Florence County, SC Building Safety: Building Permits (2026)

Florence County Code § 7-11, Building Code Administration, states that administration of the International Building Code and the National Electrical Code is governed by a stack of referenced state standards rather than by original county text: the 2021 South Carolina Building Code, the 2021 South Carolina Residential Code, the 2021 South Carolina Plumbing Code, the 2021 South Carolina Mechanical Code, the 2021 South Carolina Fuel Gas Code, the 2021 South Carolina Fire Code, and the 2021 South Carolina Existing Building Code, each incorporated by its Chapter 1, Scope and Administration, plus the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code Chapter 1 and the 2020 National Electric Code Article 90.

Because those referenced Scope and Administration chapters are where the trigger for when a permit is required actually lives, county Building Inspection enforces permitting under the state-adopted text rather than a locally drafted trigger clause. 00 each for the plumbing, electrical, and mechanical permits that accompany a mobile home placement. Section 7-1 separately requires every municipality within the county, for construction on real estate inside its own limits, to furnish the county tax assessor copies of all building permits it issues, tying local permitting activity back to the county's tax rolls; violating that reporting duty is a misdemeanor under § 1-13 of the county code.

Amendments to § 7-11 have kept the referenced code editions current over time, most recently updated by Ordinance No. 45-2022/23 on December 8, 2022, to adopt the 2021 state code cycle.