Rolling Texas Hill Country limestone hills with live oak motts, Ashe juniper, and a clear creek over white limestone cobble.
Kerr County No county building code

Barndominium Builders in Kerr County, TX

Kerr County is the Hill Country as people picture it — 1,103 square miles of limestone, cedar and spring-fed river around Kerrville, with about half the population outside any city limit. What applies here is not what applies on the prairie soils east of I-35. Chapter 233 of the Local Government Code is the whole of a Texas county's authority over structures, and Kerr County has never adopted its residential subchapter, so no county official examines the building. The ground and the water regulate instead. Nine acres in ten carry limestone, weathered rock or caliche as a mapped restrictive layer. The county rewrote its septic order in July 2026 and now permits every system regardless of tract size. And the groundwater district will not allow a well on a tract platted since August 2023 unless it runs to ten acres — the number that decides whether a listing is buildable at all. Inside Kerrville or Ingram, that city's code applies instead.

Kerr County at a glance

County
Kerr County
Population
54,037
Where we build
Kerrville, Gillespie County, Bandera County, Comal County

ZIPs 78028, 78029, 78025, 78010, 78024, 78058, 78013, 78631 and more

Site visits
On-site visits across Kerr County, Kerrville and the land beyond it
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Building conditions in Kerr 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 Kerr County , Texas . BUILD CONDITIONS KERR COUNTY, TXKerr 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 · UNDEFINEDTen acres to drill a well on a tract…Texas counties have no general zoning power, and Local GovernmentCode Sec. 233.153(d)(2) confirms that even a county that has adopte…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITKerr County Environmental Health Dep…Septic: Kerr County Environmental Health, 550 Earl Garrett Street,Suite 100, Kerrville, TX 78028, (830) 896-9020, Monday to Friday 8a…
Build conditions for Kerr 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.
Ten acres, or the well cannot be drilled
The Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District, which covers the whole of Kerr County, requires a minimum ten-acre tract to drill a well — exempt or permitted — on land subdivided, partitioned or platted on or after 10 August 2023. Older tracts carry the rule in force when they were created: five acres between January 2018 and August 2023, seven acres in the East Kerr Management Zone from June 2022, and under five acres only if the tract predates 10 January 2018. Inside a public water system service area the figure is fifteen acres.

Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District Rules, adopted by the Board of Directors 14 May 2025, Rule 4 Sections 3.A and 4 (exempt wells) and Rule 5 Sections 1 and 2 (permitted wells)

The septic order was rewritten this summer
Kerr County adopted a new On-Site Sewage Facilities Order on 13 July 2026, approved by TCEQ's executive director on 7 August 2026. Section 9 makes one departure from the state rule and it is the important one: a permit is required for all on-site sewage facilities within the county's jurisdiction regardless of acreage. The county states the change is not retroactive, and that an existing system on a ten-acre-or-larger tract serving one single-family dwelling stays grandfathered while it keeps meeting the original conditions.

Kerr County On-Site Sewage Facilities Order, passed and approved 13 July 2026, Sections 3, 6 and 9, with the TCEQ executive director's Health and Safety Code Sec. 366.031 order issued 7 August 2026

Why the county closed the ten-acre gap, in its own words
The justification filed with TCEQ names the cause. Kerr County wrote that development had produced an influx of subdivisions, mostly over ten-acre lots in order to be able to acquire a well permit, and that new septic systems on those lots would therefore not be evaluated, inspected or permitted without the new restriction — citing the groundwater district's ten-acre rule by number. The water rule reshaped the lots, and the lot shape put the septic systems outside the old permitting threshold.

Exhibit B to the Kerr County OSSF Order, letter of the Kerr County Environmental Health Director dated 11 May 2026, justification item (iii)

The shop bay does not enlarge the drainfield
Texas sizes a single-family system off the number of bedrooms or the living area of the home, whichever gives the larger figure, so a barndominium with 1,800 square feet of three-bedroom living space and a 2,200 square foot shop is a 300 gallon-per-day house rather than a 375. An authorised agent may be stricter, and some Texas counties redefine living area so a loft or attached apartment counts. Kerr County's order does not: Section 9 lists its departures from the state rule exhaustively, and the only one is the permit requirement.

TCEQ form TCEQ-0235 item 8 and 30 TAC Ch. 285 Table II, with the Kerr County OSSF Order Sections 8 and 9

The county was offered a building code and declined it
On 24 August 2009 the Commissioners' Court considered a resolution to adopt residential construction requirements under the bill that became Chapter 233's residential subchapter — construction to the 2006 residential code or the county seat's adopted code at the builder's option, with three inspections the builder pays for. Two commissioners spoke against it on the record and the item closed with no motion, no second and no vote. No adoption appears anywhere in the county's minutes since.

Kerr County Commissioners' Court verbatim minutes, 24 August 2009, Item 6, and the county's published minutes archive 2001 to 2026

This is not the Edwards Aquifer regulated zone
The Edwards Aquifer rules that require a Water Pollution Abatement Plan before building are bounded by county in the Administrative Code itself: both the recharge-zone subchapter and the contributing-zone subchapter apply in Medina, Bexar, Comal, Kinney, Uvalde, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties. Kerr County is in neither list and sits over a different aquifer, the Edwards-Trinity Plateau. What does apply is the Hill Country Priority Groundwater Management Area, and the county's answer to it is a set of water availability requirements on every plat.

30 TAC Ch. 213, Subchapters A and B; TCEQ Edwards Aquifer Protection Program; Kerr County Subdivision Regulations Secs. 1.08 and 5.08, citing Texas Water Code Sec. 35.019

Also worth knowing before you build in Kerr County

One dwelling per lot, on the plat and in the deed
Kerr County's subdivision regulations state that no more than one single-family detached dwelling shall be located on each lot, that the restriction must be placed on the face of the final plat, and that it must be placed in all deeds and contracts for deeds for real estate sold within the subdivision. A main house now and a guest barndominium later is foreclosed on a lot platted under these rules, and it is foreclosed in two places, so it survives resale.

Kerr County Subdivision and Manufactured Home Rental Community Regulations Sec. 5.01.F.3.g, approved 28 November 2022, Commissioners Court Order No. 39679, effective 1 January 2023

There are setbacks precisely because there is no fire code
The county's subdivision regulations set a minimum 50-foot setback from roads and rights-of-way and a minimum 10-foot setback from adjacent property lines in areas that lack a nationally recognised fire code and lack water lines sized for fire protection. They add that setbacks required elsewhere in the county's orders control wherever they are greater — which in practice means the septic separations decide where the shop can go.

Kerr County Subdivision Regulations Sec. 5.01.F.3.f, referring to Local Government Code Sec. 233.062(c)

Nine acres in ten sit on rock or caliche
In the USDA soil survey of Kerr County, 90 percent of the mapped acreage carries a root-restrictive layer — limestone bedrock on 70 percent, a petrocalcic caliche hardpan on 12 percent, weathered bedrock on 8 percent — and on roughly a third of the county that layer is within two feet of the surface. The largest single map unit is the Eckrant-Harper complex at 102,890 acres; the Eckrant series is described as 4 to 20 inches to lithic bedrock over Lower Cretaceous limestone. Depth to a restrictive layer is one of six site limitations the county's own septic site evaluation form asks the evaluator to score.

USDA-NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access, survey area TX265; NRCS Official Series Description, Eckrant series; Kerr County Environmental Health Site Evaluation form

Much of the county's floodplain has no published flood elevation
The county engineer's office states that much of Kerr County's floodplain on the FEMA maps is in Zone A, meaning the area lacks a detailed engineering study and the resulting flood elevations, and points to FEMA's Base Level Engineering studies as an estimating tool rather than a substitute for an engineering study. A floodplain determination or permit is required for any work in the floodplain, no work may start until the permit issues, and the development may not be used or occupied until a certificate of compliance is issued.

Kerr County Engineer, Floodplain Management; Application for Kerr County Floodplain Determination and/or Permit; Kerr County Flood Damage Prevention Order Nos. 37967 and 38000, February and March 2020

What the county's own permits cost
Kerr County publishes $200 for a residential floodplain development permit, $400 for the commercial equivalent, $75 for a septic-only floodplain permit, $75 for a Zone AE determination and $25 for a driveway permit, adopted by the Commissioners' Court on 11 September 2023 by Court Order No. 40214. The septic schedule the Environmental Health Department publishes carries its own revision date of 23 October 2013 and shows $240 plus a $10 state fee for a new system under 500 gallons per day, or $290 plus $10 where a maintenance contract is required, as with an aerobic system.

Kerr County Engineering Department Fee Schedule 2023-24, Court Order No. 40214; Kerr County Environmental Health OSSF Fee Schedule, rev. 23 October 2013

Climate zone 3B, and the B is the point
Kerr County is climate zone 3B on the pre-2021 map and on the 2021 and 2024 map alike, with a Building America designation of Hot-Dry. It is one of the few counties in the Hill Country on the dry side of the line: neighbouring Gillespie, Kendall and Blanco are 3A. Because the assignment does not change between editions, the insulation specification does not depend on which code edition reaches the parcel.

U.S. Department of Energy / Pacific Northwest National Laboratory PNNL-33270 climate zone data files, county record for Kerr County, FIPS 48265

Inside Kerrville the answer changes completely
The City of Kerrville publishes adoption of the 2018 International Residential Code and 2018 International Building Code, together with the 2018 IEBC, 2017 National Electrical Code, 2018 IPC, 2018 IFGC, 2018 IMC, 2018 IECC and 2018 International Fire Code. Inside the city limits that code and the city's own building official apply, and the county's no-code position is irrelevant. Kerrville is a home-rule city — its charter says so in terms — and the Texas Supreme Court held in Town of Lakewood Village v. Bizios that a home-rule municipality may not enforce its building codes in its extraterritorial jurisdiction.

City of Kerrville, Code Information, kerrvilletx.gov; Kerrville City Charter Sec. 1.01, Ord. No. 2024-14, adopted at special election 4 May 2024; Town of Lakewood Village v. Bizios, 493 S.W.3d 527 (Tex. 2016)

A water tank instead of a fire hydrant
Where a subdivision is not served by fire hydrants on a certified centralised water system, Kerr County requires the developer to build and maintain a fire suppression system: a minimum 2,500 gallons of storage with a 2.5-inch connection for 11 to 49 houses, and 5,000 gallons for 50 or more without a centralised system. Subdivisions of 200 lots or more need two means of ingress and egress shown on the plat for emergency vehicles and evacuation. The groundwater district exempts the well that fills such a tank from permitting.

Kerr County Subdivision Regulations Sec. 5.07, under Local Government Code Secs. 232.101, 232.107 and 232.109; Headwaters GCD Rules Rule 4 Sec. 1.A(3)

Every plat has to prove the water is there
Because Kerr County lies in the Hill Country Priority Groundwater Management Area, the Commissioners' Court has adopted water availability requirements as platting conditions. Where the supply is groundwater, the plat must carry a statement from a Texas-licensed engineer or geoscientist certifying adequate groundwater for a minimum of thirty years, and the developer must transmit the data to the Texas Water Development Board and the groundwater district. Every plat must also show compliance with the district's current rules — and even a subdivision exempt from the rest of the water availability requirements is not exempt from that.

Kerr County Subdivision Regulations Sec. 5.08, under Local Government Code Sec. 232.0032 and Texas Water Code Sec. 35.019, with 30 TAC Secs. 230.1-230.11

Ten acres shows up in the road standards too
The county's cheapest road classifications, country lane and unpaved country lane, may serve eight lots or fewer at 60 vehicles a day or less, and carry the condition that all lots must be a minimum of ten acres, with a table footnote adding that no further subdividing is allowed on the plat. It is the third independent place the ten-acre figure appears in Kerr County, after the groundwater rules and the septic order's justification.

Kerr County Subdivision Regulations Sec. 7, road classifications and Table 7.00

Letting the place out changes the water, not the code
The groundwater district allocates each stand-alone housing connection a livable minimum standard of 432 gallons per day, but transient lodging — any facility for occupancy by guests who pay rent, fees or other consideration for temporary lodging — is instead capped by production, at 80,000 gallons per year per acre, or 65,000 in the East Kerr Management Zone. A single domestic-exempt well may serve no more than three residences or rental units on a tract. There is no commercial building track in the county to move into, because there is no building department at all.

Headwaters GCD Rules, Rule 7.E and Rule 4 Sec. 1.A(4), adopted 14 May 2025

The well is registered, not permitted — but it is not unregulated
A house well on its own tract producing no more than 25,000 gallons a day is exempt from the district's permitting requirement, which means registered rather than permitted. Registration is still mandatory: the owner must file a form with a fee, a survey and proof of ownership at least ten days before drilling, and the district's rules state that drilling is prohibited until a signed registration form has been submitted. Spacing rules apply to an exempt well as well as a permitted one, and a state-licensed water well driller is required either way.

Headwaters GCD Rules, Rule 4 Secs. 1, 2 and 3, adopted 14 May 2025; Texas Water Code Sec. 36.117

Two state requirements survive the absence of a county code
The rural exemption in the Texas plumbing licence law expressly excludes plumbing performed in conjunction with new construction, so a licensed plumber is required on land with no permit and no inspector. And a builder working outside the limits of any municipality must certify that the house complies with the state energy code and keep that certification for three years. Texas houses run on the energy chapter of the residential code as it existed on 1 May 2015.

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

The population, and why the lot count is the better number
The Census Bureau puts Kerr County at 54,037 residents in 2025, against a 2020 base of 52,595 — a gain of 2.7 percent in five years, spread across 1,103 square miles, or about 49 people per square mile. Kerrville is 25,578 and Ingram 1,846, which leaves roughly 26,600 people, just under half the county, outside any city limit. Population is not what is moving here: the county's own septic filing describes an influx of subdivisions, so lots are being created faster than people are arriving.

U.S. Census Bureau county and sub-county population estimates, vintage 2025; 2024 Census Gazetteer county file (land area 1,103.333 sq mi); Exhibit B to the Kerr County OSSF Order, 11 May 2026

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

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Where we build around Kerr County

Kerr 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 Kerr County service area, covering Kerr 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 Kerr 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.

Gillespie County

Gillespie County
Bandera County

Bandera County
Comal County

Comal County

Building in Kerr County: common questions

8 questions we get asked most often about building in Kerr 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 Kerr County?
Not a building permit 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 Kerr County has never adopted its residential subchapter — the Commissioners' Court took up exactly that question in August 2009 and let the item close without a vote. So there is no county plan review, no design criterion, no structural inspection and no county building inspector. What the county does require is a permit and inspection for the septic system on any size tract, a floodplain determination or development permit if the tract is in a special flood hazard area, a driveway permit if you are cutting onto a county-maintained road, and plat approval if the land is being divided. None of those looks at the building. Inside Kerrville or Ingram the answer is completely different: that city's adopted code and its own building official apply.
I found five acres near Hunt. Can I build on it?
That depends entirely on when the tract was created, and it is the first thing to establish — before an offer if you can manage it. The Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District requires a minimum ten-acre tract to drill a well on land subdivided, partitioned or platted on or after 10 August 2023. A five-acre tract created between January 2018 and August 2023 can have a well, because it met the rule in force when it was made; a five-acre tract carved out of a ranch in 2024 cannot, and there is no septic rule or building rule that rescues it. Inside a public water system service area the figure is fifteen acres. Ask the district before you ask anyone else, get the recorded deed that shows the date the tract was created, and treat that date as the single most important fact about the parcel.
How is this different from building on clay east of I-35?
The problem inverts. On the prairie soils the difficulty is deep expansive clay that moves under a slab, and the fix is an engineered foundation designed for that movement. On the Edwards Plateau the clay is there but it is thin — the dominant soil series in Kerr County is described as 4 to 20 inches to limestone bedrock — and 90 percent of the county's mapped acreage carries bedrock, weathered rock or a caliche hardpan as a restrictive layer. That changes what excavation costs, where the rock forces the pad, and above all what the septic system can be, because the same shallow soil that supports a footing may not have the depth to treat effluent. Get a site evaluation and a parcel-level soil report early. The USDA's Web Soil Survey will give you the mapped picture free; the site evaluation gives you the answer that counts.
Do I need a Water Pollution Abatement Plan from the state?
Not in Kerr County. The Edwards Aquifer rules that require TCEQ approval before building over the recharge or contributing zone are bounded by county in the Administrative Code itself, and they apply in Medina, Bexar, Comal, Kinney, Uvalde, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties. Kerr County is in neither the recharge-zone list nor the contributing-zone list, and it sits over a different aquifer — the Edwards-Trinity Plateau rather than the Edwards Balcones Fault Zone. The two names are similar and the two regimes are not. What does reach Kerr County is the Hill Country Priority Groundwater Management Area, and the county's response to that designation is a set of water availability requirements attached to plat approval, including a licensed engineer's or geoscientist's certification that thirty years of groundwater is available.
Does my shop bay make the septic system bigger?
No, not on the state rule and not here either. Texas 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. A building with 1,800 square feet of three-bedroom living space and a 2,200 square foot shop is a 300 gallon-per-day house rather than the 375 a total-footprint reading would give. An authorised agent is allowed to be stricter, and some Texas counties redefine living area so that a loft or an attached apartment counts against you. Kerr County's order does not. Its Section 9 lists the county's departures from the state rule exhaustively and the only one is that a permit is required regardless of acreage. What will drive the design here is not the shop — it is soil depth, and whether the site supports a conventional drainfield at all.
Everyone told me ten acres means no septic permit. Is that true here?
It was, and it stopped being true on 7 August 2026. Kerr County adopted a new On-Site Sewage Facilities Order on 13 July 2026, approved by the state in August, and its single departure from the state rule is that a permit is required for all on-site sewage facilities within the county's jurisdiction regardless of acreage. The county says the change is not retroactive and that an existing system on a ten-acre-or-larger tract serving one single-family dwelling stays grandfathered while it continues to meet the original conditions. The reason the county made the change is worth knowing: it wrote that the groundwater district's ten-acre well rule had pushed developers to plat ten-acre-plus lots, and those lots were falling through the old permitting threshold.
Can I put a second dwelling or a guest barndominium on the land later?
Check the plat and the deed before you assume so. Kerr County's subdivision regulations state that no more than one single-family detached dwelling shall be located on each lot, that the restriction must appear on the face of the final plat, and that it must be written into all deeds and contracts for deeds for property sold in the subdivision. On any lot platted under those regulations the restriction is recorded twice and travels with the land. Separately, the groundwater district allows a single domestic-exempt well to serve no more than three residences or rental units on the same tract — so the water rule is the more permissive of the two, and it is the platting rule that usually bites. Read the title commitment. In Texas, recorded restrictions do the work zoning does elsewhere, and they are enforceable.
The tract touches the river. What should I be asking?
Ask the county engineer's office first, and ask early. Much of Kerr County's mapped floodplain is Zone A, which means FEMA has not published a base flood elevation for it — there is no detailed engineering study behind the line on the map. The county points to FEMA's Base Level Engineering studies as an estimating tool and is explicit that it is not a substitute for an engineering study. A floodplain determination or permit is required for any work in the floodplain, there is a fee for either, no work may start until the permit issues, and the development may not be used or occupied until a certificate of compliance is issued. An elevation certificate may be required within ten business days of the foundation being finished. Bring the appraisal district property ID when you call.

Building in Kerr County?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm what Kerr 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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