Does an addition or a remodel at Incline need a county permit?

Yes, in every case we have been asked about. The county’s exempt list is short and conditional, and it does not reach anything that enlarges or relocates an opening, anything structural, exterior alterations, or any work that disturbs the site. An addition does all four. A remodel that moves a wall does at least one. We confirm the permit path in writing before we price, and the answer goes into the scope.

Do I need a TRPA approval or a TRPA exemption?

One of the two, and which one depends on the scope and the parcel. We establish it in writing before we price a schedule. We will not tell you the order the two agencies act in, because we have no citation that settles it, and a guess about an approval sequence is worse than no answer.

What are best management practices, and when do they apply?

They are the erosion, drainage and runoff controls that protect the lake, and they attach as conditions to work that disturbs the site. They go in before the disturbance and are maintained through construction, which makes them part of the schedule and the budget rather than a line item at the end.

Snow came off the upper roof and broke something. Is that a repair or a rebuild?

We do not know until the wall is open, and we will say so rather than quote a number that assumes the cheaper answer. The visible damage is usually the smallest part: what matters is what the impact did to the framing beneath and how long water has been getting past the flashing above.

In Incline Village two agencies have to say yes. We handle both.

Incline Village is unincorporated Washoe County and it is inside the Tahoe basin, so two separate authorities review the work. Running both approvals is our job, not yours.

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Jurisdiction: Unincorporated Washoe County, plus TRPA in the basin
Permit counter: Planning and Building, 1001 East 9th Street, Reno · onenv.us
Corridor: NV-431, the Mt Rose Highway, over the summit
Talk to us: (775) 200-0648, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM

01What pulls a permit

An addition, a remodel or a footprint change answers to the county first, and then to the basin.

Incline Village is unincorporated Washoe County, so the building-permit question goes to Planning and Building at 1001 East 9th Street in Reno, on the onenv.us portal. The county publishes a short list of work exempt from a permit. Almost nothing we are asked to do at the lake is on it. Enlarging or relocating an opening, structural work, exterior alterations and anything that disturbs the site all sit outside it.

Read that against the jobs people call us for. A room added on the uphill side changes the footprint and disturbs the site. A remodel that opens up the main living level takes a bearing wall out and puts a header in, which is structural. A roofline change is an exterior alteration. Each one is permit work at the county counter, and each one brings the second agency into the room.

So the first document on an Incline project is not a drawing. It is a written answer, scope by scope, to two questions: what the county needs to see, and whether TRPA wants an approval or will issue an exemption. We get both before we price a schedule. A number quoted ahead of that answer is a number that has to change.

02Two agencies

TRPA approval vs. TRPA exemption: which one your job needs, and the BMP conditions attached.

For the scopes that leave the exempt list, two separate authorities are in play: Washoe County for the building permit, and TRPA for the basin. They are separate approvals against separate criteria. We do not tell clients which of the two acts first, because we have no citation that settles the sequencing, and inventing one on a contractor’s website is how bad information spreads through a market.

What we do is establish both, early and in writing: whether your scope needs a TRPA approval or qualifies for an exemption, what the county needs to see, and what conditions attach to either. Work that disturbs the site carries best management practices (the erosion, drainage and runoff controls that protect the lake), installed before the disturbance and maintained through construction, not produced at the end. That work starts before design is finished, and it is ours rather than yours.

03The chalet stock

1960s and 1970s chalet stock: snow load, headers, and the roof planes that shed onto everything below.

Incline has been built since 1960, which makes it the most era-coherent community in the footprint. The 1960s and 1970s chalets and A-frames are its signature: big fixed glass walls, deep overhangs, and roof geometry that sheds onto lower roofs and onto whatever is beneath them.

Spring shed is what we are usually called about. Snow releasing off an upper roof loads assemblies never designed for a point impact, and the damage surfaces at the header over an opening, in deck framing and in the wall behind both. By the time it is visible from inside, the flashing above it has usually been failing for several seasons. So the scope is structural before it is cosmetic. The header gets sized and replaced as part of the remodel, the deck framing under the impact gets opened and looked at, and the roof plane that delivered the load gets redrawn so it stops delivering it. Repairing the visible layer and leaving the roof geometry alone just buys a repeat.

Replacing one of those glass walls on its own is not work we quote.

04Wildland-urban interface

Everything here is WUI: an exterior renovation is drawn against embers, from the roof assembly down to the deck framing.

All of Incline sits in wildland-urban interface, which makes ember exposure a construction question rather than a glazing question. Embers get in at soffits (the underside of the eave, where the roof overhangs the wall), at eave and foundation vents, in deck framing and in the debris that collects in re-entrant corners, far more than through glass.

So when we change a roofline, the roof assembly, its eave and soffit vents and the transitions where it meets the wall are one scope with one sequence. When we build or rebuild a deck, the framing under it and the gap beneath the boards are part of the design problem. When an addition changes the footprint, the new corners it creates are where the needle litter will collect. A hardened wall under an unhardened eave is an unhardened house. We confirm the ignition-resistant requirements that apply to your address with the reviewing authority before we quote, and we put what they told us into the scope. A siding or window job on its own is not work we quote.

05Scope

What we take on in Incline Village.

Up NV-431 over the Mt Rose summit, which is a real winter scheduling constraint and gets planned for rather than discovered.

Exterior renovation

Roofline changes, decks, porches and footprint changes, with the vents and transitions between them scoped against the requirements that apply to the parcel.

Structural repair after snow shed

Headers, deck framing and the sheathing behind a failed flashing detail, investigated before it is priced.

Additions and exterior alterations

The scopes that pull both a county permit and a basin approval, sequenced so neither is discovered late.

Whole-home renovation

Interior layout, structure and mechanical alongside the exterior, on one contract and one schedule.

More on two of them: exterior renovation and whole-home renovation.

06Permit, inspection, sign-off

Two approvals, one schedule, and a season that closes.

We prepare the county submittal and the basin paperwork, answer review comments ourselves, and book inspections against the trade calendar. Both approvals are tracked on the schedule you are given, so you can see which one the job is waiting on.

The building season is the other constraint nobody at the valley floor has to think about. We say plainly which parts of a scope have to be closed in before weather, and we would rather move a start date than begin something that has to sit open through a winter.

07Questions

Four questions we get from Incline homeowners.

Contracts, draws and change orders are answered on the home page. These are about the lake.

08Start a conversation

Tell us the scope. We will tell you which approvals it needs before we price it.

Establishing whether your job needs a county permit, a basin approval, an exemption or all of them is the first work on an Incline project, and you get the answer in writing either way.

Fastest way to reach us (775) 200-0648

Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. A person answers, and it is somebody who has been on a job site. The form goes to the same place, one business day behind the phone.

Name

Phone

Email Optional. The phone is the faster path, since email replies can take a business day.

Where the project is

Type of project

What are you thinking about doing? Rooms, rough square footage, whether walls move, and when you would like to start. Detail here shortens the first call.

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