Laurens County, SC Accessory Structures: Shed & Carport Rules (2026)

Laurens County Code § 33-101's Table 11.A.4, governing multiple-family residential development, requires an accessory structure serving a townhome or duplex dwelling unit to sit not less than 4 feet from any lot line; the same table marks the accessory structure row as not applicable to apartments, since apartment buildings are reviewed at the site level rather than the individual dwelling unit level. The identical 4-foot minimum reappears in Table 12.C.5 under Section 33-111's Open Space Residential Development standards, so a detached garage, shed, or other accessory building placed on an individual dwelling lot inside a clustered OSRD subdivision is held to the same setback as one behind a townhome or duplex.

Both tables pair the 4-foot accessory setback with the same 45-foot maximum building height and with dwelling unit rear and side yard minimums as low as 10 feet, so the accessory setback functions as a tighter, structure-specific number rather than a byproduct of the yard rules. Because Chapter 38's zoning ordinance was never adopted, and because Table 10.A.6's conventional single-family standards do not list a separate accessory structure row at all, this 4-foot figure from the subdivision ordinance's multi-family and open space tables is the only accessory-structure setback number written into the Laurens County Code; a shed built on an ordinary conventional single-family lot in unincorporated Laurens County is otherwise governed by that lot's regular side and rear yard setbacks under Table 10.A.6.