A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Loudon County 2018 IRC with Tennessee amendments

Barndominium Builders in Loudon County, TN

Loudon County is one of the very few Tennessee jurisdictions that has filled in its own Table R301.2 rather than leaving the cells blank, so the wind speed, snow load, frost depth and seismic category are settled before you draw anything. It enforces the 2018 codes locally from an office in Loudon with a building official and two inspectors, and its zoning resolution sets no minimum floor area, no roof pitch and no restriction on cladding material. The complications here are the water: a lot on Tellico or Watts Bar can bring TVA into the approval chain, and a lot inside Tellico Village is governed by an architectural committee whose permitted materials list has no metal on it.

Loudon County at a glance

County
Loudon County
Population
58,580
ZIP codes
37774, 37771, 37772, 37742, 37846
Site visits
About 180 miles east of our Franklin office, straight out I-40 and down I-75 past Knoxville
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Building conditions in Loudon County

What actually changes from one Tennessee 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 Loudon County , Tennessee: design wind speed 115 mph ultimate design wind speed. BUILD CONDITIONS LOUDON COUNTY, TNEast TennesseeCRITERIA SET LOCALLY DESIGN WIND SPEED 115 mph ultimate design wind speedPublished by the county itself, in the resolution that adopts the codes, alongside a 10 psf ground…ZONING · A-2 RURAL RESIDENTIAL, WHERE A…2.5 acres in A-2, 5 acres in A-1…No minimum heated floor area, no minimum roof pitch and no cladding…PERMIT REVIEW CLOCK1 business daysPublished review target of the issuing authoritySCHOOL FACILITIES PRIVILEGE TAX$1.00 per square foot of conditioned…Half is due when the building permit is taken out and the balance…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITLoudon County Planning and Codes…101 Mulberry Street, Suite 101, Loudon. Codes 865-458-4470, inspectors…
Build conditions for Loudon 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.
Building code enforcement
Enforced locally. Loudon County adopted the 2018 International Building, Residential, Plumbing, Mechanical, Fuel Gas, Existing Building and Energy Conservation Codes by resolution effective 1 July 2023, repealing the resolution that carried the previous editions. The office at 101 Mulberry Street runs a building official and two building inspectors, and the codes reach the unincorporated county plus any incorporated area that has not adopted its own code on the same subject.

Loudon County resolution adopting the 2018 codes, effective 1 July 2023, in LoudonCounty_Codes_AdoptedOrdinances.pdf, and the Building Codes page at planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, both fetched 31 Aug 2026

Design criteria are published, which is rare
Tennessee leaves Table R301.2 for each jurisdiction to fill in, and most leave it blank. Loudon County filled it in inside the adopting resolution: 115 mph ultimate design wind speed, 10 psf ground snow load, no topographic effects, seismic design category C, severe weathering, 12 inch frost line, termite moderate to heavy, 19F winter design temperature, no ice barrier underlayment, air freezing index 210 and a 59.4F mean annual temperature.

Appendix A, Section A102, Amendments to the 2018 International Residential Code, item 4, in LoudonCounty_Codes_AdoptedOrdinances.pdf, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Tellico Village will not accept a metal building
The Architectural Control Committee permits brick, natural stone, stucco, cast stone, wood and fibre cement siding, and vinyl siding as exterior wall materials. Metal panel is not on that list. Roofs must be at least 4:12, must contain a minimum of six prominent roof planes, and must look like traditional asphalt, tile or shake shingles; standing seam and corrugated metal roofing are expressly prohibited. Houses must be at least 1,200 heated and finished square feet with an attached garage of at least 440 square feet whose footprint is no more than half the house, and garage doors cannot exceed ten feet.

Tellico Village POA Architectural Control Committee Residential Construction Handbook, effective 16 April 2025, sections on exterior finishes, roofs and dormers, and elevation requirements, tellicovillagepoa.org, fetched 31 Aug 2026

County zoning sets no appearance standard
The district regulations carry no minimum heated floor area, no minimum roof pitch, no required overhang, no required porch or garage, and no restriction on exterior cladding. What they do set is dimensional. In A-2 Rural Residential a detached single-family dwelling is permitted by right on a minimum of 2.5 acres, with a 40 ft front yard, 30 ft rear, 20 ft sides for a single storey, a 36 ft height cap, 100 ft of lot width, and coverage limited to 30 per cent for non-agricultural buildings.

Article V, Loudon County Zoning Resolution, sections 5.41 to 5.45, Loudon_County_Zoning_Article_V.pdf, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

A lake lot can pull TVA into the approval chain
Under 18 CFR 1304.300 any structure built on land subject to a TVA flowage easement is deemed an obstruction within the meaning of Section 26a, which means the house itself needs TVA approval, not just the dock. Cut and fill matters too: work inside the flood control storage zone clears as a routine action only where the loss of flood storage stays under one acre-foot, and above that the applicant has to evaluate alternatives and cost the lost storage. Check the deed for a flowage easement before the site plan is drawn.

18 CFR Part 1304, sections 1304.300, 1304.407 and 1304.412, 2023 CFR edition revised as of 1 April 2023, govinfo.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

School Facilities Privilege Tax
One dollar per square foot of conditioned living space, levied under T.C.A. Title 67, Chapter 4, Part 29. Half is due when the building permit is issued and the balance, adjusted for the final square footage, before the certificate of occupancy. It is charged on conditioned space only, so an unconditioned shop bay under the same roofline falls outside it. Payment goes to the Trustee, and the county will not issue a permit to anyone delinquent on it.

Estimate of School Facilities Privilege Tax Liability and Owner's Acknowledgement form, buildingCodes_SFPT_ownersAcknowledgementForm.pdf, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Also worth knowing before you build in Loudon County

What seismic category C actually means here
East Tennessee sits well away from the New Madrid zone and Loudon County entered category C in its own table. Under the 2018 IRC a detached one- or two-family dwelling only has to follow the seismic provisions from category D0 upward, so a house here sits below that trigger. The county went further and extended the exception to townhouses as well. A clear-span barndominium is still an engineered building under R301.1.3, but it is the 115 mph wind figure that drives its base connections, not seismic.

Section A102 items 4 and 5, amendments to the 2018 IRC, in LoudonCounty_Codes_AdoptedOrdinances.pdf, read against IRC R301.2.2 and R301.1.3, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Radon control is in, tiny houses are out
Loudon County adopted only two IRC appendices and excluded all the rest: Appendix F Radon Control Methods and Appendix M Home Day Care. So radon mitigation has to be in place and is checked at both the slab and the framing inspection, which is not the norm across Tennessee. The exclusion cuts the other way for Appendix Q Tiny Houses, which the state adopted but the county did not.

Section A102 item 2, appendices adopted, in LoudonCounty_Codes_AdoptedOrdinances.pdf, and the Residential Inspection Information guide, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Septic is a state permit with no local counter
Loudon County does not run its own septic programme. Subsurface sewage disposal is permitted by TDEC's Division of Water Resources under Rules 0400-48-01, and since 3 September 2019 the local staff have been fully mobile with no office hours at all. Applications go in online and the Knoxville Field Office takes the calls on 865-594-6035. The septic permit is on the county's own checklist for the building permit, and the Certificate of Completion has to be issued before the county will pass a final inspection.

Loudon County Septic System Contact Information page and Residential Permit Information page, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Lenoir City is on a different code edition
Inside one county the adopted residential code edition changes at the city line. The county enforces the 2018 IRC. Lenoir City enforces the 2021 Residential, Commercial, Plumbing, Mechanical, Fuel Gas, Existing Building and Property Maintenance codes, reviews residential plans itself, and moved all new permit applications onto a new online system on 7 July 2026. Electrical inspections there run through Lenoir City Utilities. Starting work without a permit costs double the permit fee.

City of Lenoir City Building Inspection and Permits page, lenoircitytn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Permit fees and no plan-check charge on a house
The permit fee runs off the cost of construction: $15 for the first $1,000 plus $5 per additional thousand up to $50,000, then $260 plus $4 per thousand to $100,000, then $460 plus $3 per thousand to $500,000. The plan-checking fee in Section B105 is expressly not applicable to one- and two-family dwellings or residential accessory structures, and the residential application is completed at the counter, so there is no plan review queue on a house.

Adopting resolution recital and Attachment II, Appendix B, Recommended Schedule of Permit Fees, Sections B101 to B105, in LoudonCounty_Codes_AdoptedOrdinances.pdf, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

Details the inspector will actually check
Five inspections: footings, slab, rough-in framing and plumbing and mechanical, energy, and final, each booked with 24 hours' notice. Sill plates want half-inch anchor bolts embedded at least 7 inches, at most 6 feet apart and within 12 inches of corners. A retaining wall attached to the foundation needs an engineered design at 4 feet or greater, which comes up often on a sloping lake lot. Truss drawings stay on site. Occupying before the certificate of occupancy is issued is unlawful.

Loudon County Residential Inspection Information, buildingCodes_residentialInspectionGuide.pdf, planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, fetched 31 Aug 2026

An older county than the state around it
Median age 48.8 against a population of 58,580 across 229 square miles, with a median household income of $84,185. The county's own planning department puts the decade's growth at 24 per cent and names people over 60 as the fastest growing segment. Tellico Village alone held 7,311 residents and 4,090 housing units at the 2020 census. That mix of retirees and lake lots is why single-level layouts and wide doorways come up here more than they do elsewhere in East Tennessee.

American Community Survey 2024 five-year estimates via Census Reporter profile for Loudon County, the county's own Census Data page at planningandcodes.loudoncounty-tn.gov, and the 2020 census count for Tellico Village, all fetched 31 Aug 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 Tennessee budget is usually below grade: limestone sitting shallow, karst voids and sinkholes, and slope. Those are the same conditions that decide whether a septic field passes its soil and site evaluation, so the grading plan, the footing depth 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 Loudon County

All nine services are available across Loudon County. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.

Barndominium Kits

Engineered barndominium shell packages delivered to your Tennessee lot, stamped for the criteria your county adopted.

Turnkey Builds

Start to finish barndominium construction: we handle permits, slab, shell, and full interior finish.

Custom Plans

Barndominium floor plans drawn to your land, your family, and the residential code your county actually enforces.

Post-Frame Homes

Pole barn construction adapted into full residences, with wide clear spans and fast dry-in.

Steel Construction

Red-iron and light-gauge steel framing: no rot, no termites, engineered to your county’s adopted wind criteria.

Shouses

Shop and house in one building: workspace and living space under a single roof and a single permit.

Metal Homes

Full metal-clad residences: low maintenance envelopes specified to your Tennessee climate zone.

Site Preparation

Clearing, grading, pad, drainage, and utilities: the work that decides whether the build goes smoothly.

Permitting & Engineering

Sealed structural engineering and the permit that depends on it, from submittal through final inspection.

What a build looks like

Three stages every Loudon 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 cedar and hardwood 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 Loudon 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 Loudon County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Loudon County

Loudon 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 Loudon County service area, covering Loudon County and the surrounding rural acreage. We build across this area from our office in Franklin, TN — this map marks the territory we serve, not a branch location.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what Loudon 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 Tennessee?

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

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How Long Does It Take?

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

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Sources for this page

The primary documents behind the Loudon County figures above. We would rather you checked them than took our word for it.

Nearby areas we build in

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

Knoxville

Knox County
Blount County

Blount County
Cumberland County

Cumberland County

Building in Loudon County: common questions

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

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Do I need a building permit for a barndominium in Loudon County?
Yes. Loudon County is a local enforcement jurisdiction. It adopted the 2018 International Residential Code by resolution effective 1 July 2023 and enforces it with its own building official and two inspectors out of 101 Mulberry Street in Loudon. This matters because Tennessee is unusual: a county can vote itself out of the residential code entirely by a two-thirds resolution under T.C.A. 68-120-101(b)(1)(B)(i), and in a county that has done so the obligation genuinely ends in the unincorporated area. Loudon has not. It went the other way and adopted the full set of codes with its own amendments. Expect footing, slab, rough-in, energy and final inspections, each booked with 24 hours' notice on 865-458-4680, and a certificate of occupancy at the end. Note also that the county code reaches only the unincorporated area and any city that has not adopted its own. Lenoir City has adopted its own, and runs a newer edition than the county does.
What wind speed and frost depth do I design to?
115 mph ultimate design wind speed and a 12 inch frost line. Those are not interpolated off a national map. Tennessee's 2018 IRC leaves Table R301.2 blank with the instruction that the jurisdiction shall fill it in, and most jurisdictions in this state never have. Loudon County filled the whole table in inside the resolution that adopts the codes, which makes it one of the few places in Tennessee where you can settle the design criteria before you brief an engineer. The full set: 115 mph wind, 10 psf ground snow load, no topographic effects, seismic design category C, severe weathering, 12 inch frost line depth, termite moderate to heavy, 19F winter design temperature, no ice barrier underlayment required, air freezing index 210 and a mean annual temperature of 59.4F. A clear-span rigid frame exceeds the prescriptive tables in Chapter 3, so under R301.1.3 it has to be designed by accepted engineering practice regardless, but the engineer now has real numbers to work from rather than assumptions.
Can I build a metal-clad barndominium in Tellico Village?
Not in the ordinary sense, no. Tellico Village is governed by the Tellico Village Property Owners Association, and its Architectural Control Committee issues a building permit for every home in the community on top of the Loudon County permit. The committee's permitted exterior wall materials are brick, natural stone, stucco, cast stone, wood and fibre cement siding and trim, and vinyl siding and trim. Metal panel is not among them. On roofs the handbook is blunter still: metal roofing systems are prohibited except on accent features such as cupolas, dormers and eyebrows over bay windows, and standing seam and corrugated metal roofing are expressly prohibited. The roof must be at least 4:12, must contain a minimum of six prominent roof planes, and must exhibit the appearance of traditional asphalt, tile or shake shingles. There is a 1,200 square foot minimum of heated and finished space, a required attached garage of at least 440 square feet, a rule that the garage footprint cannot exceed half the house footprint, and a ten foot cap on garage door height. A single-gable clear-span building with a big shop bay fails several of those at once. What can work is a post-frame or steel-framed structure finished to the committee's material and roof-plane standards, which is a different building and should be priced as one. Take the handbook to the ACC office at 112 Chota Center before you commission drawings.
My lot is on Tellico or Watts Bar. Who else has to approve the build?
Possibly TVA, and it catches people out because they assume Section 26a is only about docks. Under 18 CFR 1304.300 any structure built on land subject to a TVA flowage easement is deemed an obstruction affecting navigation, flood control or public lands within the meaning of Section 26a of the TVA Act. That includes the house. So the first thing to establish is whether your deed carries a flowage easement, which is common on shoreline parcels here. Earthwork matters separately. Work within the flood control storage zone clears as a routine action only where the loss of flood control storage stays under one acre-foot; beyond that you have to evaluate alternatives and document what the lost storage would cost to compensate and mitigate. On a sloping lot the cut and fill for a walkout is exactly what pushes a project over that line. In Tellico Village there is a further line to know: everything below the 820 foot contour is TVA land, and tree cutting, clearing and landscaping below it need TVA approval first. TVA's Public Land Information Center takes enquiries on 1-800-882-5263. None of this stops a build, but it changes the sequence, and it is far cheaper to find the easement in the title work than after the drawings are done.
Is there a minimum house size or a rule against metal siding in the county?
In the county's own zoning, no to both. The district regulations in Article V set no minimum heated floor area, no minimum roof pitch, no required overhang, no required porch or garage, and no restriction on exterior cladding material for a site-built dwelling. The word barndominium does not appear in the resolution at all. What the county regulates is dimensional. In A-2 Rural Residential, the district most rural parcels sit in, a detached single-family dwelling is permitted by right alongside agricultural and forestry uses and their accessory structures, on a minimum of 2.5 acres, with a 40 foot front yard, 30 foot rear, 20 foot sides for a single storey plus five feet per additional storey, a cap of three storeys or 36 feet, 100 feet of lot width and coverage limited to 30 per cent for non-agricultural buildings. A-1 Agriculture-Forestry needs 5 acres, A-3 needs one, and R-1 Suburban Residential needs half an acre. One trap worth naming: the resolution does contain a 600 square foot figure and a 15 foot minimum dimension, but those sit inside the definition of a prefabricated dwelling and exist to separate it from a mobile home. They are not a general minimum floor area and they do not reach a site-built house. Because the county is currently amending the resolution, ring the Planning Office on 865-458-2055 to confirm dimensions before drawings are finalised.
Who permits my septic system, and what does it cost me in time?
The state does, not the county. Loudon County does not run a contract septic programme, so subsurface sewage disposal is permitted by TDEC's Division of Water Resources under Rules 0400-48-01. Since 3 September 2019 the local staff have been fully mobile and keep no office hours, so there is no counter to walk into. Applications go in online and the Knoxville Field Office answers on 865-594-6035. Sequence this early, because the septic permit is on the county's own checklist of things you need before it will issue a building permit, and the subsurface sewage disposal Certificate of Completion has to be in hand before the county will pass your final inspection. The soil and site evaluation comes first. On the sloping, rocky ground that makes a walkout basement attractive in this part of East Tennessee, the drainfield is usually the constraint that decides where the house sits, not the other way round.
Do I need a contractor's licence to build my own barndominium here?
Tennessee sets a dollar threshold rather than a flat prerequisite. A licence is required for projects of $25,000 or more as prime contractor, and the state counts the complete project cost including labour and materials, with separate phases, purchase orders or contracts not available as a way to stay under the line. Loudon County's residential permit checklist asks for a copy of the contractor licence and notes that homeowners wanting to be their own contractor must comply with T.C.A. 62-6-103. A property owner may build on their own property for personal use, but the exemption does not extend to commercial construction. Lenoir City puts a further limit on it inside the city: you can be your own contractor once every two years, with a notarised homeowner's affidavit. Whichever route you take, the county also wants your contractor's workers' compensation certificate before it issues the permit, plus an approved address, a site plan that may be hand drawn, a driveway permit where one applies and the signed School Facilities Privilege Tax estimate.
What will the permit and fees come to before I start?
Two separate charges, both published. The building permit fee runs off the cost of construction under the schedule the county adopted with its codes: $15 for the first $1,000 plus $5 for each additional thousand up to $50,000, then $260 for the first $50,000 plus $4 per thousand to $100,000, then $460 for the first $100,000 plus $3 per thousand to $500,000. The plan-checking fee is expressly not applicable to one- and two-family dwellings or residential accessory structures, and the residential application is completed in the office when you collect the permit, so there is no plan review queue on a house. Separately there is the School Facilities Privilege Tax at one dollar per square foot of conditioned living space, levied under T.C.A. Title 67, Chapter 4, Part 29. Half is due when the permit is taken out and the balance, adjusted to the final square footage, before the certificate of occupancy. It is worth noting that this one is charged on conditioned space only, so an unconditioned workshop bay under the same roofline does not attract it. Loudon County also publishes a written cost justification for its fee structure, which is a useful thing to read if you want to know what you are paying for.

What clients say

4.9 out of 5 based on 8 reviews Placeholder content

We had ten acres outside town and no idea what we could legally put on it. They pulled the zoning and the A-1 lot minimum before we spent anything on drawings, which saved us from buying plans for a building that would not have been approved.

Dale W. July 18, 2026

Ordered the shell kit and erected it with my brother-in-law over about six weekends. The drawings were clear, the bolt schedule matched what showed up on the truck, and the county inspector had no issues with the engineering.

Marisol T. June 2, 2026

Turnkey from a cleared lot to certificate of occupancy. What I appreciated most was that when plan review came back with comments, I heard about it the same day along with what they were doing about it.

Ray B. April 27, 2026

Building in Loudon County?

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