Nevada contractor license 0077896A · Advanced Design & Development, Inc.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM · 1155 Watson Way, Suite 7, Sparks, NV 89431
Three separate authorities, three separate ordinances, three separate counters. Which one reads your drawings is decided by the parcel, not by the city printed on your mail.
01Who reviews you
“Reno, NV” on an envelope covers three different review paths. If the parcel sits inside City of Reno limits, the City of Reno reviews it. Inside Sparks city limits, the City of Sparks does. Everywhere else in the valley (most of Verdi, Spanish Springs, Sun Valley, Washoe Valley and Incline Village), the parcel is unincorporated and Washoe County reviews it, from an office that itself carries a Reno street address.
This is not a technicality. The three bodies administer three different accessory dwelling unit ordinances. Unit size, the setbacks that say how far the building has to stand back from each property line, height, parking, where the entry may face, and the conditions attached to renting the finished unit are written separately in each document, and each is amended on its own timetable. Two parcels on opposite sides of one street can answer to different rules.
So settle the question before anything is drawn: a parcel number and the reviewing counter confirm it in one call. What follows is how the review proceeds, what differs between the three counters, and what the building side asks for wherever you are standing. What is deliberately absent is a table of setbacks and unit sizes. Section 03 says why.
02The review path
Most homeowners arrive expecting a single permit. The planning question is answered first: may this parcel have a second unit, of what size, where. That is the one that ends projects.
Zoning district, parcel size, the existing lot coverage or share of the parcel the buildings already stand on, easements, water and sewer or septic, and whether the ordinance here allows an accessory unit at all. This is a planning conversation, and it happens before a designer is paid. You get a written feasibility note naming the sections it relies on
The unit is drawn to the standards governing this parcel, not to a plan found online and not to what the neighbours built. Size, height, setbacks and the direction the front door faces are ordinance outputs, so the design starts from them. You get a site plan and floor plans dimensioned against the governing standards
Some accessory units are approved administratively over the counter. Others need a discretionary approval, which can carry notice to neighbours, conditions attached to the decision, and a hearing calendar nobody on your side controls. You get an over-the-counter path confirmed, or a decision with its conditions listed
The permit set goes in through that jurisdiction’s portal with structural, energy and site documents attached. On many parcels it also triggers referrals: the health authority for septic, the fire district for access, the utility for a new service. You get a submitted application with a number you can follow
Almost every set comes back with comments the first time. That is normal and it is not a verdict. What matters is turnaround: answered in days rather than weeks, in writing, by the person who drew the sheet being commented on. You get the comment list and our written responses, both of them
The permit issues, and the job is then governed by an inspection sequence rather than by a plan reviewer. Footings, framing, the rough-in where pipe and wire go in before anything is covered, insulation, final: each one a gate, scheduled around the trades rather than after them. You get an issued permit and an inspection record that closes out
03The three counters
That last cell is a deliberate refusal, and it is worth explaining rather than hiding. A number that was correct when a page was written and wrong when it is read costs the writer nothing and costs the reader a redesign. So the standards live in a document that is dated and attributable instead of in body copy. Ask, and we will read the current figure for your address with you.
04What the reviewer reads first
A planner reads the site plan first. Where the unit sits relative to each property line, how far it stands from the main house, what it does to lot coverage, which way its entry faces, and where a car can park once it exists: those decide whether an accessory dwelling unit is approvable at all. The interior layout is a building-code conversation and comes second.
The study beside this text is dimensioned with letters rather than numbers, because the letters are what the ordinance fills in and they differ between the three jurisdictions and again by zoning district. It is also why a garage conversion is not the shortcut it looks like: the building stops being a garage the moment it becomes a dwelling, and the parking it was providing has to be answered somewhere else on the same plan. Where that parking goes is settled early in how a garage conversion is actually built.
05Four shapes, four reviews
06The building side
01
Washoe County adopted the 2024 International Residential, Energy Conservation and Wildland-Urban Interface Codes with the 2024 Northern Nevada Amendments. They took effect 1 July 2025 and have been mandatory for submittals since 1 January 2026; sets submitted earlier under the 2018 editions stay under them. Source: the county’s Adopted Building Codes page, read 24 September 2026.
02
The International Residential Code requires an emergency escape and rescue opening of 5.7 square feet net clear (5.0 at grade-floor level), with at least 24 inches of clear height, 20 inches of clear width, and a sill no higher than 44 inches above the finished floor.
03
Walls, roof and slab edge insulated and air-sealed to the adopted edition, with the documentation to show it. On a conversion this is usually the line item nobody budgeted, because the existing shell was never built to hold heat.
04
Whether the unit shares the existing service or takes its own is part utility question and part code question. On a septic parcel it is a capacity question too, and that one is answered by the health authority rather than at the building counter.
05
Access width, turnarounds and water supply are referral items on many parcels. Where the wildland-urban interface code applies it reaches the exterior assemblies and the defensible space around the new unit as well.
06
A furnace and water heater sitting in a garage cannot stay there once the garage is a dwelling. Finding a location, venting it and getting combustion air to it is real work with a real cost, priced in the job, not a detail to resolve on site.
07The neighbour’s unit
It is the most common thing a homeowner brings to a first meeting, and it is almost never usable. The parcel may sit in a different jurisdiction, if the boundary runs between you, or in a different zoning district on the same street. The permit may have been issued under an earlier version of the ordinance, or under the previous code edition. In unincorporated Washoe County, anything submitted before 1 January 2026 may have been reviewed against the older codes. It may have carried conditions invisible from the sidewalk. And some of what gets built is never permitted at all.
None of that means the answer is no. It means the answer comes from your parcel, read against the document that governs it, on the day you are asking. That is what a feasibility note is for, and it is the cheapest step in the project. If you plan to stay in the main house while the unit goes up, the practical side is in living in the house during a remodel; and when plan review asks for something the drawings did not show, the document that arrives is a change order, so read what has to be printed on one before you sign it.
08Questions
You can, and it is usually wasted money. Size, setbacks, height and the direction the entry faces are ordinance outputs, so a plan drawn before those are known is a plan that will be drawn again. The feasibility step exists so the drawings start from the constraints instead of colliding with them at the counter.
For the building codes the local answer is clear: Washoe County’s 2024 adoption has been mandatory for submittals since 1 January 2026, and sets submitted before that date remain under the editions in force when they went in (Washoe County’s Adopted Building Codes page, read 24 September 2026). Zoning amendments are handled separately and the vesting rules are not identical, so that half is confirmed with the planning counter rather than assumed.
A detached unit is the easiest version: the work happens outside the house you are living in, and the disruption is noise, deliveries, a site path and the days a utility is cut over. An attached unit or an interior conversion is different, because the work is inside your envelope and containment and phasing start to matter.
09Keep going
01
The same three counters read from the submittal side: which missing document sends an application back most often, and what a contractor can and cannot do to move it along.
02
Dust containment, which rooms go offline and in what order, and the choices that make the worst stretch shorter. Containment and phasing matter most on an attached or interior unit.
03
When plan review asks for something the drawings did not show, the document that arrives is a change order. What legitimately triggers one, and what has to be on it before you sign.
10Start a conversation
That is a short call and it comes before everything else. Once the jurisdiction is settled we read the standards that actually govern the parcel, write them down with the sections they came from, and only then does anybody draw anything.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. A person answers. The form goes to the same place, one business day behind the phone.
We will call you back within one business day with the answer for your address. If you would rather not wait, call (775) 200-0648 now, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.