Free wildfire and land services in Pima County, Arizona

12 programs in 6 categories in Pima County. Every listing names its source; ring ahead before you rely on one.

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Pima is the only county in Arizona to have adopted a wildland urban interface code, and it adopted it in exactly one place: Mount Lemmon, where an owner must keep at least thirty feet of defensible space and where driveway design, water pressure and building materials all face greater scrutiny. Everywhere else in the county the same code is published as guidance that nobody enforces. The county also publishes an off grid living guide whose blunt middle is worth reading before you buy. Off grid living is allowed, there is nowhere in the county where zoning and building rules do not apply, you may not move equipment or animals onto the land until the home permit is secured, and the guide puts the initial home permit fee at roughly eight to fourteen thousand dollars. Buffelgrass and other non native plants may be taken off your own land without limit.

This summary was drafted by a machine from the listings on this page, and an editor has not rewritten it yet.

boundary from the US Census Bureau

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Why Sierra Log & Timber cares about your vacant land

Sierra Log & Timber mills cedar log and timber home packages in Chico, California. A good part of our working week is spent with people who have just bought land, and the same thing happens every time: the grants, the chipping days, the defensible space visits and the permit desks are all real, and all scattered across a dozen county websites that do not link to one another. So we put them in one place and left it open. You do not have to be building a log home to use this, and reading it signs you up for nothing.

Nothing local is recorded for Pima County yet. What is on this page reaches it from the Arizona and national listings above, which is worth knowing before you ring anybody: the help is real, but the desk answering is not in the county. We would rather say that than pad the page. If you know of something here that belongs on it, the second panel below is the fastest way to tell us.

Building on rural land in Pima County

What applies here, in Arizona and in this county, each line with the source it was read from.

Where the building permit comes from

Pima County Development Services issues building permits here.

Source · Pima County Development Services

Building code

Arizona has adopted no residential building code statewide: under ARS 11-861(A) a county board of supervisors may adopt a building code for the unincorporated areas it has zoned, and may authorise areas zoned rural or unclassified to be exempt from the code it adopts.

Source · Arizona Revised Statutes § 11-861

Wildland-urban interface

Whether a wildland-urban interface code applies is a county decision: ARS 11-861(D) provides that a board of supervisors may adopt a current wildland-urban interface code adapted from a national or international model code.

Source · Arizona Revised Statutes § 11-861

Who issues the permit

Permits and inspections under a county building code are the county board of supervisors' own, under ARS 11-863, which lets the board set the permit and inspection fees and contract enforcement to a city or town.

Source · Arizona Revised Statutes § 11-863

Building it yourself

ARS 32-1121(A)(5) exempts from contractor licensing an owner who builds on their own property, using their own labour, their own employees or licensed contractors, where the structure is intended for the owner's occupancy and not for sale or rent.

Source · Arizona Revised Statutes § 32-1121

Common questions

Does Sierra Log & Timber run any of these programmes?

No. Every organisation and programme on this page is run by somebody else: a county office, a state agency, a nonprofit, a utility or a tribe. We collect them, check them and publish them, and that is the whole of our part in it. What we do ourselves is mill cedar log and timber home packages in Chico, California.

Is this free to use, and does using it sign me up for anything?

The directory is free and reading it signs you up for nothing. The two panels below are the only places on this page that ask for an address, both are optional, and they do different jobs: one tells you when this county's listings change, the other tells us that something here is already wrong.