Robertson County 2018 IRC with Tennessee amendments

Barndominium Builders in Robertson County, TN

Robertson County is the north-west corner of the Nashville ring, on the Kentucky line, and it is still farming country: about two thirds of its land area sits in farms, and it ranks second in Tennessee for tobacco sold. That matters for this building type, because more buyers here own working farmland and arrive believing an agricultural exemption will cover the house. It will not. The county's zoning, on the other hand, is unusually permissive about the building itself: no minimum heated floor area, no roof pitch rule and no restriction on exterior materials anywhere in the resolution.

Robertson County at a glance

County: Robertson County
Population: 80,175
ZIP codes: 37172, 37073, 37049, 37010, 37141, 37032, 37188, 37152
Site visits: About 55 miles north of our Franklin office

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Building conditions in Robertson 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 Robertson 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

Robertson County enforces its own codes, and so does every incorporated place in it. The State Fire Marshal's residential jurisdictions list records the county as EXEMPT along with Adams, Cedar Hill, Coopertown, Cross Plains, Greenbrier, Millersville, Orlinda, Ridgetop, Springfield and White House. Nothing in this county has opted out of the residential code, and nothing here falls to the state inspection programme. That is not the general Tennessee pattern: elsewhere on the same list, counties sit as OPT OUT with a scatter of towns in three different states of enforcement inside them. Here the answer to "do I need a permit" is the same everywhere in the county.

Tennessee Fire Marshal's Office, Residential Jurisdictions & Inspectors, tn.gov/commerce/fire/residential-permits/jurisdictions-inspectors.html, carrying its own stamp "accurate as of 8/21/2026", retrieved 31 August 2026

The farm building exemption stops at the front door

Tennessee's statewide building standards do not apply to "nonresidential farm buildings" under T.C.A. 68-120-101(c)(2). The load-bearing word is nonresidential. A barn nobody lives in is exempt; the moment the building contains a dwelling unit it is a one- or two-family dwelling and the exemption is gone. Robertson County's own regulations point the same way from two directions. Section 11-3 of the zoning resolution requires a permit from the Building Commissioner for "any building or other structure, including accessory structures", with no farm carve-out, and the county's permit page handles agricultural work by referral rather than exemption: "Agricultural Permits — Please inquire prior to construction." On land where two thirds of the county is in farms, this is the single most expensive assumption a buyer can make.

T.C.A. 68-120-101(c)(2) via codes.findlaw.com, current as of 2 January 2024; Robertson County Zoning Resolution Sec. 11-3, 2021 revision; robertsoncountytn.gov/departments/planning/how_to_acquire_a_building_permit.php, fetched 31 August 2026

How much land AG-1 and AG-2 require

Table 6-5-A sets the minimum lot for a single-family dwelling at 15 acres in AG-1 Agricultural/Business and 130,000 square feet in AG-2 Agricultural/Residential. Without public water, AG-2 and RP-80 both rise to 218,000 square feet, a fraction over five acres, and R-40, R-30 and R-20 are marked not permitted altogether. So on a rural parcel with a well, the choice narrows to three districts and the floor is five acres. AG-1 also carries a 400 foot lot width at the setback line, a 100 foot front yard, 50 foot side and rear yards, and a maximum building coverage of ten percent of the lot.

Robertson County Zoning Resolution, Table 6-5-A, Article VI as amended in its entirety by Resolution 042715027 of 27 April 2015, 2021 revision PDF from robertsoncountytn.gov/departments/planning, fetched 31 August 2026

No minimum house size, no rule on what you clad it in

Robertson County sets no minimum heated or gross floor area for a site-built dwelling in any district. Table 6-5-A has no floor area row at all. Nor does the resolution contain a minimum roof pitch, an overhang requirement, a required porch or garage, or any restriction on exterior wall materials. The word metal appears in the document only in salvage-yard and industrial use definitions. The only size threshold anywhere in the text is a 600 square foot gross floor area with no exterior dimension under 15 feet, and that is the test for when a prefabricated dwelling stops being treated as a mobile home, not a minimum house size. For a steel or post-frame building this county regulates lot size, setbacks, height and coverage, and then stops.

Robertson County Zoning Resolution 2021 revision, Table 6-5-A and Art. II Sec. 2-2 definitions, searched in full for floor area, roof pitch and exterior material provisions; robertsoncountytn.gov/departments/planning, fetched 31 August 2026

Two fees, measured two different ways

The county building permit is $0.70 per square foot of total space — livable area plus porches, garages, storage and basements. The Adequate Facilities Tax is $1.50 per square foot, but only of heated or cooled living space. An unheated shop bay is charged at the first rate and not the second. The private act authorising the tax also excludes "barns or outbuildings used for agricultural purposes" outright, and defines residential floor area as space that is heated or air-conditioned "or designed to be finished into heated and/or air-conditioned living space at a future date" — so a shell bay plainly intended to become living space counts. Mechanical and plumbing permits are $100 each, a first re-inspection is $50 and a second is $100, and building without a permit doubles the fee.

robertsoncountytn.gov/departments/planning/how_to_acquire_a_building_permit.php and /fee_schedule.php, fetched 31 August 2026; Robertson County Adequate Facilities Tax, HB3316 / SB3305, 99th General Assembly, text at capitol.tn.gov/bills/99/Bill/SB3305.PDF

Design criteria are set case by case

Robertson County publishes no filled-in Table R301.2, so the ultimate design wind speed, ground snow load, seismic design category and frost line depth are settled with the building official before the frame is ordered rather than read off a county sheet. Tennessee leaves that table for each jurisdiction to complete. One figure in the county's regulations looks like a wind speed and is not: telecommunications towers of 150 feet or more must meet a 1991 antenna-tower standard "utilizing a wind rating of eighty (80) miles per hour plus ice loading for Robertson County". That is a nominal rating under a tower standard, not an IRC ultimate design wind speed, and it should never be carried across to a house.

Robertson County Zoning Resolution 2021 revision, telecommunications tower standards at Sec. 4-1 and Article VIII; Tennessee 2018 IRC Table R301.2(1) as published with jurisdiction fill-in cells, up.codes Tennessee IRC 2018 Chapter 3, fetched 31 August 2026

Also worth knowing before you build in Robertson County

How agricultural the county actually is: 1,117 farms working 200,408 acres, against a county land area of 476 square miles — about two thirds of Robertson County is farmland. Average farm size is 179 acres and rising, 43 farms run past a thousand acres, and 141,821 acres are cropland. Tobacco is the historical identity and still ranks second in Tennessee by value at $21.3 million from 3,150 acres, eleventh in the United States. Cattle and calves rank fifth in the state. Ninety-seven percent of the farms are family farms.
Septic runs through the state, not the county: Robertson County does not operate its own septic programme. Subsurface sewage disposal systems are permitted by TDEC's Division of Water Resources under Rules 0400-48-01, through the Nashville Environmental Field Office at 711 R.S. Gass Blvd, Nashville, on (615) 687-7000. The county's own permit instructions point to the same number. A soil and site evaluation comes first, and the septic permit or a sewer tap receipt is the first item on the county's list — the building permit is not issued without it.
What the county wants before it issues the permit: Six documents, in order: the septic permit or sewer tap receipt; a water tap or meter receipt, or a letter from the well drilling company; a driveway permit from the Robertson County Highway Department on (615) 384-2507, required for all new buildings and closed on Fridays; a 911 address verification letter from Emergency Communications on (615) 384-0099, required for all new construction; the recorded deed; and a site plan showing the house, drive, all buildings and the septic tank and field lines. Then detailed construction drawings with livable and non-livable square footage printed on them. One line matters more than the rest for a clear-span building: "Truss document requires TN Engineer stamp."
Living on the land while the house goes up: Robertson County has a written answer to this, which is unusual. Where an owner wants to live on site while the principal residence is being built, the Board of Zoning Appeals may issue a temporary use permit for six months, and the Planning Director may add a further three. It is conditional: a building permit for the dwelling must already be issued and must stay valid, the unit must be served by approved water, sewer and electric, and residential use must end when the certificate of occupancy is issued for the house.
Extra dwellings on a farm over fifteen acres: The general rule is one principal building per lot. On lots used for agricultural purposes that exceed fifteen acres, Section 3-2 allows up to two additional dwelling units for immediate family members or full-time farm employees and their families. Each site has to meet the district's own lot and yard minimums so it could be subdivided from the remaining acreage if needed. Accessory dwellings are separately permitted in AG-1 and AG-2 on the same logic — they must be capable of conversion to a single-family dwelling and division from the tract.
Front porches cannot be screened: One of the few appearance rules in the whole resolution, and it lands squarely on the wrap-around porch plans. The definition of a porch says the area cannot be heated or air conditioned, and that "side and rear porches may be screened, but front porches may not be screened or enclosed in any manner." So the screened run goes down the side or the back. It also has a cost consequence: a porch that gets heated or cooled stops being a porch and starts being living space for the Adequate Facilities Tax.
Climate zone and the envelope: Robertson County is in IECC climate zone 4A. Tennessee's own county table in the 2018 residential code puts only fourteen West Tennessee counties in zone 3A and everything else, Robertson included, in 4A. Worth knowing that Tennessee then amended its residential energy provisions so the insulation and fenestration tables revert to the 2009 edition and duct leakage testing is optional, which makes the enforced Tennessee envelope looser than a national zone 4A specification would suggest.
Springfield permits its own work: Inside the Springfield city limits the City of Springfield Building & Codes department at 405 North Main Street, on (615) 382-2200, handles permitting, plan review and inspections rather than the county. The city states that new construction residential permits carry a three-day review period before issue, and its building inspections are foundation, sheathing, framing and final, with mechanical rough-in and final alongside. Springfield lists its adopted codes as the 2021 editions of the ICC family including the residential code for one- and two-family dwellings, which sits ahead of the 2018 residential code Tennessee adopted statewide — the first question on any parcel is therefore whether it is in the city or the unincorporated county.
Growth against farmland: The county went from 72,803 residents at the 2020 census to an estimated 80,175 in 2025, a rise of about ten percent in five years. Over roughly the same period the number of farms fell seven percent while average farm size rose twelve percent. Farms are consolidating in the middle of the county and being subdivided at the edges nearest Nashville, which is why the parcels a barndominium buyer looks at here are so often carved off a working farm rather than platted in a subdivision.

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 Robertson County

All nine services are available across Robertson 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 Robertson County project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Stage one

The parcel

Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.

Stage two

Pad and permit

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

Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.

Those are the rules for Robertson County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Robertson County

Robertson 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 Robertson County service area, covering Robertson 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 Robertson 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 Robertson 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.

Clarksville

Montgomery County

Sumner County

Nashville

Davidson County

Building in Robertson County: common questions

7 questions we get asked most often about building in Robertson 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 Robertson County?

Yes, everywhere in the county. Robertson County is recorded by the State Fire Marshal's office as an exempt jurisdiction, which means it has certified that it adopts and enforces its own codes rather than leaving residential work to the state programme. All ten of its municipalities are in the same position. No part of Robertson County has voted itself out of the residential code. That is worth saying plainly because Tennessee genuinely does allow a county or a town to opt out by a two-thirds vote, and many nearby rural counties have. Here the permit, the inspections and the certificate of occupancy all run through Robertson County Planning at 527 S. Brown St. in Springfield, on (615) 384-3666 — unless the parcel is inside the Springfield city limits, in which case the city's own Building & Codes department at 405 North Main Street handles it.

I farm the land. Doesn't the agricultural building exemption cover my barndominium?

No, and this is the most costly misunderstanding in this category. Tennessee's statewide building standards exempt "nonresidential farm buildings" at T.C.A. 68-120-101(c)(2). The whole exemption turns on the word nonresidential. A hay barn, a machine shed or a tobacco barn that nobody lives in is outside the standards. A building that contains a dwelling unit is a one- or two-family dwelling, and the exemption does not reach it — the same building, the same frame, the same cladding, but a different legal category the moment there is a kitchen and a bedroom in it. Robertson County's own rules run in the same direction. Section 11-3 of the zoning resolution requires a permit for any building or structure including accessory structures, with no farm exception written into it, and the county's permit page asks people to inquire before building anything agricultural rather than declaring it exempt. If part of your building really is a farm building and part of it is a house, expect the county to treat it as a house.

How much land do I need, and does it change if I am on a well?

It changes a lot. In AG-2 Agricultural/Residential the minimum lot for a single-family dwelling is 130,000 square feet, just under three acres, if there is public water. Without public water that becomes 218,000 square feet, a fraction over five acres. RP-80 Rural Preservation follows the same pattern, 80,000 square feet with public water and 218,000 without. AG-1 Agricultural/Business asks for fifteen acres either way, with a 400 foot lot width and a 100 foot front yard. The part people miss is that the three smaller residential districts — R-40, R-30 and R-20 — are marked not permitted without public water at all. So on a rural parcel served by a well, the practical choice is AG-1, AG-2 or RP-80, and five acres is the floor. Settle which district a parcel actually carries before you buy it.

Is there a minimum house size, or a rule against metal siding?

Neither. Robertson County's zoning resolution sets no minimum heated or gross floor area for a site-built dwelling in any district — Table 6-5-A regulates lot size, width, setbacks, height and coverage, and has no floor area row. There is also no minimum roof pitch, no required overhang, no required porch or garage, and no restriction on exterior wall materials anywhere in the document. You may see a 600 square foot figure quoted; that is the threshold in the definition of a prefabricated dwelling, the point at which it is treated as a single detached dwelling rather than a mobile home, and it is not a minimum house size. The constraints that do bite are dimensional: 35 feet of height, no more than three full or partial storeys entirely above grade, and in AG-1 a maximum building coverage of ten percent of the lot. There is one appearance rule, and it is about porches — side and rear porches may be screened, front porches may not be screened or enclosed in any way.

What will the county charge me, and is the shop taxed the same as the house?

No, and the difference is worth designing around. The building permit is $0.70 per square foot of total space, and the county counts everything — livable area plus porches, garages, storage and basements. The Adequate Facilities Tax is a separate $1.50 per square foot, but it is charged only on heated or cooled living space. So an unheated shop bay attracts the permit fee and not the tax. Two cautions. The act authorising the tax defines residential floor area to include space "designed to be finished into heated and/or air-conditioned living space at a future date", so a shell bay obviously intended to become a room later is inside the definition. And a porch that gets heated or cooled is no longer a porch under the county's own definition. Mechanical and plumbing permits are $100 each, re-inspections are $50 for the first and $100 after that, paid in advance, and starting work without a permit doubles the fee. Barns and outbuildings used for agricultural purposes are excluded from the tax.

What wind speed and seismic category should my engineer design to?

Whatever Robertson County confirms for the parcel. Tennessee leaves Table R301.2 for each jurisdiction to fill in, and Robertson County has not published a completed one, so the ultimate design wind speed, ground snow load, seismic design category and frost line depth are settled with the building official before the frame is ordered. Two traps here. The county's regulations do contain an eighty mile per hour figure, but it belongs to a 1991 antenna-tower standard applied to telecommunications towers of 150 feet or more — it is not an IRC design wind speed and carrying it across to a house would be wrong. And a seismic category looked up in a current IRC is looked up in a figure Tennessee deleted; the state works from the 2015 IRC Figure R301.2(2) Site Class D map instead. A clear-span barndominium exceeds the prescriptive tables anyway, so under IRC Section R301.1.3 it is an engineered building and those elements have to be designed in accordance with accepted engineering practice by a Tennessee-licensed engineer. The county already asks for that in one place explicitly: truss documents require a Tennessee engineer's stamp.

Can I live on the property while the barndominium is being built?

Yes, within limits the county has written down. Where the owner wants to live on site while the principal residence is under construction, the Board of Zoning Appeals may issue a temporary use permit for six months, and the Planning Director may grant a further three — nine months in total. The conditions are firm: a building permit for the dwelling must be issued before the temporary use permit and must remain valid, the temporary unit must be served by approved water, sewer and electric facilities, and residential use has to end once the certificate of occupancy is issued for the house. If you are on a working farm over fifteen acres there is a separate route worth knowing about: Section 3-2 allows up to two additional dwelling units for immediate family or full-time farm employees, provided each site independently meets the district's lot and yard minimums.

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 Robertson County?

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