RV Barndominium in Tennessee

Bigger than the one the category recommends. Start from the ceiling: Tennessee Code section 55-7-202(d) permits a vehicle up to thirteen feet six inches high and eight feet six inches wide on the federal and state highway systems, which is why coaches are built to that height. Then apply the measuring rule the sizing guides themselves publish — measure to the absolute highest point, meaning the roof air conditioner, the satellite dome or the antenna rather than the roofline, and add at least 12 inches of clearance. Thirteen feet six plus twelve inches is fourteen feet six inches of clear opening. The 14 foot door those same guides recommend leaves six inches over a coach at the legal maximum, which is half the clearance they told you to allow; run it the other way and a 14 foot door suits a coach up to about 13 feet, or 12 feet 6 inches if you use the eighteen-inch allowance other suppliers use. Sectional doors are stacked from 18, 21 and 24 inch sections and the stocked ladder for tall doors runs 12, 14 and 16 feet, so 14 feet 6 inches is not a size you can order off the shelf. Sixteen feet is. For width, measure mirror to mirror without retracting the mirrors, because that is how you drive it in, and add about eighteen inches in total: that lands on 12 feet as an arithmetic minimum and 14 feet as the size people are glad they bought, because you are steering a forty-foot vehicle through it rather than sliding it in on rails.

About eighteen feet to the eave, and the stack is worth seeing in full because it explains why. Above the opening sit the header, the torsion tube and springs, the horizontal track and the opener. Clopay's own track guidance asks for at least 12 inches of headroom on a 12-inch radius standard track and 14.25 inches on a 15-inch radius. Garaga recommends 12 inches for a standard torsion system and says to add 2 inches for an electric opener, with anything under 4.75 inches simply not possible and 4.75 to 12 inches requiring a low-headroom system. On top of that sits the header, which over a 14 or 16 foot opening in a post-frame or steel wall is an engineered member with real depth rather than a rule of thumb. General Steel gives the buyer's version: allow two feet between the top of the door and the eave, so a 16 foot building takes a 14 foot door. That makes an 18 foot eave the working number for a 16 foot door and a 16 foot eave the working number for a 14 foot one. Put the door in a gable end instead of a sidewall and the rising roof plane does part of that work for you — but check the height at the door jambs, not at the ridge, because the jambs are where the roof is lowest across the opening. And in Cumberland County note that the county's own building requirements call for a letter from an engineer on any wall above 10 feet tall, so an RV bay triggers it automatically.

Often not, and the reason is a height rule most people never look at. Principal-structure caps are generous — 35 feet in Chattanooga, Wilson County, Sumner County, Robertson County and Sevier County, 36 feet in Loudon County, 40 feet in Memphis, and Williamson County's rural district table records maximum height as Not Applicable. Accessory-structure caps are much tighter. Metro Nashville's Code section 17.12.060 B limits an accessory structure to one storey or sixteen feet, whichever is less, in every district with a minimum lot size under forty thousand square feet, and to two storeys or twenty-four feet where the minimum lot is at least forty thousand. Knox County's ordinance section 5.22.05 caps an accessory building at eighteen feet and says in no case shall the bottom chord of the roof truss or the bottom of the ceiling joist exceed eighteen feet — measured to the bottom chord, so an 18 foot eave sits exactly on the limit with nothing to spare. Wilson County allows twenty-two feet at accessory setbacks and thirty at principal setbacks, and gives the thirty near the line only if the building matches the predominant two roof pitch angles and the building material of the house; its Board of Zoning Appeals heard two variances against that provision in July 2025. Chattanooga caps a detached accessory structure at twenty-four feet, adds that it may not exceed the height of the principal building, and separately says its footprint cannot exceed the principal building's footprint. Clarksville is the one written the generous way round, allowing the height of the principal building or twenty-five feet, whichever is greater. In unincorporated Putnam County there is no zoning and so no cap at all, and Cookeville's zoning code says the height of buildings, structures or uses is unrestricted. Attaching the bay to the principal structure is what makes the taller allowance available in the jurisdictions where the cap bites, because the tight number lives in an accessory-structure section that an attached bay is not in.

No, and Williamson County is the county that shows why. Its rural districts do not cap dwelling height at all — the maximum height column reads Not Applicable — so height is not the problem there. What attaching does instead is move the whole building onto the principal-structure setbacks. Zoning ordinance section 11.04(3) says an accessory structure within 10 feet of a principal structure, whether physically attached or not, is considered part of the principal structure and must meet the principal setbacks, and section 11.04(3)(b) applies the same result at 20 feet where the two are connected by a roofline. Williamson's RP-5 and RD-5 front setback is 100 feet. Rutherford County runs the same proximity test at 3 feet and Sumner County at 5 feet, and Sumner adds that an accessory structure placed beside the house has to meet the primary setbacks regardless. So the decision is genuinely local: attach the bay where the constraint is an accessory height cap, and think harder where the constraint is a deep front setback on a narrow or awkward parcel.

In Rutherford County, no, and the ordinance says so twice over. An accessory structure shall not be constructed or established on any lot prior to the time of construction of the principal structure to which it is accessory. A non-commercial garage or shop may go up first only by special exception from the Board of Zoning Appeals, and that exception carries conditions: one structure per parcel, it must meet setback, height and coverage, and the structure must not be used for living quarters, commercial activities or business storage. Living quarters is named in the exception itself, so the exception is not a route to the plan. Sumner County applies the same rule on lots of five acres or less, with the same living-quarters exclusion attached to its own special exception. Knoxville reaches the same place from a different direction: the city zoning code states that accessory structures, other than accessory dwelling units, shall not be used for occupancy. The lawful route is to permit the building as the dwelling from the outset. In Rutherford County that is also what puts the project on the residential plans-review list, which names pole barn type structures with living space regardless of square footage and requires drawings sealed by a Tennessee registered architect or engineer — a county describing this building type by name and saying it needs engineering.

It depends on the jurisdiction, and two of the ones researched publish opposite answers. Rutherford County allows it with conditions, set out in its own building code guidance: where a property owner wants to live on site while the principal residence is being constructed, a temporary use permit runs for six months with one further six months if necessary, a building permit for the principal dwelling must have been issued first and must remain valid, the unit has to be served by approved water, sewer and electric, and the residential use ends on occupancy approval for the primary dwelling. Wilson County goes the other way: travel trailers are prohibited as a permanent dwelling in its A-1 district, the zoning administrator will not release electrical permits for one to be connected in a single location for an extended period, and no building or occupancy permit issues unless the unit is converted onto a permanent foundation with a perimeter foundation wall on all sides; storing an owner's trailer is fine provided nobody lives in it more than two weeks at a time. Confirm the answer for your parcel before planning around it, because it is a live difference between neighbouring counties rather than a formality.

It does for a barn. It does not for this building, and several Tennessee ordinances say so in the same sentence that grants the exemption. Sevier County's zoning ordinance exempts agricultural buildings, including barns and silos, from the district height cap — but not including dwellings. Wilson County's resolution exempts agricultural buildings including barn and silo, but not including dwellings. Both Clarksville and Montgomery County exempt agricultural buildings, barns, silos and windmills from the height limit, and both add but not including dwellings. The zoning ordinances are drawing exactly the line the state statute draws: Tennessee's building standards do not apply to nonresidential farm buildings, and nonresidential is the load-bearing word. The moment the building contains a dwelling unit it is a one- or two-family dwelling, the farm-building exemption is gone, and the ordinary height cap applies. Rutherford County goes further on evidence, requiring an affidavit plus a recent Schedule F, an agricultural sales and use tax exemption certificate or a site inspection, on a parcel of at least five acres in exclusive agricultural use. A building you live in does not meet any version of that test.

In some jurisdictions it does, and a 16 foot door is a large share of a front elevation. Knoxville's Estate Neighborhood district — the city's large-lot district and the one where this building would realistically sit inside city limits — limits front-loaded attached garages to 40 percent of the width of the front building line, requires front-facing garage doors to be set back at least four feet behind the front facade, and bars detached garages from sitting forward of the front building line. Chattanooga's single appearance standard for a detached dwelling requires windows, entrances, porches or other architectural features on all street-facing facades to avoid the appearance of blank walls, which a long blank gable end to the street fails; the fix is inexpensive but has to be in the drawings before submission. Memphis allows barns and related accessory structures in front of the primary residence provided they sit at least 100 feet from the right-of-way on a site of at least four acres, and separately asks that any accessory structure be compatible with the architectural character of the principal structure — which for a metal building is an argument in favour of a matching metal bay rather than against it. In private communities the standards can be stricter than any of that: the Tellico Village architectural committee in Loudon County limits garage doors to ten feet in height, caps the garage footprint at half the house footprint, and requires a minimum 4:12 pitch with at least six prominent roof planes. Ten feet is below every door size on this page, so an RV bay is not available on a lot governed by those standards, and it is better to know that before drawings are paid for.