Open rolling Blackland Prairie cropland grading into a post oak belt of the Eastern Cross Timbers, with a pecan-lined creek.
McLennan County 2024 IRC as adopted here

Barndominium Builders in Waco, TX

Waco is our home market, and McLennan County is the county we work in day to day. Inside the city limits Waco runs its own adopted code, and it is more current than most of Texas: the 2024 International Residential Code, with one deliberate exception where the energy chapter stays on the 2018 edition. The land question here is the honest one. Waco covers 91 square miles at roughly 1,600 people to the square mile, so there is real open ground inside the limits — but the zoning ordinance tops out at a 40,000 square foot lot in the R-E estate district, just under an acre. If you want more than that you are looking at Waco's five-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction or at unincorporated McLennan County, and what applies to you changes at both of those lines. Knowing which side of them your tract sits on is the first thing to settle.

Waco at a glance

County
McLennan County
Population
147,788
Where we build
Waco, McLennan County, Temple, Killeen, Bell County

ZIPs 76701, 76704, 76705, 76706, 76707, 76708, 76710, 76711 and more

Site visits
First visit set on your parcel, anywhere in McLennan County
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Building conditions in Waco

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 Waco , McLennan County, Texas . BUILD CONDITIONS WACO, TXMcLennan County2024 IRCADOPTED RESIDENTIAL CODE2024 IRCThis jurisdiction publishes no design wind speed. It is settled in writing with the authority overyour parcel before the frame is ordered.ZONING · R-E, THE CITY'S ESTATE DISTRICT, MAP…40,000 sq ft per unit (about 0.92 ac…R-E is the largest-lot residential district Waco has. The next onedown, R-1A, drops to 12,000 sq ft, and R-1B and R-1C to 6,000 and…WATER, WASTEWATER AND ROADWAY IMPACT FEES$1,000 water plus $2,000 wastewater…Established by Ordinance 2020-793 and effective 1 June 2021,collected at the time the building permit is issued. Those two…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITCity of Waco Inspection Services, a…Dr. Mae Jackson Development Center, 401 Franklin Ave., Waco, TX76701 · (254) 750-5612 · permits@wacotx.gov · Monday to Friday, 8…
Build conditions for Waco, 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 adopted code, and the split inside it
Waco adopted the 2024 International Residential Code, including appendices BB, BD, BO and NE, by Ord. No. 2025-813 on 4 November 2025, and the Inspection Services division publishes the same list as the codes in force as of 1 January 2026. But the energy chapter is carved out: the city deletes IRC Chapter 11 and puts the 2018 edition back in its place, alongside a separately adopted 2018 International Energy Conservation Code. So a Waco house takes its structural, foundation and termite provisions from the 2024 code and its insulation and envelope requirements from the 2018 one. Describing Waco as simply on the 2024 code misses the half that decides the insulation.

City of Waco Code of Ordinances Ch. 6, Art. II, Secs. 6-26 and 6-29(5), and the City of Waco Inspection Services Adopted Codes page

Any shop foundation 500 sq ft or larger must be engineered
Waco's Inspection Services division publishes this in terms: new foundations for shops, storage buildings and residential additions need to be engineered at 500 square feet or larger. The residential submission checklist says the same thing from the other direction, requiring engineer-sealed drawings for accessory structures of 500 square feet or more. A barndominium shop bay is essentially never under that, so on this build type the engineer is not a maybe that turns on a soil report — the city requires the sealed drawings on size alone.

City of Waco Inspection Services, Residential Construction Permits page (Engineered Foundation Requirements) and Submission Checklists, Building Residential (Accessory Structure)

The permit fee counts the shop; the septic sizing does not
Waco prices the residential building permit at $0.35 per square foot of living area and non-living area and accessory structures alike, so the shop bay is inside the fee. The state's on-site sewage rules measure the same building differently, keying system capacity off bedrooms or living area rather than the total footprint. Two published rules, two different measurements of one structure, and it is worth knowing which is which before the plan is drawn.

City of Waco Inspection Services Permit Fee Schedules, Building tab, Residential Structures; and 30 TAC Ch. 285 with TCEQ form TCEQ-0235, which asks for bedrooms and living area

Inside the city, the zoning tops out just under an acre
R-E is Waco's estate district, the one the comprehensive plan maps to Rural Residential, and it is the largest-lot residential district the city has. It requires 40,000 square feet per unit, about 0.92 acre, with 150 feet of lot width and a maximum of 1.089 dwelling units per acre. Below it, R-1A is 12,000 square feet and R-1B and R-1C are 6,000 and 7,000. So the city genuinely does have room to build on, but if the plan needs several acres the answer lies past the city limit rather than inside it.

City of Waco Code of Ordinances Ch. 28 Zoning, Art. IX, Chart 3 (Lot size requirements by zoning district and use), and the Waco Development Guide zoning classification tables

Five miles of extraterritorial jurisdiction, and platting is the gate
Waco is over 100,000 people, so its extraterritorial jurisdiction reaches five miles beyond the city limits under Local Government Code Sec. 42.021. Out there the city regulates platting but not building construction, and Texas courts have held a city cannot enforce its building code in its ETJ. What the city does say is that a subdivision plat is required for the purpose of obtaining a building permit or an on-site sewage facility permit, and that an unplatted tract may lawfully be sold to a buyer who then finds they have to plat before they can build. Standard processing for an ETJ plat is 45 to 60 days, because it goes through public hearings at the Plan Commission and City Council.

Local Government Code Sec. 42.021; City of Waco Planning Services, Subdivision Regulations page; Waco Development Guide, Timeline for Platting in Waco's ETJ; Town of Lakewood Village v. Bizios, 493 S.W.3d 527 (Tex. 2016)

The septic permit comes from the same building as the building permit
The Waco-McLennan County Public Health District runs the on-site sewage facilities programme as the designated representative for McLennan County, and under an agreement between the city and the county it administers that programme for the county, for the cities within it and for Waco itself. Its office is on the first floor of the Dr. Mae Jackson Development Center at 401 Franklin Avenue, the same building as Inspection Services and Planning Services. Inside the Waco city limits most parcels are on city sewer and the question does not arise; the moment you are in the ETJ or the unincorporated county it does, and it is the item that most often decides where the house can physically sit.

Waco-McLennan County Public Health District, Environmental Health, On-Site Sewage Facilities Program (OSSF) page

Also worth knowing before you build in Waco

Three things the 2024 code requires that Waco does not
Sec. 6-29 carries ten local amendments to the residential code, and three of them are outright deletions. IRC Section R309.2, automatic sprinkler systems in one- and two-family dwellings, is deleted. The whole of IRC Part VIII, electrical Chapters 34 to 43, is deleted, with the National Electrical Code as adopted by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation standing in its place. Section P2903.11, hose bibbs, is deleted. A fourth amendment turns Appendix NE's electric-vehicle power transfer infrastructure from a requirement into something that may be provided. So a general claim that the residential code requires sprinklers, or requires EV-ready parking, is simply not true in Waco.

City of Waco Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-29, amendments (1), (4), (9) and (10)

Waco's code edition moves by itself
Sec. 6-26(c) provides that newer versions of most of the adopted codes are automatically adopted twelve months after the International Code Council publishes them, unless the council amends them or declines to adopt them, and that the city's existing exceptions, amendments and deletions survive that change. The energy code is expressly excluded and stays where the council put it. This is unusual and it is worth asking about, because it means the edition in force on the day you pull a permit is a question with a moving answer rather than a fixed one.

City of Waco Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-26(c), quoted in the codified building chapter

The city publishes no design wind speed
Waco leaves IRC Chapter 3 untouched apart from the sprinkler deletion, so the ordinance fills in no Table R301.2 climatic and geographic design criteria at all: no ground snow load, no design wind speed, no frost depth, no seismic design category, no termite rating and no winter design temperature. That means the design values are the engineer of record's, working from the code and from the site, and it is a good reason to be sceptical of anyone who quotes you a Waco wind speed as though the city had set one.

City of Waco Code of Ordinances Ch. 6, Art. II, Secs. 6-26 to 6-29, which contain no amendment to Table R301.2 or to the R301.2 design criteria

Two size thresholds for a detached workshop
Waco treats a detached shop as an accessory structure and publishes two thresholds. Under 200 square feet, no permit is required. Over 200 square feet, a Residential Accessory Structure permit is required, along with a site plan showing setbacks and dimensions to the property lines and to existing structures, a floor plan, and a foundation plan showing how columns or posts are embedded or anchored. At 500 square feet and above, those foundation drawings must be engineer-sealed. Prefabricated buildings additionally require tie-downs by an approved method.

City of Waco Inspection Services, Do I Need a Permit? page, item 13 (Accessory Structure, including Detached Carport), and Submission Checklists, Building Residential

What the foundation inspection actually looks for
The city publishes its minimum residential foundation requirements rather than leaving them to the code alone. The details are based on footings and beams placed below undisturbed soil with a bearing capacity of 1500 psf. Concrete must reach at least 2500 psi at 28 days, reinforcing steel is minimum grade 40, exterior footings go at least 12 inches below undisturbed soil, exterior beams take four #5 bars and interior beams two, interior beams are spaced no more than 16 feet on centre, the slab is a minimum of 4 inches on a 6-inch sand base with a 6-mil polyethylene vapour barrier, and slab steel is #3 bars at a maximum of 16 inches each way. On an engineered slab the electrical UFER ground has to be installed and inspected before the pour, and the city's building official has put in writing that pouring without it results in a ticket.

City of Waco Inspection Services, Residential Construction Permits page, Minimum Foundation Requirements for Residential Construction and Engineered Foundation Requirements for Residential Construction

Letting the guest suite is a zoning question here, not just a licence
Waco regulates short-term rentals by zoning district as well as by licence. In R-E, R-1A, R-1B and R-1C, an owner-occupied Short Term Rental Type I — the city's own example is an owner living in the main house and renting the backyard guest house or garage apartment — is allowed only by Special Permit, not by right. A Type II, where the owner does not stay on the property, has not been allowed even by special permit in those four districts since 15 June 2021. There is also a 500-foot separation rule between licensed homestay establishments in R-E through R-2. If a guest suite or shop apartment is part of the plan, settle this before the plan is drawn rather than after.

City of Waco Planning Services, Schedule of STR uses by zoning district (updated 31 August 2022) and the Short Term Rentals overview and categories pages

Registering the trades costs nothing, but the licences are checked
Texas has no state licence for a residential contractor, and Waco does not invent one. What it does require is that plumbing, electrical and mechanical contractors register with Inspection Services before permits can be issued, and the city states plainly that there is no registration fee for contractors. What is checked is the state licence: master plumber, master electrician plus electrical contractor licence, mechanical licence, irrigation licence, each with the holder's identification and a certificate of insurance naming the City of Waco. Subcontractors in those trades must permit their own work.

City of Waco Inspection Services, Residential Construction Permits and Registering & Applying for a Permit pages

The ground under Waco is the reason the engineer keeps appearing
The city's own foundation requirements say that foundations to be placed on expansive soils, or soils with a plasticity index of 15 or greater, shall be investigated and designed by a registered engineer. That is the same threshold the residential code uses when it hands expansive-soil foundations to the building code's engineered-design provisions. Waco sits in the Blackland Prairie, which the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service describes as characterised by its shrink-swell nature and names Waco within by name. Two independent routes therefore arrive at the same place here, and the 500 square foot accessory-structure rule arrives there a third way without needing the soil to be expansive at all.

City of Waco Inspection Services Residential Construction Permits page; IRC R403.1.8 with IBC Sec. 1808.6; Texas Occupations Code Sec. 1001.056(c)(2); USDA-NRCS Major Land Resource Area 86A

How the inspection clock actually runs
Inspections are requested online through the city's self-service portal by 4 p.m. the day before they are needed; a request after 4 p.m. is pushed back a further day, and any document needing approval first requires a minimum of 24 hours. Inspectors are routed geographically each morning rather than given appointment times. The sequence is foundation, then plumbing, electrical and mechanical roughs before any concealment, then framing, then energy before sheetrock and again at final, then final before occupancy. Engineered foundations must be inspected by the engineer of record before the pour, with a sealed letter submitted before the building final. The first reinspection is free; a fee applies from the third site visit onward, at $55, then $100, then $150.

City of Waco Inspection Services, Inspection Procedures and Residential Construction Permits pages, and the Permit Fee Schedules reinspection table

Waco is not a built-out suburb, and the numbers say so
The Census Bureau puts Waco at 147,788 people in 2025, up from 140,541 in 2020, a rise of about 5.2 percent. The city covers 91.0 square miles of land, which works out at roughly 1,620 people per square mile — a fraction of the density of the built-out Metroplex suburbs. McLennan County as a whole reached 272,020, and about 44,700 of those people live outside every city limit in the county. So there is open ground both inside Waco and immediately around it, which is not something that can be said of most Texas cities this size.

U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 sub-county and county population estimates (sub-est2025, co-est2025-alldata) and the 2025 TIGER place gazetteer land area file

Building without the permit doubles the fee
Waco's fee schedule states that where work requiring a permit is started before the permit is obtained, the fees are doubled, and that paying the doubled fee does not relieve anyone of complying with the chapter or of other penalties. Alongside the $0.35 per square foot residential rate there is a $60 non-refundable residential plan submittal fee and a $15 building technology fee. An accessory dwelling unit is priced at $0.50 per square foot, and the city waives the building permit fee entirely where the applicant uses a City of Waco pre-approved plan for it, though the trade permit fees still apply.

City of Waco Inspection Services Permit Fee Schedules, Building tab, Residential Structures and Penalty for Working Without a Permit

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 Waco

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 McLennan 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.

See what we build

What a build looks like

Three stages every Waco 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 McLennan 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 McLennan County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Waco

McLennan 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 Waco service area, covering McLennan 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 Waco 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.

McLennan County

McLennan County
Temple

Bell County
Killeen

Bell County
Bell County

Bell County

Building in Waco: common questions

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

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Which code applies to a barndominium in Waco, and is it really the 2024 edition?
Yes, and Waco is unusually current for Texas. The city adopted the 2024 International Residential Code, including appendices BB, BD, BO and NE, by Ord. No. 2025-813 on 4 November 2025, and Inspection Services publishes that same list as the codes in force as of 1 January 2026. There is one deliberate exception you need to know about: the city deletes IRC Chapter 11, the energy efficiency chapter, and substitutes the 2018 edition of it, which lines up with the separately adopted 2018 energy conservation code. So the framing, foundation and termite provisions come from the 2024 code and the insulation and envelope requirements come from the 2018 one. There is also a rolling clause at Sec. 6-26(c) under which newer editions of most of these codes adopt themselves twelve months after publication, with the energy code excluded, so the edition in force is worth re-confirming rather than assuming.
Will the shop foundation need an engineer?
In Waco, almost certainly yes, and the reason is refreshingly simple. Inspection Services publishes that new foundations for shops, storage buildings and residential additions need to be engineered at 500 square feet or larger, and the residential submission checklist independently requires engineer-sealed drawings for accessory structures of 500 square feet or more. A barndominium shop bay is essentially never under that. Separately, the city's own foundation requirements send any foundation on expansive soil, or soil with a plasticity index of 15 or greater, to a registered engineer — and Waco sits in the Blackland Prairie, which the Natural Resources Conservation Service characterises by its shrink-swell nature and names Waco within by name. So there are two triggers here and the size one does not even require the soil to be a problem. What we do is have the design sealed by a Texas-licensed engineer for the actual parcel.
How much land can I actually get inside the Waco city limits?
Less than people expect, and the zoning ordinance is where the ceiling sits. R-E is the city's estate district, the one the comprehensive plan maps to Rural Residential, and it is the largest-lot residential district Waco has: 40,000 square feet per unit, about 0.92 acre, with 150 feet of lot width and a maximum of 1.089 dwelling units per acre. Everything below it is smaller — R-1A at 12,000 square feet, R-1C at 7,000, R-1B at 6,000. That said, Waco is not a built-out suburb. It covers 91 square miles of land at roughly 1,620 people per square mile, so there is genuine open ground inside the limits. The honest answer is that a barndominium on just under an acre works in R-E, and anything needing several acres means looking at the extraterritorial jurisdiction or at unincorporated McLennan County instead.
What changes if the land is just outside the city limits?
Two things, in opposite directions. Waco is over 100,000 people so its extraterritorial jurisdiction reaches five miles past the limits under Local Government Code Sec. 42.021, and out there the city cannot enforce its building code — the Texas Supreme Court settled that in Town of Lakewood Village v. Bizios. What the city can and does do is regulate platting, and this is the part that catches people: the city states that a subdivision plat is required for the purpose of obtaining a building permit or an on-site sewage facility permit, and warns that an unplatted tract can lawfully be sold to a buyer who then discovers they must plat first. Standard processing runs 45 to 60 days because it goes through public hearings at the Plan Commission and City Council. The city's water and wastewater impact fees also reach into the ETJ, though its roadway impact fees stop at the city limit. Further out again, unincorporated McLennan County is a different question, and our McLennan County page is the place to take it.
Do I need a permit for the shop if I build it separately?
It depends on the size, and Waco publishes two thresholds. A detached accessory structure under 200 square feet needs no permit. Over 200 square feet, and for any detached carport, you need a Residential Accessory Structure permit, and the submittal has to include a site plan showing setbacks and dimensions to the property lines and to existing structures, a floor plan with the construction type, and a foundation plan showing how columns or posts are embedded or anchored. At 500 square feet and above the foundation drawings must be engineer-sealed. If the building is prefabricated, tie-downs by an approved method are required, and the manufacturer's brochure or specification sheet goes in with the plan set. For a genuine barndominium, where the shop and the dwelling are one structure, the whole thing is permitted as the residence and the fee counts every square foot of it.
What does the city charge, and are there impact fees?
Waco prices the residential building permit at $0.35 per square foot, and its fee schedule is explicit that this covers living area and non-living area and accessory structures — so the shop bay is inside the number. On top of that there is a $60 non-refundable residential plan submittal fee and a $15 building technology fee. An accessory dwelling unit is $0.50 per square foot, waived entirely if you use a City of Waco pre-approved plan, though trade permits still apply. Impact fees do exist here: Ordinance 2020-793 established water, wastewater and roadway impact fees effective 1 June 2021, collected when the building permit issues. On the standard 5/8-inch or 3/4-inch residential meter the water fee is $1,000 and the wastewater fee $2,000 after the city's general credit. Roadway fees are calculated on projected traffic generation, land use type and which of eleven service areas you are in, apply only inside the city limits, and are nil in service areas 5 and 8 — which is why no single roadway figure can honestly be quoted. And note that starting work before the permit issues doubles the fees.
What design wind speed should the frame be engineered to?
Waco does not publish one, and that is the accurate answer rather than an evasive one. The city amends its adopted residential code in ten places, but it leaves Chapter 3 alone apart from deleting the sprinkler section, so it fills in no Table R301.2 climatic and geographic design criteria at all — no ground snow load, no design wind speed, no frost depth, no seismic design category, no termite rating, no winter design temperature. So the values come from the engineer of record working from the code and from the site, and you should be wary of anyone who quotes you a Waco wind speed as though the city had set it. One related figure the city does publish is a foundation design basis of 1500 psf soil bearing capacity, with a note pointing to the code for anything higher. Seismic, incidentally, is not a design factor for a house anywhere in Texas.
Can I let out the guest suite or shop apartment once it is finished?
Not without checking the zoning first, and in Waco this is a real constraint rather than a formality. Short-term letting is regulated by district as well as by licence. In R-E, R-1A, R-1B and R-1C, an owner-occupied Short Term Rental Type I — the city's own worked example is an owner living in the main house and renting the backyard guest house or garage apartment — is allowed only by Special Permit, which goes to the Plan Commission and City Council. A Type II, where the owner does not stay on the property, has not been permitted in those four districts at all, even by special permit, since 15 June 2021. There is also a 500-foot separation rule between licensed homestay establishments in R-E through R-2. A licence from Development Services is required in every case, and hotel occupancy taxes apply. If income from a suite is part of the reason for building it, settle this with Planning Services on (254) 750-5650 before the plan is drawn.
What are the inspections and how do they get scheduled?
The sequence is foundation, then plumbing, electrical and mechanical roughs before anything is covered or concealed and before fixtures or appliances go in, then framing once the roughs have passed, then energy before sheetrock and again at final, then the final inspection before occupancy. Where the foundation is engineered, the engineer of record inspects it before the pour and a sealed, signed and dated letter from them has to reach the city before the building final. On an engineered slab the electrical UFER ground must be installed and inspected before concrete goes down, and the building official has stated in writing that pouring without it means a ticket. Requests go in online by 4 p.m. the day before; after 4 p.m. they slip a day, and any document needing approval first takes a minimum of 24 hours. Inspectors are routed geographically each morning rather than given appointment slots, so they will not give you an exact time, though they will call ahead if you ask. The first reinspection is free, with fees of $55, $100 and $150 applying from the third site visit onward.

Building in Waco?

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