Flat bottomland fields with a line of sycamores marking the river and wooded knobs rising behind rolling limestone pasture.
Shelby One statewide code · inspection is local

Barndominium Builders in Shelby County, KY

Shelby County is the land answer on the eastern side of the Louisville ring, and it is one of the Kentucky counties that inspects. Under KRS 198B.060(1) permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy are not mandatory on a single-family residence unless the local government adopted an ordinance requiring them, and roughly eighty of Kentucky's 120 counties have never adopted county zoning at all. Shelby did both. Its own code, at Chapter 150 of the Land Usage title, adopts the Kentucky Building Code and states that a building inspection program is established in Shelby County for application to all buildings including single-family dwellings — and the county's Building Inspection office publishes the fee schedule, the inspection list and the permit steps that follow from it. Zoning runs through the Triple S Planning Commission, a single joint commission for Shelby County, Shelbyville and Simpsonville, which is why the county and both of its cities share one set of zoning articles and one office at 419 Washington Street. On unincorporated land the Agricultural district takes a five-acre minimum lot, 250 feet of road frontage on a tract under fifteen acres, a hundred-foot front yard, twenty-five feet at the sides and rear, and a thirty-six-foot height limit. What the county's accessory-building section does not contain is a floor-area cap — nothing in it measures a detached shop against the house the way Hardin County's ordinance does. What it does contain is a placement rule and a use rule: accessory buildings go in the rear yard, five feet off any other building and five feet off the line, and a residential accessory building may not be used for or involved with the conduct of any business, trade or industry. The ground is Outer Bluegrass on Ordovician and Silurian limestones, dolomites and shales, rolling to hilly with about a hundred feet of local relief, and it carries one feature no other Kentucky county has: Jeptha Knob, a cryptoexplosion structure roughly 14,000 feet across sitting just north of I-64, whose central uplift and ring of annular and radial faults put Shelby's highest point at 1,188 feet. USDA counts 1,350 farms here — fourth-most of any Kentucky county — on 160,081 acres, with 608 of them in the ten-to-forty-nine-acre band. Land in farms is down twenty percent since the 2017 census, which is what sitting between Louisville and Frankfort on an interstate does to farmland.

Shelby County at a glance

County
Shelby
Population
52,004
ZIP codes
40065, 40066, 40067, 40076, 40003, 40022
Site visits
Site visits out I-64 into Shelbyville, Simpsonville, Waddy, Bagdad and Finchville
Start your project

Building conditions in Shelby County

The building code is the same in every Kentucky county, and no local government may adopt or enforce a different one on a house — the Kentucky Residential Code says so in its own text. The design criteria are settled by the state too: the code prints a filled-in table covering all 120 counties, so your county's ground snow load, frost depth and seismic design category are published figures rather than something a local office decides. Ultimate design wind speed is 115 mph for every county in the state.

What changes from one county to the next is whether anyone checks. Kentucky makes permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy optional for a single-family home unless the local government has passed an ordinance requiring them, and it forbids the state from stepping in where none has. Twenty-five counties tell the state outright that they have no local building inspector, and in much of the rest the answer depends on an ordinance the county either passed or never did. Zoning is a separate, equally local choice — most Kentucky counties have never adopted any. What is below covers this county specifically: who issues the permit if anyone does, what the state's tables assign it, and what the ground does to a slab.

Build conditions for Shelby County , Shelby, Kentucky : design wind speed 115 mph. BUILD CONDITIONS SHELBY COUNTY, KYShelbyONE STATEWIDE CODEINSPECTION IS LOCALDESIGN WIND SPEED115 mphUltimate design wind speed, Vult. The Kentucky Residential Code's Table R301.2(1) sets 115 mph forevery Kentucky county and adds that topographic effects shall be investigated. Most of Shelby is…ZONING · AGRICULTURAL (A)5 acres; 2 acres for a first divisio…Shelby County Zoning Regulations, administered by the Triple SPlanning Commission for Shelby County, Shelbyville and Simpsonville…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITShelby County Building Inspection /…Building permit, unincorporated land: Shelby County BuildingInspection, Isaac Hughes, 419 Washington Street, Shelbyville KY…
Build conditions for Shelby County, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.
Shelby County's own code establishes a building inspection program that reaches single-family dwellings
This is the fact that separates Shelby from most of Kentucky, and it is in the county's published code rather than inferred from a contact directory. Chapter 150 of the Shelby County Land Usage title adopts the International Building Code and Kentucky Building Code and any future editions or amendments as promulgated in 815 KAR 7:120 and 7:125. Section 150.02 designates a Building Code Enforcement Officer as the local enforcement agent, requires that all building code inspections be performed by persons certified by the Kentucky Department of Housing, Buildings and Construction, and requires electrical inspections by a certified electrical inspector specifically approved by the jurisdiction. Section 150.03, citing KRS 198B.060(8), then establishes a building inspection program in Shelby County for application to all buildings, including single-family dwellings as provided in the adopted codes. The ordinance history is Ord. 4-19-04, passed 4-19-2005, amended by Ord. 07-07-11, passed 7-7-2009, with an attested copy transmitted to DHBC. The county's own permit-requirements page confirms what is being enforced today: the 2018 Kentucky Building Code and the 2018 Kentucky Residential Code, with permits required of any owner or authorised agent who intends to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move or change the occupancy of a building or structure. That matters because KRS 198B.060(1) makes permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy discretionary on a single-family residence unless the local government adopted an ordinance requiring them — and many Kentucky counties name no local building inspector for rural land at all. Shelby adopted one, and published it.

Shelby County Code of Ordinances, Title XV Land Usage, Chapter 150 Building Regulations §§ 150.01–150.05 — https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/Land%20Usage/150%20-%20Building%20Regulations.pdf (PDF text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026; the county's Azure host refuses plain curl requests with an HTTP block page, so the file was retrieved through a rendering fetch and then text-extracted locally) · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/building-inspector/Pages/Permit-Requirements.aspx · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=52659

There is no accessory-building size cap here — but there is a rear-yard rule and a no-business rule
Read the Shelby County zoning regulations end to end for a limit on how big a detached shop may be against the house, and there is not one. Article VIII § 830 is the whole of the accessory-building standard and it sets no floor area, no footprint percentage and no ratio to the dwelling. What it sets instead is three other things. Accessory buildings shall be permitted in rear yards only, and must be at least five feet from any other building on the same lot and five feet from all adjoining lots. On a corner lot backing onto a residential zone they take that zone's side-yard requirement. And — the sentence to read twice before planning a business out of the shop — residential accessory buildings shall not be used for or involved with the conduct of any business, trade or industry. Article II's definition calls an accessory building subordinate and incidental to the principal building without quantifying either word, which is a materially weaker constraint than Hardin County's ordinance next door, where an accessory structure must be subordinate in scale to the principal structure and cannot be built first without a conditional use permit. Three things still bind in Shelby: the Agricultural district's 36-foot height limit, the rear-yard placement, and § 840's requirement that every principal building sit on its own lot with only one principal building and its permitted accessory structures. There is one carve-out on the business rule worth knowing: Article II's Agricultural Home Occupation covers an occupation conducted in an accessory building in the agricultural zone provided the use is clearly agricultural only and any product offered for sale is produced on property owned or operated by the person conducting it. Article VIII § 810(6) states the placement rule slightly differently — no accessory buildings in front yards, permitted in the rear or side yards — so confirm which reading the office applies before the site plan is drawn.

Shelby County Zoning Regulations, Article VIII General Zone Regulations for Lots and Yards (2015) §§ 810(6), 830 and 840 — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20VIII%20GENERAL%20ZONE%20REGULATIONS%20SC.pdf · Article II Terms and Definitions, entries 22(b) Accessory Building, 23 Building Height and 71 Home Occupation, Agricultural — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20II%20TERMS%20AND%20DEFINITIONS.pdf (both PDFs text-extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://shelbypz.com/zoning-regulations

Five acres in the Agricultural district, 250 feet of frontage, and a 100-foot front yard
The Agricultural district (A) covers the unincorporated county and its development standards are unusually demanding on frontage and setback for a Kentucky rural zone. Minimum lot area is 5 acres. Minimum width at the building line is 250 feet. Road frontage is tiered: a tract of 5 to 10 acres needs 250 feet of frontage and must meet a 4:1 ratio at the front property line; 10 to 15 acres needs 250 feet of frontage extended to the rear property line with no part of the tract less than the minimum; above 15 acres the requirement drops to 100 feet of frontage. The minimum front yard is 100 feet from the front property line — not from a centreline, and not the 25 to 50 feet a buyer coming from a suburban lot expects. Side and rear yards are 25 feet each. Maximum building height is 36 feet or three storeys. A singular mobile home as the principal residence needs 15 acres, one per farm. And the district carries its own septic floor: the minimum size lot on septic tank in the agricultural district shall be two acres. There is one route to a smaller tract, written into the standards themselves: under KRS 100.111(22), one tract that would be the first division from a farm since 1961 may be a minimum of two acres with 250 feet of road frontage meeting the 4:1 ratio, and does not require plat approval. That first-division exception is the single most useful sentence in the district for a buyer being sold a small piece off a family farm, and it is worth asking the seller directly whether it has already been used.

Shelby County Zoning Regulations, Article VI Establishment of Zones (2020) § 652 Agricultural District (A), development standards — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20VI%20ESTABLISHMENT%20OF%20ZONES.pdf (PDF text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=46635 · https://shelbypz.com/zoning-map

15 psf snow, 24 inch frost, Seismic Design Category B
Three Kentucky Residential Code tables answer for Shelby County and each figure belongs to the table that publishes it. Table R301.2(1) gives Shelby a ground snow load of 15 psf, the statewide floor — worth stating because two of Shelby's neighbours in the northern tier, Henry and Trimble, are assigned 20 psf on the same table, so the heavier load starts one county away. Table R403.1.4, Minimum Frost Protection Depth for Kentucky, puts Shelby in its All other KY Counties row at 24 inches, against 27, 30 and 33 inches in the named eastern mountain counties and the three Northern Kentucky counties on the Ohio; § R403.1.4 allows that depth to be reached by backfilling with non-compacted soil above the base of the footing to the required depth plus 4 inches, and excuses the frost depth altogether where the footing bears on exposed solid rock — which on this shallow Ordovician limestone happens often enough to plan for. Table R301.2.2.1 assigns Seismic Design Category B, so IRC R301.2.2 Exception 1 exempts a detached one- or two-family dwelling from the seismic provisions entirely. Statewide values fill in the rest: 115 mph ultimate design wind speed with the code's own instruction that topographic effects shall be investigated, severe weathering for concrete, and moderate to heavy termite probability. On bearing, Table R401.4.1's presumptive value for clay, silty clay, clayey silt and silt (CL, ML, MH, CH) is 1,500 psf in lieu of a geotechnical evaluation, and its footnote b makes a soils investigation the determining method once the building official concludes in-place soils below 1,500 psf are likely. The table's one Kentucky-specific bearing amendment, raising CL and CH soils to 2,000 psf, is written for Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties only and does not reach Shelby.

https://dhbc.ky.gov/Documents/2018%20Kentucky%20Residential%20Code%203d%20Ed.pdf — Table R301.2(1) (snow, wind, weathering, termite), Table R301.2.2.1 Seismic Design Categories–Site Class D, Table R403.1.4 Minimum Frost Protection Depth for Kentucky with § R403.1.4, and Table R401.4.1 with footnotes b and c; the county rows are transcribed in research/statewide/design-criteria-and-climate.md from a local text extraction of that PDF · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/building-inspector/Pages/Permit-Requirements.aspx (the county naming the 2018 Kentucky Building Code and 2018 Kentucky Residential Code as the codes it enforces)

Outer Bluegrass limestone, no KGS-named karst area, and a 14,000-foot impact-suspect structure north of I-64
Shelby County sits in the Outer Bluegrass Region of north-central Kentucky, rolling to hilly with about a hundred feet of local relief, elevations from 750 feet in the west to 900 feet in the east and north, and its lowest point at 550 feet on Guist Creek. Shelbyville itself is at 760 feet. The bedrock is Ordovician and Silurian — the Lexington Limestone, High Bridge and Knox groups, the Drakes, Bull Fork, Grant Lake, Fairview, Calloway Creek, Clays Ferry and Kope formations, and the Laurel Dolomite, Osgood and Brassfield formations — described by KGS as interbedded limestones and shales, with Quaternary alluvium in the valleys. On karst, the honest answer is a careful one. The Kentucky Geological Survey names five principal karst regions and lists the cities partly or entirely underlain by karst: Frankfort, Louisville and Lawrenceburg are on that list and Shelbyville is not, and KGS assigns no county-by-county roster to its regions. So Shelby lies between two named karst cities without being placed in a named region by the body that draws them, in a state where 92 of 120 counties contain at least some karst, about 40 percent of the land has rocks with potential for karst development and 20 percent has well-developed features. KGS does publish a karst map for Shelby County specifically, and its Karst Potential Index viewer is pannable to a parcel and classes bedrock as Intense, Prone or Nonkarst — which is the right check before an offer, bearing KGS's own warning that factories and homes built over filled sinkholes may be damaged as the fill is transported out and the soil cover collapses. The county's genuinely singular feature is Jeptha Knob, a mass of irregular hills a mile south of Clay Village that rises some 300 feet above the surrounding terrain to the county high point of 1,188 feet. It is a cryptoexplosion structure roughly 14,000 feet in diameter, mapped by USGS as a central area 6,300 feet across of uplifted Clays Ferry Formation surrounded by a belt of annular faults divided into segments by radial faults. Shatter cones and coesite have not been found there, so an impact origin is not proven, but anomalously high iridium in the breccias points that way. Faulted and brecciated bedrock is a real foundation variable rather than a curiosity, and a site inside the structure is a site where a geotechnical opinion earns its fee.

https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Shelby/Topography.htm and https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Shelby/Geology.htm and https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Shelby/Karst.htm (KGS Groundwater Resources of Shelby County; the karst page's text is KGS's statewide karst chapter with a link to a Shelby County karst map, and it names no karst region for this county — read 6 Sep 2026) · https://kgs.uky.edu/kygeode/geomap?gkarst=true (KGS Karst Potential Index viewer) · https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/pp1151B (Surface geology of the Jeptha Knob cryptoexplosion structure, Shelby County, Kentucky, USGS Professional Paper 1151-B) · https://www.uky.edu/KGS/rocksmineral/meteorite-hitky.php

1,350 farms — fourth-most in Kentucky — and 608 of them in the 10-to-49-acre band
USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture county profile counts 1,350 farms in Shelby County across 160,081 acres at an average of 119 acres, which puts Shelby fourth among all 120 Kentucky counties by farm count behind Barren, Pulaski and Warren. The size distribution is what a homesite buyer should read: 163 farms of 1 to 9 acres, 608 of 10 to 49 acres (45 percent, the modal band by a wide margin), 397 of 50 to 179, 139 of 180 to 499, 21 of 500 to 999 and 22 at 1,000 acres or more. That 397-farm middle band is larger than Grant County's 362 and nearly double Boone County's 214, and the ten-to-forty-nine band at 608 is where a five-to-twenty-acre homesite actually comes from. Land use inside those farms is 99,543 acres of cropland against 29,014 pastureland, 20,102 woodland and 11,422 other — this is a row-crop county, with forage, soybeans and corn as the top three crops by acreage, and crops making up 77 percent of a $91.7 million total market value that rose 27 percent since 2017. The change column is the part to plan around and it is blunt: farm count down 13 percent since the 2017 census, land in farms down 20 percent, average farm size down 9 percent. That is a faster loss of farmland than Madison County's 17 percent, in a county that grew 8.2 percent between the 2010 and 2020 censuses. Shelby runs 384 square miles at about 125 people per square mile, which puts it in the middle band where land exists but you drive for it — and it is markedly less dense than Oldham County next door at 358 per square mile. Acreage here is genuinely available and moving in one direction; the larger, quieter tracts are east and south of Shelbyville toward Waddy, Bagdad, Cropper and the Franklin and Spencer lines rather than west along I-64 toward the Jefferson County edge.

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Online_Resources/County_Profiles/Kentucky/cp21211.pdf (2022 Census of Agriculture, Shelby County profile, FIPS 21211 — PDF text extracted twice, with -layout and with -raw, and the two reconciled before transcription because the layout pass offsets the size-distribution labels by one row; read 6 Sep 2026) · research/statewide/geography-and-population.md (52,004 at the 2020 census, +8.2 percent; 384 sq mi at 125 people per sq mi; Shelby 4th in Kentucky by farm count; Oldham at 358 per sq mi)

Also worth knowing before you build in Shelby County

The zoning permit and the building permit are two different offices, and the zoning one comes first
Shelby County splits what many jurisdictions combine, and the sequence is published. Article III § 310 of the zoning regulations states that no building or other structure shall be erected, moved, added to or structurally altered without a zoning permit issued by the Administrative Official, and § 320 sets out what has to accompany the application: plans drawn to scale showing the actual dimensions and shape of the lot, the exact sizes and locations of existing buildings and the location and outside dimensions of the proposed building; the governing health official's certificate approving proposed water and sewage facilities under § 880; and an entrance or encroachment permit from the Shelby County road engineer, the State Highway Department or the City of Shelbyville Engineer for the driveway. The Administrative Official must act within two weeks. A zoning permit expires if work has not begun within one year, and again if the work is not substantially completed within two years. Then a separate building permit issues from the building inspector's office, and separate electric, septic, plumbing and HVAC approvals from four more contacts. The county publishes the whole chain on one sheet, and it opens with a requirement that trips people on raw land: a physical address is required to obtain a Shelby County building or electric permit, and lot numbers are not accepted — addressing is done by Triple S Planning and Zoning on 502-633-1718. Article III § 315 also carries the one exception worth knowing on a farm: no zoning permit is required for construction or alteration of agricultural structures when they are three hundred feet or more from the nearest property line or road. That is a distance test, not a use test, and it does not reach a dwelling.

Shelby County Zoning Regulations, Article III Administration and Enforcement (1994) §§ 310, 315, 320 and 330 — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20III%20ADMINISTRATION%20AND%20ENFORCEMENT.pdf and Article VIII § 880 — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20VIII%20GENERAL%20ZONE%20REGULATIONS%20SC.pdf (PDFs text-extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/building%20inspector/the%20steps%20to%20obtain%20a%20building%20permit.pdf (Obtaining a Building Permit, the county's seven-step contact sheet; retrieved through a rendering fetch because the county's host blocks plain automated requests, then text-extracted locally) · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/Pages/planning-and-zoning.aspx

The county prices a house at 16 cents a square foot of everything under roof — which is how a shop-house gets measured
Shelby County Building Inspection publishes its fee schedule, and for this building type the definition matters more than the rate. New home construction is charged at $0.16 per square foot with a minimum of $250, and the schedule's own note says the residential square-footage fee is derived from measuring total floor space including the enclosing walls, outside dimensions, and any porches — including unfinished basement, attached garage, first floor, second floor and bonus rooms. In short, in the schedule's own words, all areas under roof. A barndominium whose shop and dwelling share one roofline is therefore priced on the whole envelope, not on the finished living area, and that is a number worth running before the permit conversation rather than after. Residential additions are the same rate at a $125 minimum; a deck without a roof is $50; a plans or application revision is $50; moving a structure is $100. Starting a project without a permit doubles the permit fee. The published inspection types are footing, foundation wall, slab, framing, insulation and final, with the first inspection of each type and one follow-up included in the permit fee, a second follow-up at $50 and each subsequent one at twice the last fee imposed. Two thresholds need checking against each other on the day: the fee schedule states that one-storey detached accessory structures of 200 square feet and less do not require a building permit, while the county's permit-requirements page lists storage sheds and similar structures under 120 square feet among its exemptions — the two figures come from the residential and the building code respectively, so ask the office which applies to your structure. A land disturbance permit — essentially a grading permit with erosion and sediment control — applies only on projects disturbing an acre or more of soil. And the schedule states plainly that where the state issues a permit, a local building permit is always required in addition to it.

https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/Building%20Inspector/Permit%20Fee%20Schedule.pdf (Shelby County Building Inspection fee schedule with its Building Cost / Fee Schedule and its numbered definitions 1 through 17; retrieved through a rendering fetch because the county's Azure host returns an HTTP block page to plain curl, then text-extracted locally and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/building-inspector/Pages/Permit-Requirements.aspx

The Emergency Management Director is the Floodplain Administrator, and the ordinance adds no freeboard
Shelby County's Flood Damage Prevention ordinance is Chapter 153 of its Land Usage title, Ord. 08-04-13, passed 4 August 2009, and § 153.25 appoints the Emergency Management Director — not the county engineer, not a GIS officer — to administer, implement and enforce it by granting or denying development permits, as the Floodplain Administrator. A development permit is required before any construction or other development begins within a special flood hazard area, and § 153.26(B) states that endorsement of the local administrator is required before a state floodplain construction permit can be processed. The residential elevation standard in § 153.41(A) is the lowest floor, including basement, mechanical equipment and ductwork, elevated no lower than at or above the base flood elevation — that is BFE plus zero, matching the state minimum in 401 KAR 4:060 rather than adding the extra foot some Kentucky communities do, so the margin has to be a design decision instead of an ordinance requirement. Section 153.45 is the provision a shop owner needs: an accessory structure in any zone beginning with the letter A must be non-habitable, anchored against flotation, vented with at least two openings on opposite walls at one square inch per square foot of floor area no more than a foot above grade, built of flood-resistant materials, with utilities elevated, may only be used for storage or parking, and cannot be modified for a different use after permitting. A shop in the floodplain therefore cannot later be finished into living space. Separately, the zoning regulations' Floodplain/Conservation (F/C) district has no principal permitted uses at all and states that the erection of any structure for residential purposes is prohibited. On top of any of this, Kentucky requires a state Division of Water Individual permit for construction in the base floodplain under KRS 151.250 and 401 KAR 4:060 § 2, on form DOW 7116, and state jurisdiction reaches the whole base floodplain rather than only the regulatory floodway. Clear Creek and the Salt River headwaters, plus Brashears and Guist Creeks, are where that bites.

Shelby County Code of Ordinances, Chapter 153 Flood Damage Prevention §§ 153.25, 153.26, 153.41 and 153.45 (Ord. 08-04-13, passed 8-4-2009) — https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/Land%20Usage/153%20-%20Flood%20Damage%20Prevention.pdf (retrieved through a rendering fetch because the county's host blocks plain automated requests, then text-extracted locally and read 6 Sep 2026) · Shelby County Zoning Regulations Article VI § 690 Floodplain/Conservation District — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20VI%20ESTABLISHMENT%20OF%20ZONES.pdf · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=54097 · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/kar/titles/401/004/060/

All three communities were remapped on 16 October 2025, and none of them is a CRS community
FEMA's Kentucky Community Status Book lists three Shelby County communities and all three participate in the National Flood Insurance Program: unincorporated Shelby County (CID 210209, initial FIRM 1 September 2001), the City of Shelbyville (210376, initial FIRM 2 September 2009) and the City of Simpsonville (210431, initial FIRM 2 September 2009). Two things stand out. First, all three carry the same current effective map date of 16 October 2025, which means the county was remapped — a flood determination on a Shelby parcel that predates that date is answering from a superseded map, and this is the same effective date the Hardin County communities carry, so it is part of a wider Kentucky map revision rather than a Shelby-only event. Second, none of the three appears in the Community Rating System columns. Kentucky has only 33 CRS communities in the whole book and Shelby County has none of them, so there is no CRS premium discount on a flood policy here and no CRS-driven floodplain standard above the NFIP minimum — which is consistent with the county ordinance setting the lowest floor at base flood elevation with no added freeboard. Note also how late the mapping is: Shelbyville and Simpsonville did not get an initial Flood Insurance Rate Map until September 2009, and the county's own initial FIRM is dated 2001. A long-tenured landowner here may never have had a mapped flood answer for the parcel before this century, which is a reason to get a current determination rather than to rely on what the ground has historically done.

https://www.fema.gov/cis/KY.html (Kentucky Community Status Book, Shelby County rows read 6 Sep 2026 — the host refuses plain automated requests, so the table was read through a rendering fetch rather than copied from source) · research/entries/hardin-county-ky.json (the matching 16 October 2025 effective date on the Hardin communities) · research/statewide/land-water-and-septic.md (Kentucky's 33 CRS communities)

Septic runs through a single-county health department, and the Agricultural district sets its own two-acre floor
Most Kentucky counties are served by a multi-county district health department — Hardin by Lincoln Trail across six counties, for instance. Shelby is not: the Shelby County Health Department at 615 11th Street in Shelbyville, 502-633-1231, serves this county alone, with Amy Tingle as the environmentalist on 502-633-9377 and DHBC listing the same address and number on its county sheet. The county's building-permit sheet gives the practical detail: septic hours are Monday to Friday 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., messages may be left any other time, and a set of house plans is required to start. Inside the city sewer service areas the answer changes — Shelbyville Water and Sewer at 1059 Washington Street, 502-633-2840, and the Simpsonville Sewer Commission at 108 Old Veechdale Road, 502-722-8110, are the alternatives named on the same sheet, and Simpsonville's own 2024 zoning ordinance requires municipal water and sewer even in its A1 Agricultural district. On unincorporated land two floors stack. The zoning regulations set a minimum lot on septic tank in the agricultural district of two acres, and Article VIII § 880 states that no building or dwelling can be constructed without a safe drinking water supply and sewage disposal facilities approved by the governing health official, with a certificate showing that approval required to accompany the zoning permit application. Then 902 KAR 10:085, the state on-site sewage regulation, requires room for the system plus a full replacement area, makes ground closer than seventy feet to an open sinkhole throat or downslope from a sinkhole sideslope midpoint unsuitable, and limits who may install. The site evaluation should therefore come before the pad is sited, not after.

https://dhbc.ky.gov/Documents/Shelby%20County.pdf (DHBC Shelby County sheet, updated 5 Aug 2026 — PDF text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026; health department address and environmentalist contact) · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/building%20inspector/the%20steps%20to%20obtain%20a%20building%20permit.pdf (septic, sewer and hours) · Shelby County Zoning Regulations Article VI § 652 and Article VIII § 880 · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/kar/titles/902/010/085/ · ⚠️ do not confuse this department with shelbycountyhealth.com, which is Shelby County, Missouri and cites Missouri statutes

One planning commission, three jurisdictions — and Simpsonville is the one that broke ranks
Zoning in Shelby County is administered by the Triple S Planning Commission, a single joint commission covering Shelby County, Shelbyville and Simpsonville from one office at 419 Washington Street, 502-633-1718. Historically that meant three parallel sets of the same nineteen zoning articles, one adopted by each legislative body — which is why the county's Article VI is dated 2020, its Article VIII 2015 and its Article III 1994, each amended on its own schedule. Simpsonville then adopted a wholly new, consolidated zoning ordinance on 7 October 2024, and the differences matter to this building type. Simpsonville's A1 Agricultural district takes a 5-acre minimum, 36 feet of structure height, 30 percent maximum lot coverage, 25-foot side and rear yards, a front yard tiered the same way as the county's by parcel size — and it requires municipal water and sewer. Its residential districts cap accessory structures at 20 feet of height and add the rule that accessory structures cannot exceed the height of the principal structure, which is exactly the constraint the county's own Article VIII § 830 does not impose. Simpsonville's ordinance also reproduces the KRS 100.203 agricultural exemption in its own § 6.5-B: land used solely for agricultural purposes has no regulations imposed as to zoning permits, height, yard or location requirements for agricultural buildings, except that setback lines are still required to protect streets and highways and anything in a designated floodway or floodplain may be fully regulated. So the answer to what may be built here is genuinely three answers, and the city line is where it changes.

https://shelbypz.com/zoning-regulations (the Triple S Planning Commission publishing separate Shelby County, Shelbyville and Simpsonville article sets) · https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/9d87ce63-96db-4493-ba8c-31c70dacc297/Simpsonville_Zoning_Ordinance_Adopted_10.7.24.pdf (Simpsonville Zoning Ordinance adopted 7 Oct 2024, Article 6.5 A1 and Articles 6.6–6.7 residential development standards; PDF text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://shelbyvillekentucky.com/176/Triple-S-Planning-Commission · https://shelbycounty.ky.gov/departments/Pages/planning-and-zoning.aspx

No conservation-subdivision or purchase-of-development-rights track was found in the adopted documents
An equine and row-crop county between two cities is exactly where a conservation-subdivision option or an agricultural-preservation programme would be expected, so it is worth saying what the adopted documents actually contain. The Triple S subdivision regulations are organised into nine articles — legal status and general provisions, procedures for major plats, contents and format of documents, general requirements and minimum design standards, improvements required for final approval, waivers and enforcement, definitions, effective date and certifications — and none of them is a conservation, cluster or open-space subdivision article. The zoning regulations' Article XIX Special Districts, adopted 2014, establishes exactly one special district, the BEQ Building Exterior Quality Design Overlay, aimed at commercial corridors. The Recreational/Open Space (ROS) zone is a parks-and-recreation designation, and the Floodplain/Conservation (F/C) zone is a flood-hazard district that permits no principal use. Article II does define residential cluster and planned unit development, and Article XII carries the PUD procedure, so a clustered layout is available through the planned-development route rather than as a by-right rural option. What actually preserves rural character in unincorporated Shelby County, then, is the ordinary A district arithmetic: a five-acre minimum lot, 250 feet of width at the building line, tiered road frontage that makes narrow flag-shaped splits difficult, and a 100-foot front yard. Anyone told a parcel qualifies for a conservation-subdivision density bonus here should ask the Triple S office to name the ordinance section, because none was found in the published articles.

https://shelbypz.com/subdivision-regulations (Triple S subdivision regulations, article structure as published) · Shelby County Zoning Regulations Article XIX Special Districts (2014) — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20XIX%20SPECIAL%20DISTRICTS.pdf and Article VI §§ 654 and 690 — https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/a9104a77-9bdf-470b-a9af-47949c795004/downloads/Article%20VI%20ESTABLISHMENT%20OF%20ZONES.pdf (PDFs text-extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://shelbypz.com/zoning-regulations

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

What moves a Kentucky budget is usually below grade, and more often than not it is what the ground is sitting on rather than the ground itself. The Kentucky Geological Survey says 92 of the state's 120 counties contain karst — limestone that dissolves — across four named areas: the Western Pennyroyal around Bowling Green and Hopkinsville, the Inner Bluegrass around Lexington, the Eastern Pennyroyal through Somerset and Monticello, and Pine Mountain in the south-east. On karst, KGS's own model ordinance for local governments lists the structures that should not be sited in sinkhole areas, and the list is buildings with soil-bearing foundations and buildings that cover thousands of square feet with impermeable surface. A post-frame or steel building on a monolithic slab is both of those at once. KGS is equally clear that nearly all karst parcels still have buildable ground on them — so karst does not stop the build, it removes the option of siting the pad by eye. A filled and graded-over sinkhole is the classic trap, because the pad looks perfect.

In the two coal fields the question is undermining instead, and Kentucky treats it differently from everything else: mine subsidence coverage is added automatically to property policies in the counties whose fiscal court voted the fund in, with a written opt-out — thirty-seven of them — while karst collapse gets no fund at all and falls under the ordinary earth-movement exclusion. On slopes the surprise is geographic: KGS's landslide inventory puts Kenton, Campbell, Boone and Gallatin — the northern Kentucky counties opposite Cincinnati — near the very top, above most Appalachian counties, on Ordovician shale. Three of those four — Boone, Campbell and Kenton — are the only counties in the state with a line of their own in the residential code's bearing table, which raises the presumptive value for two named clay groups there and nowhere else. Everywhere else the table gives clay and silt a single presumptive figure, and a soils investigation becomes mandatory once the building official determines the real capacity is likely to be lower than it.

The same ground then sizes the septic system, and Kentucky does that from soil morphology — a certified inspector reading the profile in a backhoe pit — rather than from a percolation test, at 110 gallons a day per bedroom against an application rate taken from soil texture and structure. On a mound or other alternative design a measured permeability test can still be required. And on karst the septic regulation is blunter than the building code ever gets: it declares the ground within seventy feet of an open sinkhole throat unsuitable outright. The soil that needs a foundation engineer is usually the soil that complicates the drainfield, so the site work, the foundation and the septic get resolved together rather than one at a time. We price the dirt before we price the building.

What we build in Shelby County

All seven services are available in Shelby County. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.

Barndominium Kits

We check barndominium kit packages against the wind, snow, frost and seismic criteria the Kentucky Residential Code publishes for your county.

Pole Barn Homes

Pole barn homes across Kentucky. KRC §R327 covers accessory barns, not houses — so a pole barn home is engineered by the code's own terms.

Custom Barndominium Plans

Barndominium plans drawn to Kentucky's published county design criteria — snow, wind, seismic, frost — with engineering where the code calls for it.

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What a build looks like

Three stages every Shelby County project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Aerial view of an undeveloped rural lot with cleared grass, an oak and hickory treeline, and a pale gravel access track.
Stage one

The parcel

Karst and mine maps, the flood question, zoning where the county has any, and utility access — all checked before anything is drawn.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the submittal works through whichever office issues the permit — and where no office does, through the approvals that still apply.

A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems and interior finish — and the certified electrical inspection your utility needs before it will set a meter.

Those are the rules where you are building in Shelby County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Shelby County

Shelby and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the city limits, and in Kentucky that line frequently decides whether anyone issues a permit at all, not merely who issues it.

The Shelby County service area, including the rural acreage outside the built-up edge, which is where the parcels big enough for a build like this usually sit. The map marks the territory we build in. It is not a branch location, and there is no office at this pin.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what Shelby County allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

Why the published spread runs from one end of the scale to the other, and which of it is the building rather than the ground.

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Is It Legal in Kentucky?

Whether your county inspects a house at all, what the farm-dwelling exemption really requires, and the approvals that reach you anyway.

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What a Pole Barn Home Costs

Post-frame against stick-built, and what the prescriptive post-frame section of the state code does and does not cover.

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Nearby areas we build in

Others we cover nearby. They share the same statewide code and the same state-published design tables — but whether a house is permitted and inspected at all, whether the county zones, what the health department will accept for septic, and what the ground does to a foundation can all differ from one card to the next. Two counties that touch are not two versions of the same answer.

Louisville

Jefferson

Oldham County

Oldham
Franklin County

Franklin
Nelson County

Nelson

Building in Shelby County: common questions

10 questions we get asked most often about building in Shelby County. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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Do I need a building permit for a barndominium in Shelby County?
Yes, and this is one of the Kentucky counties where that answer is written into the county's own code rather than assumed. Chapter 150 of the Shelby County Land Usage title adopts the Kentucky Building Code, and § 150.03 — citing KRS 198B.060(8) — establishes a building inspection program in Shelby County for application to all buildings, including single-family dwellings as provided in the adopted codes. The county's own permit-requirements page names the 2018 Kentucky Building Code and the 2018 Kentucky Residential Code as what it enforces, and requires a permit of any owner or authorised agent intending to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move or change the occupancy of a building. That is the opposite of the Kentucky default: KRS 198B.060(1) makes permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy discretionary on a single-family residence unless the local government adopted an ordinance requiring them. On unincorporated land apply to Shelby County Building Inspection, Isaac Hughes, 419 Washington Street in Shelbyville, 502-633-0692, office hours Tuesday and Thursday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Inside Shelbyville or Simpsonville the building official is Barry Edington at 502-633-8000 ext. 1108 or 502-722-8110. A separate zoning permit comes first, from Triple S Planning and Zoning at the same street address on 502-633-1718, and starting work without a permit doubles the permit fee.
Can I build a shop bigger than the house in Shelby County?
In the county's Agricultural district, nothing in the zoning regulations caps how big it may be. Article VIII § 830 is the whole accessory-building standard and it sets no floor area, no footprint percentage and no ratio against the dwelling — which is a real difference from Hardin County next door, where an accessory structure must be subordinate in scale to the principal structure and cannot be built before the house without a conditional use permit. What binds in Shelby is different. Accessory buildings go in rear yards, at least five feet from any other building on the lot and five feet from all adjoining lot lines. The Agricultural district's maximum building height is 36 feet or three storeys. Article VIII § 840 puts one principal building per lot with its permitted accessory structures. And § 830 adds a use restriction that catches people out: a residential accessory building shall not be used for or involved with the conduct of any business, trade or industry. The carve-out is Article II's Agricultural Home Occupation, which covers an occupation in an accessory building in the agricultural zone where the use is clearly agricultural and anything sold is produced on the property. Note also that § 810(6) states the placement rule as rear or side yards while § 830 says rear yards only, so confirm the office's reading before the site plan is drawn. Inside Simpsonville the answer changes: its 2024 ordinance caps accessory structures at 20 feet and forbids them exceeding the height of the principal structure.
How much land do I need in Shelby County?
In the Agricultural district the minimum lot is five acres, with 250 feet of width at the building line and a 100-foot front yard measured from the front property line. Road frontage is tiered: 250 feet with a 4:1 ratio at the front property line on a tract of five to ten acres; 250 feet extended to the rear property line at ten to fifteen acres; and 100 feet above fifteen acres. Side and rear yards are 25 feet. There is one route to less: under KRS 100.111(22), one tract that would be the first division from a farm since 1961 may be as small as two acres with 250 feet of road frontage meeting the 4:1 ratio, and does not require plat approval — worth asking the seller whether that division has already been taken. Two further floors stack on top. The district sets a minimum lot on septic tank of two acres. And Article VIII § 880 requires a certificate from the governing health official approving the proposed water supply and sewage disposal to accompany the zoning permit application, with the state regulation 902 KAR 10:085 requiring room for the system plus a full replacement area. A five-acre tract with a 100-foot front yard, 25-foot side yards, a driveway entrance permit and a septic field with its spare is a genuinely comfortable barndominium site; a two-acre first-division tract is a tighter exercise and worth walking with the health department before an offer.
What structural design figures does a Shelby County build have to meet?
The Kentucky Residential Code answers by table and each figure belongs to the table that publishes it. Table R301.2(1) gives Shelby a ground snow load of 15 psf, the statewide floor — and it is worth knowing that Henry and Trimble to the north are assigned 20 psf on the same table, so the heavier load starts one county away rather than at some regional boundary. Table R403.1.4, Minimum Frost Protection Depth for Kentucky, puts Shelby in its All other KY Counties row at 24 inches; § R403.1.4 allows that depth to be achieved by backfilling with non-compacted soil above the base of the footing to the required depth plus four inches, and excuses the frost depth altogether where the footing bears on exposed solid rock, which on this Ordovician limestone is a real possibility. Table R301.2.2.1 assigns Seismic Design Category B, so IRC R301.2.2 Exception 1 exempts a detached one- or two-family dwelling from the seismic provisions entirely and the shell is braced for wind rather than for a seismic base shear. Wind is 115 mph ultimate statewide with the code's own instruction that topographic effects shall be investigated — routine on the rolling upland, less so on Jeptha Knob or a Guist Creek valley rim. Weathering is severe and termite probability moderate to heavy. On bearing, Table R401.4.1 presumes 1,500 psf for clay, silty clay, clayey silt and silt in lieu of a geotechnical evaluation, and its Kentucky amendment raising CL and CH soils to 2,000 psf is written for Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties only.
What is the ground like here — is Shelby County karst?
The precise answer is more useful than a yes or no. Shelby sits in the Outer Bluegrass Region on interbedded Ordovician and Silurian limestones, dolomites and shales, rolling to hilly with about a hundred feet of local relief and elevations from 550 feet on Guist Creek to 1,188 feet on Jeptha Knob. The Kentucky Geological Survey names five principal karst regions and lists the cities partly or entirely underlain by karst — Frankfort, Louisville and Lawrenceburg are on that list; Shelbyville is not — and KGS publishes no county-by-county roster assigning counties to those regions. So the honest statement is that Shelby lies between two named karst cities without KGS placing it in a named karst area, in a state where 92 of 120 counties contain some karst and about 40 percent of the land has rocks with karst potential. KGS does publish a karst map for Shelby County, and its Karst Potential Index viewer pans to a parcel and classes bedrock as Intense, Prone or Nonkarst — that is the check to run before an offer, along with KGS's own warning that homes built over filled sinkholes may be damaged as the fill is transported out and the soil cover collapses. The county's distinctive feature is Jeptha Knob, a mass of irregular hills a mile south of Clay Village rising some 300 feet above the surrounding ground. USGS maps it as a cryptoexplosion structure about 14,000 feet across, with a 6,300-foot central uplift of the Clays Ferry Formation ringed by annular faults segmented by radial faults; shatter cones and coesite have not been found, so an impact origin is unproven, but anomalous iridium in the breccias points that way. Faulted, brecciated bedrock is a foundation variable, and a site inside that structure is one where a geotechnical opinion earns its fee.
Is Shelby County a realistic place to find acreage on the Louisville side?
It is one of the better ones. USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture counts 1,350 farms here across 160,081 acres — fourth-most of any Kentucky county, behind only Barren, Pulaski and Warren — with 608 of them in the ten-to-forty-nine-acre band and another 397 between fifty and 179 acres. That 397-farm middle band is larger than Grant County's 362 and close to double Boone County's 214, and it is the band a barndominium buyer is usually shopping. Shelby runs 384 square miles at about 125 people per square mile, which sits in the middle band where land exists but you drive for it; Oldham County immediately to the north-west runs 358 per square mile over 189 square miles, which is a different kind of market entirely. The direction of travel is the part to plan around: farm count is down 13 percent since the 2017 census, land in farms down 20 percent and average farm size down 9 percent, in a county that grew 8.2 percent between the 2010 and 2020 censuses. That is the I-64 corridor between Louisville and Frankfort converting cropland. Practically, the larger and quieter tracts are east and south of Shelbyville toward Waddy, Bagdad, Cropper and the Franklin and Spencer county lines, rather than west along the interstate. If a Shelby search stalls, the neighbours worth widening to are Franklin County to the east and Nelson County to the south.
Who issues the septic permit, and when in the process?
The Shelby County Health Department, at 615 11th Street in Shelbyville, 502-633-1231, with Amy Tingle as the environmentalist on 502-633-9377. Unusually for Kentucky this is a single-county department rather than part of a multi-county district. The county's own building-permit sheet gives the working detail: septic hours are Monday to Friday 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., messages may be left any other time, and a set of house plans is required. Inside the sewer service areas the alternatives named on the same sheet are Shelbyville Water and Sewer at 1059 Washington Street, 502-633-2840, and the Simpsonville Sewer Commission at 108 Old Veechdale Road, 502-722-8110 — and Simpsonville's own zoning ordinance requires municipal water and sewer even in its A1 Agricultural district. Timing matters because of Article VIII § 880 of the zoning regulations: no building or dwelling can be constructed without a safe drinking water supply and sewage disposal facilities approved by the governing health official, and a certificate showing that approval must accompany the zoning permit application. So the health department comes before the zoning permit, which comes before the building permit. On unincorporated land the Agricultural district also sets a minimum septic lot of two acres, and 902 KAR 10:085 requires room for the system plus a full replacement area, with ground closer than seventy feet to an open sinkhole throat or downslope of a sinkhole sideslope midpoint rated unsuitable.
My parcel touches a creek — what does that change?
Potentially a great deal, and there are three layers. Locally, Chapter 153 of the county code requires a development permit before any construction or other development begins within a special flood hazard area, and § 153.25 appoints the county's Emergency Management Director as Floodplain Administrator. The residential standard in § 153.41(A) puts the lowest floor, including basement, mechanical equipment and ductwork, at or above the base flood elevation — base flood elevation plus zero, with no added freeboard in the ordinance, so any margin above that is a design decision. Section 153.45 is the one that reshapes a shop plan: an accessory structure in an A zone must be non-habitable, anchored against flotation, flood-vented on at least two opposite walls, built of flood-resistant materials, used only for storage or parking, and it cannot be modified for a different use after permitting. Separately, the zoning regulations' Floodplain/Conservation district has no principal permitted uses and prohibits the erection of any structure for residential purposes outright. On top of the local permit, Kentucky requires a state Division of Water Individual permit for construction in the base floodplain under KRS 151.250 and 401 KAR 4:060 § 2, applied for on form DOW 7116, and state jurisdiction reaches the whole base floodplain rather than only the regulatory floodway — § 153.26(B) says plainly that endorsement of the local administrator is required before the state permit can be processed. Finally, check the date on any determination you have been shown: all three Shelby County communities carry a current effective map date of 16 October 2025, and none of them is in FEMA's Community Rating System, so there is no CRS discount on the policy either.
Do I need a contractor's licence to build in Shelby County?
Kentucky issues no state contractor licence for residential general contracting, so there is no competency licence to hold and this business does not claim one. What Shelby County operates instead is the permit and inspection system itself: § 150.02 of the county code requires that all building code inspections be performed by persons certified by the Kentucky Department of Housing, Buildings and Construction and all electrical inspections by a certified electrical inspector specifically approved by the jurisdiction, and the fee schedule doubles the permit fee where construction started without a permit. The published inspection sequence is footing, foundation wall, slab, framing, insulation and final. The trades are separately licensed by the Commonwealth regardless — electrical under KRS 227.450 to 227.530, plumbing under KRS Chapter 318 and HVAC under KRS Chapter 198B — and DHBC assigns Shelby County a state building inspector, a state electrical inspector, a plumbing inspector and an HVAC inspector by name. Locally the electrical inspection is scheduled with Craig Bitzer on 502-829-0054 with phone hours Monday, Wednesday and Friday 6:30 to 8:00 a.m., once the permit number is in hand. And whatever else is or is not required, KRS 198B.060(11) is the gate at the end: no utility may initiate permanent electrical service to a new building until a certified electrical inspector issues a final certificate of approval.
Does the farm exemption let me skip any of this?
Partly, and the two instruments people have in mind are different. On the zoning side, Article III § 315 of the Shelby County regulations exempts from the zoning permit the construction or alteration of agricultural structures when they are three hundred feet or more from the nearest property line or road. That is a distance test rather than a use test, it reaches agricultural structures rather than dwellings, and on a five-acre tract with a 250-foot minimum width it is difficult to satisfy in the first place. Simpsonville's 2024 ordinance carries the KRS 100.203 exemption in its own words: land used solely for agricultural purposes has no regulations imposed as to zoning permits, height, yard or location requirements for agricultural buildings, except that setback lines are still required to protect existing and proposed streets and highways and anything in a designated floodway or floodplain may be fully regulated. On the building side, the county's fee schedule prices a farmstead exemption at $25 and defines it as farm dwellings and other buildings located on farms which are incident to the operation of the farm and located outside the boundary of a municipality, provided they are not used in the business of retail trade, as a regular place of work for ten or more people, or for the processing or storage of timber products. Note that this is a $25 permit line, not an absence of paperwork. The statutory version of that exemption under KRS Chapter 198B reaches a farm dwelling only on a PVA-registered farm of ten contiguous acres outside city limits, and KRS 100.203(4)(c) keeps zoning's reach over the dwelling regardless. A barndominium is a house with a shop attached; describe the actual building to the office on 502-633-0692 and get the answer in writing before ordering concrete.

Building in Shelby County?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm whether any office permits and inspects a house where your parcel is, what it will let you put there, and which line of the state's snow, frost and seismic tables your county falls on. That conversation costs nothing.

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