Flat Texas Gulf coastal prairie with brackish sloughs, cordgrass, and wind-shaped live oaks leaning inland.
San Patricio County No county building code TDI windstorm area

Barndominium Builders in San Patricio County, TX

San Patricio County is where the Corpus Christi market's land is. Nueces County across the bay lost residents between 2020 and 2025 and Corpus Christi itself shrank; San Patricio grew 4.8 percent, and the part of it outside every city limit grew 10.2 percent. Ninety-one percent of its 693 square miles lies outside any city, at about 22 people to the square mile. What comes with that land is a regulatory picture few expect. There is no county residential building code. There is a county permit for anything you build, issued by the Floodplain Management office in Sinton, with plans reviewed before you start, a final inspection at the end, and an occupancy letter before the electricity is connected. And because the whole county sits inside the state's designated catastrophe area, a new building must be certified for windstorm before the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association can insure it.

San Patricio County at a glance

County
San Patricio County
Population
72,053
Where we build
Sinton, Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Aransas County

ZIPs 78387, 78374, 78336, 78362, 78368, 78390, 78370, 78359 and more

Site visits
Site visits across San Patricio County, from Sinton to the far side of the county
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Building conditions in San Patricio 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 San Patricio County , Texas . BUILD CONDITIONS SAN PATRICIO COUN…San Patricio 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 · NONE1 acre on a private wellLocal Government Code section 233.153(d)(2) gives a commissionerscourt no zoning power, and San Patricio has none. The binding…COUNTY DEVELOPMENT PERMIT, NEW SINGLE-FAMILY…$175 base + $0.05/sq ftOutside a mapped flood zone. Inside zones A, AE, V or VE it is $275base plus the same $0.05 per square foot of enclosed area. An…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITSan Patricio County Floodplain Devel…Fairgrounds Dome, 219 W. 5th Street, Sinton, TX 78387, (361)587-3567. Permits by appointment only. Septic is a separate office:…
Build conditions for San Patricio 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.
The county permits construction, and it is not a building code
A development permit is required before building a new home, placing a manufactured home, putting up a shed or any other structure, moving large amounts of dirt or installing a septic system, anywhere in the county rather than only in a flood zone

San Patricio County Residential Development Permitting pamphlet, Office of Floodplain/Permits; San Patricio County Flood Damage Prevention Order, adopted and effective 1 June 2021

Two feet up, even outside the floodplain
In shaded and unshaded X zones, outside the special flood hazard area entirely, all new residential construction must have the lowest floor elevated two feet above the highest adjacent grade; the county's stated reason is sheet flow

San Patricio County Flood Damage Prevention Order, art. 5 sec. D(1)

Wholly inside the designated catastrophe area
San Patricio is one of the 14 first-tier coastal counties, all of it in the windstorm program, so a new building needs a certificate of compliance before the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association can insure it

TDI Designated Catastrophe Areas map and Adopted Building Codes page; TWIA Coverage & Eligibility; Texas Insurance Code secs. 2210.003 and 2210.258(b)

No county residential building code
No order adopting Subchapter F of Local Government Code chapter 233 could be located: the county publishes no codified code, and its verbatim Commissioners Court minutes from 2019 onward contain no adoption of any residential code

San Patricio County Commissioners Court minutes, full-text search 2019-2026; Texas Local Government Code sec. 233.152

The county is the septic authority for the entire county
TCEQ lists the San Patricio County Authorized Agent as serving the entire County, and Ingleside, Portland, Odem and Aransas Pass are each listed as administered by the county under interlocal agreement

TCEQ On-Site Sewage Facility Authorized Agent search, San Patricio County; Commissioners Court minutes 28 Dec 2020 and 5 Apr 2021

The growth is on this side of the bay
San Patricio grew from 68,757 to 72,053 between 2020 and 2025 while Nueces County fell slightly and Corpus Christi lost residents; the part of San Patricio outside every city limit grew 10.2 percent, from 12,742 to 14,037

U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 county and subcounty population estimates, co-est2025-alldata.csv and sub-est2025.csv

Also worth knowing before you build in San Patricio County

There is a county fire code, and it stops short of houses
The Commissioners Court adopted the 2018 International Fire Code for the unincorporated county, but it applies only to commercial establishments, public buildings and multifamily dwellings of four or more units

San Patricio County Fire Code, revised 7 Nov 2022, secs. 1.1, 1.2 and 2.9; Texas Local Government Code sec. 233.062(a)

How a county of 72,000 gets fire-code power
Section 233.061(a) allows it in a county of over 250,000 or a county adjacent to one; San Patricio qualifies because Nueces County next door had 352,992 residents in 2025

Texas Local Government Code sec. 233.061(a); U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 county population estimates

The dominant soil is clay from the surface down
Victoria clay covers about 161,600 acres, roughly a third of the county, and reads 51 percent clay in the top six inches, rising to 61 percent at three feet; Vertisols in total account for around 202,000 acres

USDA-NRCS Soil Data Access, SSURGO survey area TX620 restricted to San Patricio County, component and chorizon tables

Wells are registered even when they are exempt
The San Patricio County Groundwater Conservation District requires registration of every exempt well, at a one-time $100 fee for a new one, and no well may be drilled within 100 feet of a property line

San Patricio County Groundwater Conservation District Rules, Dec 2016 as amended 2026, Rule 3 and Rule 11; district created by H.B. 3568, 79th Legislature, 2005

The electricity is the enforcement
Temporary power is released only once the septic design is approved and a development permit has been pulled, and permanent power only after the county's final inspection on both the septic and the construction

San Patricio County Floodplain Development & Permits, temporary and permanent power notice

Portland sends its wind number to the state
The largest city in the county adopts the 2021 International Residential Code and prints Table R301.2(1), but the wind speed cell reads only an asterisk footnoted 'As specified by the Texas Department of Insurance'; the windborne debris zone cell reads Yes

City of Portland Code of Ordinances secs. 4-11 and 4-19 (Ord. No. 2307, adopted 6 May 2025, effective 1 July 2025), codified through Ord. No. 2318

Inside Portland, sprinklers
Portland amends section 313.2 of the residential code so that an automatic residential fire sprinkler system is required in all one- and two-family dwellings, with an exception only for additions to existing houses

City of Portland Code of Ordinances sec. 4-19, Residential Code Amendments, 313.2

Ninety-one percent of the county is outside any city
The county has 693.32 square miles of land, of which about 60 square miles sits inside the twelve incorporated places, leaving roughly 633 square miles at about 22 residents to the square mile

U.S. Census Bureau 2025 Gazetteer county and place files; Vintage 2025 subcounty population estimates

The county is the sole addressing authority
The 9-1-1 Coordinator assigns every physical address outside the cities, and for subdivisions and major developments no official address is issued until the county receives a copy of the recorded plat

San Patricio County E911 Addressing, Physical Address and Road Name guidance

Clean air, for what it is worth to a builder
Despite the refinery and petrochemical corridor at Ingleside, Portland and Gregory, San Patricio and Nueces are classified attainment or unclassifiable for every criteria pollutant, including the 2015 eight-hour ozone standard

TCEQ, Corpus Christi: Current Attainment Status

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

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Where we build around San Patricio County

San Patricio 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 San Patricio County service area, covering San Patricio 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 San Patricio County allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

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

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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.

Corpus Christi

Nueces County
Nueces County

Nueces County
Aransas County

Aransas County

Building in San Patricio County: common questions

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

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Does San Patricio County have a building code?
Not for houses. A Texas commissioners court has no general building-code authority in its unincorporated area unless it has adopted an order under Subchapter F of Local Government Code chapter 233, and none could be located here. San Patricio publishes no codified code of ordinances, and a full-text search of its verbatim Commissioners Court minutes from 2019 to 2026 turns up no adoption of any residential code. The county's own subdivision guidance names the three instruments a project has to follow, and they are the Flood Damage Prevention Order, the Subdivision Rules and the On-Site Sewage Facility Order. A residential building code is not among them. The county does have a fire code, adopted under a different subchapter, but it reaches only commercial buildings, public buildings and multifamily of four or more units. Because the 2009 window in which counties adopted these orders sits before the county's published archive begins, confirm the point with the county on (361) 364-9300 before you rely on it.
So do I need any permit at all to build out there?
Yes, and this is the part that surprises people. The county requires a Floodplain Development Permit before construction, and its own pamphlet says the permit is required before making any changes to property in San Patricio County, listing building a new home, placing a manufactured home, a shed or any other structure, moving large amounts of dirt, or installing a septic system. It applies whether or not the parcel is in a flood zone. House plans and a site plan are required documents; plans go to the Floodplain Manager at least two weeks before the application is reviewed, and work may not begin until the reviews are complete. The permit runs one year. At the end there is a final inspection, a final elevation certificate and a Certificate of Occupancy letter from the county. And the power is tied to it: temporary power is only released once the septic design is approved and the permit is pulled, and permanent power only after the county's final inspection on both. What none of that is, is a code review. Nobody checks a wall bracing schedule or an energy calculation. The permit is a flood and drainage instrument issued under the county's Flood Damage Prevention Order, which cites Texas Water Code section 16.315.
How high does the slab have to sit?
Two feet, and the interesting part is where that applies. Inside a special flood hazard area the order requires the lowest floor two feet above the base flood elevation, certified to the Floodplain Administrator by a registered engineer, architect or land surveyor. But article 5 section D goes further: in shaded and unshaded X zones, which sit outside the special flood hazard area altogether, all new residential construction must still have the lowest floor elevated two feet above the highest adjacent grade. The county's stated reason is sheet flow given the topography. In practice the county asks for an elevation certificate proving 24 inches above highest adjacent grade or base flood elevation, and that certificate is what unlocks the occupancy certificate. On a barndominium this shapes the whole design, because the shop bay usually wants a drive-in slab at grade and the living end has to come up. Settle it with the Floodplain Manager on (361) 587-3567 before the pad is engineered, not after.
What does being in the windstorm catastrophe area mean for my build?
San Patricio County is one of the fourteen first-tier coastal counties, and all of it is in the program. TDI's current designated catastrophe areas map shades the county whole, and its adopted-codes page states that except for Harris County the entire county of each county on the map is part of the windstorm program. What follows is an insurance requirement rather than a permit. Texas Insurance Code section 2210.258(b) says the association may not insure a structure built in the catastrophe area until a certificate of compliance has been issued for it. TWIA puts the same point in its own words: without a certificate of compliance it lacks evidence that the structure conforms to applicable building codes, and it may be considered uninsurable and ineligible for coverage with TWIA. From 1 April 2026 the certification standard is the 2024 International Residential Code or the 2024 International Building Code, set by TDI rule at 28 TAC section 5.4013. Note carefully what that rule does and does not do. It governs eligibility for catastrophe insurance. It does not replace whatever code applies where you are building. On unincorporated land here, where no county residential code applies, it is the only code that reaches the house at all.
Do I need an engineer?
For the windstorm work, yes, and it is in statute. Occupations Code section 1001.056(a) exempts a private dwelling from the Engineering Practice Act, which is why an ordinary Texas house needs no engineer. Subsection (c)(1) switches that exemption off for a person providing engineering design or inspection services necessary to comply with windstorm certification standards for a residential dwelling under Subchapter F of chapter 2210 of the Insurance Code. The legislature carved the coast out by name in 2009. The certificate chain runs WPI-1 application, then a WPI-2 inspection verification, then the WPI-8 certificate issued by TDI, and the notice has to be filed before construction begins under section 2210.2515(b). If the building is finished before anyone inspects it, the completed-construction route is engineer-only and TDI says plainly that it may cost more. A clear-span steel frame is a further reason to plan for a sealed design, because prescriptive code tables are written for conventional light framing.
What is the design wind speed here?
There is no longer a published figure to quote, and anyone who gives you one from a TDI zone map is reading a page TDI itself labels legacy. The 110, 120 and 130 mph zone speeds lived in the rule for construction begun between 1 January 2008 and 31 August 2020 and were dropped when that code was superseded. TDI's current instruction is that the required wind speed must be determined for each structure based on the location of the structure, using a tool such as the ASCE 7 Hazard Tool, and that most of the designated catastrophe areas are now inside the windborne debris region, so opening protection is a design question rather than an upgrade. The City of Portland does the same thing in its own code: it prints Table R301.2(1) and leaves the wind speed cell as an asterisk footnoted 'As specified by the Texas Department of Insurance', while filling in the windborne debris zone cell as Yes. Get the number for your parcel, in writing, before any steel is ordered.
Who handles the septic permit, and how big will the drainfield be?
San Patricio County Environmental Health, at 313 N. Rachal Avenue in Sinton, (361) 587-3500. TCEQ's authorized agent register lists the San Patricio County Authorized Agent as serving the entire County, and it lists Ingleside, Portland and Odem as administered by San Patricio County and Aransas Pass as administered by Aransas and San Patricio counties, all under interlocal agreements the Commissioners Court has renewed since 2020. So for most of this county the answer is the same office whether your land is inside a small town or outside one. On sizing: Texas has no percolation test at all. Soil is classified by texture, and the county's dominant soil is a problem in that scheme. Victoria clay covers about a third of the county and reads 51 percent clay in the plough layer, rising to 61 percent at three feet, so it falls in the slowest loading class TCEQ recognises. At state level the capacity calculation keys off living area rather than total structure area, which normally means a shop bay does not count against you, but an authorized agent may adopt stricter standards. San Patricio has its own On-Site Sewage Facilities Order, and its text is not published online, so ask Environmental Health for a copy and ask specifically how they treat a loft or an attached shop before you draw anything.
Is there a water well question?
Yes, and it has a fee attached. The San Patricio County Groundwater Conservation District was created by House Bill 3568 in 2005 and covers the county. Its rules define an exempt well as one producing under 25,000 gallons a day, which is every domestic well, and then say expressly that exempt wells must be registered even though they are otherwise free of permits, meters and usage reporting. Rule 3 requires registration of all exempt wells and exploratory holes. A new exempt well carries a one-time $100 registration fee plus delivery of the well log; an existing one is $10. Rule 11 also sets siting: a well may not be drilled within 100 feet of any property line. On a narrow rural tract that stacks with the septic setbacks and can decide where the house goes. The district manager is in Sinton on (361) 449-7017.
Ingleside and Portland are industrial. Is there an overlay I should know about?
This is worth asking and the honest answer is that no county-level industrial, port or air-quality overlay reaches a house on unincorporated land here. TCEQ classifies San Patricio and Nueces as attainment or unclassifiable for every criteria pollutant, including ozone, lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulates and sulphur dioxide, so there is no nonattainment construction restriction. The one industry-specific provision in any county instrument runs the other way: the fire code excludes an industrial facility whose fire brigade conforms to OSHA requirements, which removes regulation from the plant rather than adding any near its neighbours. What does bite is more ordinary and more easily missed. Article 5 section I of the flood order requires any pipeline development to be approved by the Floodplain Department, the Drainage District and the County Engineer, and the Coastal Bend is threaded with pipeline easements that constrain where a building can sit. Read the title commitment and the recorded easements before you buy, and if the parcel is inside a city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, ask that city what it can require.
Do I have to plat my land?
Often not, and the exemptions are the ones state law sets. The county's Subdivision Rules, amended and restated 16 January 2007, reproduce Local Government Code section 232.0015 in full: no plat may be required where all the resulting lots are more than ten acres and no street or public way is being laid out, nor where the land is to be used primarily for agricultural, farm, ranch, wildlife management or timber production use, with the platting requirement snapping back if that use ceases. There are further exemptions for transfers to close relatives and to veterans through the Veterans Land Board. What the exemption does not do is get you out of the development permit; the county asks for a deed with a legal description, not necessarily a recorded plat. It may affect your address, though. The county 9-1-1 Coordinator is the sole addressing authority outside the cities, and for subdivisions and major developments the county states it will not issue official addresses until it receives a copy of the recorded plat. Where a plat is required, the County Engineer reviews it, the Drainage District reviews any hydrology study, and the Commissioners Court approves it.
What changes if my land is inside a city?
Everything about the code does. Portland, Ingleside, Aransas Pass, Sinton, Mathis, Taft, Odem, Gregory, Ingleside on the Bay, Lake City, Lakeside and the small city of San Patricio all have their own limits, and inside them the city's adopted code, permit and inspector apply instead of the county's development permit. Portland is the clearest example and the largest city here: it adopts the 2021 International Residential Code along with the 2021 building, fire, mechanical, plumbing and fuel gas codes, the 2020 National Electrical Code and the 2015 energy code, most recently by Ordinance No. 2307 effective 1 July 2025. It also amends section 313.2 to require an automatic residential fire sprinkler system in all one- and two-family dwellings, which is a substantial cost item the county regime does not impose. Note what that pairing shows: Portland's 2021 code governs the permit while TDI's 2024 rule governs whether TWIA will insure the finished building. Two codes, one house, different jobs. Septic is the exception to the pattern, because the county administers it inside most of these cities anyway, and the county floodplain manager administers development permitting inside Gregory under a 2019 interlocal agreement.

Building in San Patricio County?

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