferson County on the Gulf. So the rule that puts the 2024 International Residential Code on coastal construction regardless of what the local jurisdiction adopted does not reach here, the TWIA windstorm certificate chain from WPI-1 through WPI-8 does not apply, and the windstorm limb of the engineering exemption in the Occupations Code is not in play. Wind still matters as engineering, and the City of Longview gives a design wind speed of 104 mph under the 2021 code it adopted on 1 July 2026, but no jurisdiction in the unincorporated county publishes a design wind speed at all, because no code applies there for one to sit in.
Everyone says rural Texas has no rules. Is that right?
It is half right, and the half that is wrong is the expensive half. There is genuinely no county residential building code here and no county inspector for a house. But a licensed plumber is required on new construction even where nothing else is, because the rural exemption in the plumbing licence law expressly excludes plumbing done in conjunction with new construction. A builder outside any municipality must certify the house against the state energy code and keep the certification for three years. The septic permit and inspection apply on any size tract. Every county regulates its floodplain. Anyone excavating has to notify the one-call centre before digging, and on an old oil field that is not a formality. Where a detached one-storey building has a clear span over 24 feet, the Occupations Code says its roof-supporting members must be engineered or pre-engineered. And recorded deed restrictions bind whether or not a public body is enforcing anything. Read the title commitment.

Building in Gregg County?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm what Gregg County will actually let you put on the parcel and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.

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