Pulaski One statewide code · inspection is local

Barndominium Builders in Somerset, KY

Somerset is where the company is based, and it is also the sharpest illustration in the region of the single fact this whole site turns on. Under KRS 198B.060(1) a building permit, an inspection and a certificate of occupancy are not mandatory on a single-family residence in Kentucky unless the local government adopted an ordinance requiring them — and Somerset is the local government that did. The City of Somerset runs a Building Inspection Department, certified by the Commonwealth, that regulates residential as well as commercial construction, reviews plans at 15 cents a square foot for residential occupancy, requires gas, water and sewer sign-offs on the permit form, and issues no certificate of occupancy until as-built drawings are in. Step across the city line into unincorporated Pulaski County and the county's own government publishes that it has no zoning laws, does not require a building permit for residential construction, and does not issue certificates of occupancy. Same house, same builder, same soil — permitted and inspected on one side of a surveyed line and neither on the other. The city also has zoning, which the county does not: ten districts plus a set of special zones, with R-1 Low Density Residential as the default and the zone every newly annexed parcel lands in. What the ordinance does not do is cap the size of a shop. R-1 publishes no maximum lot coverage and no accessory-building floor-area limit — only a 35-foot height ceiling, a backyard-only rule, and a 20-foot separation from the house. Somerset is genuinely still a place you can build on: 14.76 square miles of land for 11,924 people, an R-1 intent statement that expects lots big enough for a septic system, and an article of the zoning ordinance written for land inside the city that is still being farmed.

Somerset at a glance

County: Pulaski
Population: 11,924
ZIP codes: 42501, 42502, 42503
Site visits: Same day

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Building conditions in Somerset

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 Somerset, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.

The city line is the permit line, and it runs the way most people guess backwards

Kentucky lets a local government choose whether to require a permit on a house, and here the city chose yes and the county chose no. The City of Somerset's Building Inspection Department is certified by the Commonwealth to regulate residential construction — single-family, hotels, motels and multi-family are named first on its own department page, ahead of the commercial occupancies. Its zoning ordinance §8.3 requires a permit before any building or structure is erected, moved, added to or structurally altered, and §8.4 makes it unlawful to occupy anything newly erected until a certificate of occupancy has issued in accordance with the Kentucky Building Code. Unincorporated Pulaski County publishes the opposite: no zoning laws, no building permit required for residential construction, no certificates of occupancy issued, and an inspector titled County Commercial Building Inspector. That is KRS 198B.060(1) working exactly as written — permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy are not mandatory on a single-family residence unless the local government adopted an ordinance requiring them, and KRS 198B.060(4)(b) stops the state preempting on single-family dwellings. The practical consequence for a buyer is that two parcels a quarter mile apart on the same road can sit under completely different regimes, and the deciding fact is a surveyed municipal boundary rather than anything visible on the ground.

https://www.cityofsomerset.com/building-inspection/ · https://www.cityofsomerset.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ZONE_ORD-9-03-2020.pdf §§8.3, 8.4 (text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://www.pulaskigov.com/county-government/ — the live county host serves a Wordfence 503 to automated access, so the county text was read from the Internet Archive capture at http://web.archive.org/web/20260905125721/https://www.pulaskigov.com/county-government/ · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=52659

Somerset zoning caps the height of a shop at 35 feet and does not cap its size at all

This is the zoning fact that decides most barndominium projects, and Somerset's answer is unusually permissive. The R-1 Low Density Residential schedule publishes minimum lot 12,500 square feet without sanitary sewer or 8,000 with it, minimum frontage 60 feet, front yard 30 feet, side yard 8 feet, rear yard 10 feet, maximum height 35 feet, and — printed in the schedule itself — maximum lot coverage, no limitation. R-1A repeats no limitation; R-2 says none; only R-3 caps coverage, at 27 percent for single family and 33 for duplexes and triplexes. Nowhere in the ordinance is an accessory building limited to a percentage of the dwelling's floor area or held to a lower height than the house, which is the restriction that kills shop-dominant designs in a great many other jurisdictions. What does bind: §2.56 keeps accessory buildings out of front yards and at least five feet from other buildings, and the R-1 schedule adds that accessory uses shall only be located within the backyard, at least five feet from an adjoining side or back lot boundary and at least 20 feet from the principal structure. And the definitions section calls an accessory building a subordinate building whose use is incidental and accessory to the main building — so the size question is a judgment the administrative official makes on that word rather than a number you can look up. A detached shop noticeably larger than the house is worth putting to the Planning and Zoning Coordinator on 606-425-5312 before the plan is drawn, not after.

https://www.cityofsomerset.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ZONE_ORD-9-03-2020.pdf — §2.56 Use of Yards for Accessory Building, §4.2 R-1 Lot Yard and Height Requirements, §4.3 R-1A, §4.4 R-2, §4.5 R-3, and the Building, Accessory definition in Article 1 (city's own published PDF, text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://www.cityofsomerset.com/planning-and-zoning/

The city's own ordinance has an article for farmland inside the city limits

Somerset is not built out, and the zoning ordinance proves it from the inside. §4.13, Special Provisions for Agricultural Areas, says that land used solely for agricultural, farming, dairying, stock-raising or similar purposes has no regulations imposed as to building permits, certificates of occupancy, height, yard, location or court requirements for agricultural buildings — subject to four carve-outs: no structure for feeding or sheltering animals or poultry within 100 feet of any dwelling or street, street and highway setback lines may still be required, nothing in the floodway and nothing in the 100-year floodplain that would raise flood heights or obstruct flow, and no agricultural use that violates the city's nuisance ordinance. All other uses on that land are conditional uses. There is also an A-1 Agricultural district among the ordinance's special zones, whose stated purpose is to protect prime agricultural land and to limit urban-type development in rural areas until services can be provided efficiently — and A1 is the first box in the zoning checklist printed on the city's building permit form. Two cautions travel with this. The exemption is for agricultural buildings, not for a dwelling: a house on a farm inside the city is still a house, and Kentucky's separate farm-dwelling exemption from the building code reaches only a PVA-registered farm of ten contiguous acres outside city limits, which by definition is not Somerset. And the ordinance publishes a purpose statement for A-1 without a dimensional schedule in Article 4, where R-1 through P each get one — so lot and yard figures for an A-1 parcel are a question for the Planning and Zoning Coordinator rather than a table lookup.

https://www.cityofsomerset.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ZONE_ORD-9-03-2020.pdf — §2.48 Special Districts (A-1 Agricultural, Conservation, Flood Plain), §4.1 Schedule of Zones, §4.13 Special Provisions for Agricultural Areas (text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://www.cityofsomerset.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Building-Permit-Application-2022.pdf (office-use zoning checklist: A1 B1 B2 B3 I1 I2 R1 R1A R2 R3) · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=52659

Annex into Somerset and you land in R-1 — and a health department, not the city, sets your real lot minimum

Zoning ordinance §4.17 provides that all territory hereafter annexed by the City shall be considered in the R-1 Zone until otherwise changed. Somerset has grown by annexation along the US 27 corridor, so acreage that was county land last year can be city land this year, arriving with a 12,500 square foot minimum lot where there is no sanitary sewer and no maximum lot size at all. R-1's own intent statement is explicit that this district should be the city's largest residential area and that lots should be large enough to accommodate septic systems in areas of the city not served by the wastewater collection system — a city zoning district written on the assumption that some of it is on septic. Where that is the case the binding minimum is not the city's. The Lake Cumberland District Board of Health's lot-size regulation, adopted under KRS 212.230(1)(c), requires that a lot created, sectioned or platted off after 1 January 2007 and intended for a home be at least 22,000 square feet, and that a subdivision lot carry 22,000 square feet of suitable or provisionally suitable area as interpreted under 902 KAR 10:085. Twenty-two thousand beats twelve thousand five hundred, so on a newly platted septic lot inside Somerset the health department's number is the one that governs. On a sewered lot the city's 8,000 square foot figure stands and the health department has no lot-size interest at all.

https://www.cityofsomerset.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ZONE_ORD-9-03-2020.pdf — §4.2 R-1 Intent and Lot, Yard and Height Requirements, §4.17 Annexations (text extracted and read 6 Sep 2026) · https://www.lcdhd.org/services/environmental-services/guidelines/lot-size-regulation-for-private-waste-water-disposal-systems/ — the live LCDHD host refuses automated connections from here, so the regulation was read 6 Sep 2026 from the Internet Archive capture at http://web.archive.org/web/20260905124213/https://www.lcdhd.org/services/environmental-services/guidelines/lot-size-regulation-for-private-waste-water-disposal-systems/ · https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/kar/titles/902/010/085/

15 psf snow, 24 inches of frost, seismic category B — the lightest case Kentucky publishes

Three separate Kentucky Residential Code tables answer for Somerset, and each figure belongs to the table that publishes it. Table R301.2(1) gives Pulaski County a ground snow load of 15 psf, the statewide floor, against 20 psf along the Ohio River tier and in the eastern mountains. Table R403.1.4, Minimum Frost Protection Depth for Kentucky, puts Pulaski in its All other KY Counties row at 24 inches, against 27 inches in Bell, Clay, Knox, Lawrence and Owsley, 30 in Boone, Kenton, Campbell and the central coalfield counties, and 33 in Floyd, Knott, Letcher, Martin and Pike. Table R301.2.2.1 assigns Seismic Design Category B, which triggers IRC R301.2.2 Exception 1 and exempts a detached one- or two-family dwelling from the seismic provisions entirely. Statewide values fill in the rest: 115 mph ultimate wind with the code's instruction to investigate topographic effects, severe weathering for concrete, and moderate to heavy termite probability. Somerset is inside a jurisdiction that enforces those numbers rather than merely publishing them, which cuts both ways — the inspector will check the footing depth, and the appraiser and the lender will find a permit record when they look.

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; transcribed in research/statewide/design-criteria-and-climate.md

KGS names Somerset itself as a karst city, and EPA puts the county in radon Zone 1

The Kentucky Geological Survey's karst mapping names three cities in its Eastern Pennyroyal karst area, and Somerset is one of them, alongside Mount Vernon and Monticello. KGS also publishes a printable 30x60-minute quadrangle karst groundwater basin sheet covering Somerset. That is not a regional generality applied to a town; it is the town named in the source. The same carbonate geology shows up twice more. EPA maps Pulaski as one of only thirty Kentucky counties in radon Zone 1, its highest predicted indoor-radon class, and KGS lists radon infiltration into homes among karst's hazards beside sinkhole flooding and sudden cover collapse. Physiographically Somerset sits in the Eastern Pennyrile, which KGS describes as more eroded with steeper slopes than the plains to the west — 27 percent of it in Class VII and VIII land against 18 percent in Classes I and II — so a Somerset-area lot can carry noticeably less flat building envelope than its acreage suggests. Neither hazard is regulated into the build: the Kentucky Residential Code adopts appendices K, R and S and not Appendix F, Radon Control Methods, so radon-resistant construction is nowhere required in Kentucky. A passive sub-slab depressurisation rough-in is cheap while the slab is open and expensive afterwards, and on a karst lot the geotechnical question and the sinkhole setback question are worth settling before the pad location is fixed.

https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/wprkarst.html · https://www.uky.edu/KGS/karst/karst_resources.php (Somerset 30x60 quadrangle karst sheet) · https://kgs.uky.edu/kygeode/geomap?gkarst=true (KGS Karst Potential Index viewer, parcel-checkable) · https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-08/documents/kentucky.pdf · https://kygs.uky.edu/geology/radon

Also worth knowing before you build in Somerset

What the city permit actually costs, and the two thresholds that surprise people: Somerset prices plan review by occupancy in cents per square foot and lists Residential at 15 cents; Business, Institutional and Mercantile are 16 cents and Utility/Miscellaneous 13 cents. The department's own checklist adds a $100 application fee, and the $285 minimum non-refundable review deposit printed on the application is stated for commercial plan review. The checklist runs: site plan approved and fees paid, $100 application fee, completed and signed application, structural drawings, a list of general contractors and subcontractors with contact information, a business licence for every contractor and subcontractor, an insurance certificate, the permit fee, a signed Authorization to Proceed letter, the inspection report, as-built drawings, and finally the signed Certificate of Occupancy letter — and the application states in capitals that no certificate of occupancy will be issued until as-built drawings are submitted. The form also demands signatures from authorised City of Somerset gas, water and sewer representatives verifying existing facilities on the property, which is a step a county builder never encounters. Then two thresholds a rural builder rarely sees coming. Total disturbed soil area under 750 square feet takes a sketch plan; from 750 square feet to one acre the city wants a professional plot plan, a standard SWPPP form and a named EPSC-certified contractor; over one acre it adds a grading and drainage plan and Kentucky's general permit for construction discharges. Separately, new impervious area over 10,000 square feet combined with more than an acre disturbed triggers a full Stormwater Quality Management Plan with post-construction BMPs, an operation and management plan, and a recorded maintenance agreement. A house pad, a shop pad, a septic field and a long gravel drive cross an acre of disturbance more easily than most people expect. Permit fees other than these come off a fee worksheet the city publishes only as a scanned image with no text layer, so treat the figures here as the ones printed on the application and checklist and ask the department for the current worksheet.
$150 local, $200 non-local, 1 May to 30 April — and every subcontractor buys their own: The City of Somerset requires a business licence of anyone conducting business inside the city, including businesses based outside the limits that come in to work. The licence year runs 1 May through 30 April with renewal notices going out around 1 April. The contractor lines are $150 for a local contractor and $200 for a non-local one, sitting in a schedule that runs from $50 for a barber or beauty shop with three chairs or fewer up to $1,000 for a hospital. The city's own answer to the obvious question is that yes, each contractor needs to purchase his or her own licence — so a general contractor's licence does not cover the framer, the electrician, the plumber, the HVAC crew or the concrete finisher, and the building permit checklist requires a business licence for contractors and subcontractors before the permit issues. None of that is a competency licence. Kentucky issues no state contractor licence for residential general contracting, and the city neither tests nor certifies a builder; the trades themselves are licensed by the Commonwealth under KRS 227.450–227.530 for electrical, KRS Chapter 318 for plumbing and KRS Chapter 198B for HVAC, entirely independently of the city. A job inside the city also sits under Pulaski County's separate occupational licence fee, so both apply to the same site.
Somerset is in the flood program; the city next door is not — and the state permit stacks on the city's: FEMA's Kentucky Community Status Book lists the City of Somerset, CID 210199, among communities participating in the National Flood Insurance Program, with an initial Flood Hazard Boundary Map of 24 May 1974, an initial FIRM of 4 September 1985, a regular-programme entry the same day, and a current effective map dated 22 July 2010. Unincorporated Pulaski County (CID 210197) also participates. The City of Burnside, ten miles south on Lake Cumberland at the mouth of the South Fork, appears instead in the table of communities not in the flood program, carrying a sanction date of 22 July 2011 — which matters because Burnside is exactly where a buyer is most likely to be looking at water frontage, and NFIP standing decides whether federally backed flood insurance can be written at all. Somerset's zoning ordinance carries the local half of the machinery: §2.48 establishes a Flood Plain District by the federal flood map with buildings to be approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission, and §4.13 bars agricultural structures from the floodway and from anything in the 100-year floodplain that would increase flood heights or obstruct flow. On top of any city approval, Kentucky requires a separate state Division of Water floodplain permit for construction in the base floodplain under KRS 151.250 and 401 KAR 4:060 §2, applied for on form DOW 7116. The state permit is an additional approval, not an alternative to the city one.
$227 to evaluate the site and $271 for the septic permit — and the floor plan comes first: Parts of Somerset are on the city's wastewater collection system and parts are not; the R-1 district was written on that assumption. Where a lot is on septic, the permit comes from the Lake Cumberland District Health Department, whose Pulaski County office is at 45 Roberts Street in Somerset and whose district covers Adair, Casey, Clinton, Cumberland, Green, McCreary, Pulaski, Russell, Taylor and Wayne. The published sequence has four steps and two published fees. Step one is a site evaluation application at $227.00 payable to LCDHD, with a floor plan submitted at that point — bedrooms, laundry, kitchen and baths — which surprises people who expected the septic question to come before the house design rather than with it. Step two is digging two to four backhoe test pits about 42 inches deep and 50 to 100 feet apart in the proposed system area; once the soil is evaluated the district writes up the system and issues a temporary electric sticker to the homeowner, though not for an RV or mobile home. Step three, a certified septic installer applies for the permit at $271.00, and a detailed drawing is required before it issues; the plumbing inspector gets a copy, which is what releases him to write the water permit. Step four, the system is installed to permit, inspected, and on approval a permanent electric sticker issues. On karst ground 902 KAR 10:085 rules an area unsuitable within seventy feet of an open sinkhole throat, anywhere downslope of the sinkhole sideslope midpoint, or where it is subject to flooding damage — so one large sinkhole can sterilise a lot more of a parcel than its own diameter.
14.76 square miles for 11,924 people — there is room inside the line, but the big tracts are outside it: Somerset is a city page that passes the land test rather than failing it, and the numbers are worth stating plainly so a reader can judge for themselves. The Census Bureau's 2024 gazetteer gives Somerset city 38,230,457 square metres of land — 14.761 square miles, about 9,447 acres — against a 2020 population of 11,924. That is roughly 808 people per square mile inside a city whose own zoning ordinance keeps an agricultural article and an A-1 district on the books, defaults annexed ground to a district written for septic lots, and sets no maximum lot size in R-1. So a half-acre to a few-acre homesite inside Somerset is a real proposition, with city gas, water and sewer available on much of it and a permitted, inspected, certificate-of-occupancy build at the end. What Somerset does not have is a twenty-, fifty- or hundred-acre tract. For that the reader wants Pulaski County around it — 662 square miles at 98 people per square mile, 1,600 farms, second-most of any Kentucky county, 621 of them in the 50-to-179-acre band — or Wayne County and Russell County to the south and west across Lake Cumberland. All three are in the same service ring and all three have their own page. The honest framing is that Somerset is where the services and the inspections are, and the county line is where the acreage starts.
R-1 prohibits manufactured homes and does not list modular homes — a site-built barndominium is neither: This is a definitional trap worth clearing before it costs anybody a contract. Somerset's R-1 district lists exactly two principal uses, single family residences and government parks and playgrounds, and its prohibited list opens with manufactured homes as defined in the ordinance. The ordinance defines a Manufactured Home as a dwelling unit that is not constructed in accordance with the Kentucky Building Code, is composed of components substantially assembled in a manufacturing plant and designed to be transported to the site on its own chassis, and has at least 400 square feet of living space. A barndominium framed and finished on site to the Kentucky Residential Code is none of those things — it is a single family residence, the first permitted use in the district. A Modular Home is defined separately as a dwelling built to the Kentucky Building Code from components assembled in a plant and erected on a permanent foundation, and modular homes appear as a named principal use first in R-2 rather than R-1, though R-1 does deem permitted other uses substantially similar to those listed. So the answer for a site-built shell is clean and the answer for a factory-modular one is a question to put to the Planning and Zoning Coordinator in writing before you buy the lot. Post-frame construction as such is not addressed by the zoning ordinance at all; the ordinance regulates use, bulk and placement, and the structural system is the building code's business.
No permit does not mean no inspection anywhere in Kentucky — and inside Somerset there are two chains, not one: KRS 198B.060(11) provides that no utility may initiate permanent electrical service to a new building until a certified electrical inspector has issued a final certificate of approval. That reaches every parcel in the Commonwealth whether or not anybody inspects the frame, which is why the meter, not the permit, is the real gate in unincorporated Pulaski County. Inside Somerset both chains run at once. The city's building inspector holds the certificate of occupancy until as-built drawings are submitted, and the city permit form requires signed gas, water and sewer verifications from City of Somerset utility representatives. In parallel, DHBC's Pulaski County sheet names a state electrical inspector, a state HVAC inspector and a state plumbing inspector; the county publishes four county electrical inspectors and carries an electrical inspection fee ordinance; and on a septic lot the Lake Cumberland district issues a temporary electric sticker after the soil evaluation and a permanent one after the installed system passes. One further thing that is true here and not in the county: Pulaski is not one of the 37 counties in Kentucky's Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund, where KRS 304.44-030 puts the endorsement on every property policy unless the insured waives it in writing. Mine subsidence is a coal-county issue and Somerset sits between the two coalfields; karst is the local ground hazard, and Kentucky built no fund, no mandatory endorsement and no seller-disclosure question for it — Kentucky Real Estate Commission Form 402 asks about soil stability, drainage and erosion and says nothing about sinkholes or caves.

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 Somerset

All seven services are available in Somerset. 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 Somerset project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

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.

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.

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 Somerset. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Somerset

Pulaski 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 Somerset 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 Somerset 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.

Read it

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.

Read it

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.

Read it

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.

Pulaski

Russell

Wayne

Laurel

Building in Somerset: common questions

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

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Do I need a building permit to build a barndominium in Somerset?

Yes — and that is the single most important thing to know about building here, because a mile outside the city line the answer flips. The City of Somerset runs a Building Inspection Department certified by the Commonwealth that regulates residential as well as commercial construction, and the zoning ordinance's §8.3 requires a permit before any building or structure is erected, moved, added to or structurally altered. Section 8.4 makes it unlawful to occupy until a certificate of occupancy has issued in accordance with the Kentucky Building Code, and the permit application says in capitals that no certificate of occupancy will be issued until as-built drawings are submitted. Unincorporated Pulaski County publishes the opposite: no zoning laws, no residential building permit, no certificates of occupancy. Kentucky allows that split deliberately — 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 KRS 198B.060(4)(b) bars the state from preempting on single-family dwellings. Because everything turns on a surveyed boundary rather than anything you can see, confirm which side your parcel is on before you plan around either answer. The Building Inspection Division is at 306 E. Mt. Vernon Street on 606-679-6366, with the permit line on 606-425-5314.

Can I build a shop that is bigger than the house inside the city limits?

Somerset's zoning ordinance sets no numerical cap on an accessory building's floor area, and the R-1 schedule prints maximum lot coverage as no limitation — R-1A repeats it, R-2 says none, and only R-3 caps coverage at 27 percent for a single-family lot. That is genuinely permissive compared with a lot of ordinances that limit an accessory building to a fraction of the dwelling's footprint. What binds instead is placement and height. Section 2.56 keeps accessory buildings out of front yards and at least five feet from other buildings; the R-1 schedule adds that accessory uses go in the backyard only, at least five feet from an adjoining side or rear lot line and at least 20 feet from the principal structure; and maximum building height in R-1 is 35 feet. The one soft edge is the definition: the ordinance calls an accessory building a subordinate building whose use is incidental and accessory to the main building, so a shop dramatically larger than the dwelling invites an administrative judgment about whether it is still subordinate. That is a conversation to have with the Planning and Zoning Coordinator on 606-425-5312 before the drawings are finished. If you want a genuinely shop-dominant building with no such conversation, unincorporated Pulaski County has no zoning at all and therefore no accessory-structure rule to clear.

How big does my lot have to be, and what does the septic permit cost?

Inside Somerset, R-1 requires 12,500 square feet without sanitary sewer and 8,000 square feet with it, on 60 feet of frontage, with a 30-foot front yard, 8-foot side yards and a 10-foot rear yard. But if the lot will use a septic system and was created, sectioned or platted off after 1 January 2007, the Lake Cumberland District Board of Health's lot-size regulation — adopted under KRS 212.230(1)(c) — requires at least 22,000 square feet, and a subdivision lot needs that 22,000 square feet to be suitable or provisionally suitable area under 902 KAR 10:085. Twenty-two thousand is the larger figure, so on a new septic lot it governs. The published fees are $227.00 for the on-site sewage site evaluation and $271.00 for the septic permit itself, both payable to the Lake Cumberland District Health Department, whose Pulaski office is at 45 Roberts Street here in Somerset. Two things about the sequence catch people out. A floor plan showing bedrooms, laundry, kitchen and baths has to go in with the site evaluation, not later — the system is sized from it. And the temporary electric sticker only comes after the soil evaluation is written up, with the permanent one after the installed system passes inspection, so septic sits on the critical path to permanent power. Where the parcel is already on the city sewer, none of the health department's lot minimum applies and the city's 8,000 square foot figure stands.

Is there actually land to build on inside Somerset, or do I need to look at the county?

Both are true, at different scales, and it is worth being precise. Somerset covers 14.76 square miles of land for 11,924 people, about 808 per square mile, and the city's own zoning ordinance still carries an article of special provisions for land inside the limits used solely for agriculture, an A-1 Agricultural district among its special zones, no maximum lot size in R-1, and an R-1 intent statement expecting lots large enough for septic where the sewer does not reach. That is a city with room in it, and building there buys you city gas, water and sewer on much of the ground plus a permitted and inspected house with a certificate of occupancy at the end — which matters to a lender and an appraiser. What Somerset does not offer is a large tract. For twenty, fifty or a hundred acres you want Pulaski County around it, which carries 662 square miles at 98 people per square mile and 1,600 farms, the second-most of any Kentucky county, with 621 of them in the 50-to-179-acre band. Wayne County and Russell County, south and west along Lake Cumberland, are the other two obvious places to look and are the same drive for us. The short version: the services and the inspections are inside the line, and the acreage starts outside it.

What structural design figures does a Somerset build have to meet?

The lightest set the Commonwealth publishes, and inside the city they are enforced rather than merely printed. The Kentucky Residential Code's Table R301.2(1) sets a ground snow load of 15 psf for Pulaski County, the statewide floor, where the Ohio River tier and the eastern mountains carry 20 psf. Table R403.1.4, Minimum Frost Protection Depth for Kentucky, puts Pulaski in its All other KY Counties row at 24 inches, against 27, 30 and 33 inches in the named eastern and northern counties. Table R301.2.2.1 assigns Seismic Design Category B, and IRC R301.2.2 Exception 1 exempts a detached one- or two-family dwelling in Category A, B or C from the seismic provisions entirely, so the shell is braced for wind rather than for a seismic base shear the way a Paducah building has to be. Wind is 115 mph ultimate statewide, with the code's own instruction that topographic effects shall be investigated — and on a ridge or bluff-edge lot above Lake Cumberland that instruction earns its keep, because the topographic factor can lift the real pressure well above the flat-ground figure. Weathering is severe and termite probability moderate to heavy, both statewide. The seismic table assumes Site Class D soil; on karst ground a geotechnical investigation can return something different.

Do my subcontractors each need their own City of Somerset licence?

Yes. The city requires a business licence of anyone conducting business inside the city, including firms based outside that come in to work, and its own published answer is that each contractor needs to purchase his or her own licence — a general contractor's licence does not cover the trades under it. The contractor lines are $150 for a local contractor and $200 for a non-local one, on a licence year running 1 May through 30 April with renewals going out around 1 April. The building permit checklist requires a business licence for contractors and subcontractors before the permit issues, so this is not a formality that can be caught up later, and the permit application asks for the full subcontractor list with contact details. A job inside the city also sits under Pulaski County's separate occupational licence fee, so both apply to the same site. None of this is a competency licence: Kentucky issues no state contractor licence for residential general contracting and the city neither tests nor certifies a builder. The trades are licensed by the Commonwealth independently — electrical under KRS 227.450 to 227.530, plumbing under KRS Chapter 318, HVAC under KRS Chapter 198B — and DHBC assigns a state electrical, HVAC and plumbing inspector to Pulaski County regardless of what the city does.

My land is farmed. Does the agricultural exemption cover my house?

No, and this is where the exemption is most often misread. Somerset's zoning ordinance §4.13 does say that land used solely for agricultural, farming, dairying, stock-raising or similar purposes has no regulations imposed as to building permits, certificates of occupancy, height, yard, location or court requirements — but the words that follow are for agricultural buildings. A dwelling is not an agricultural building, and all other uses on that land are treated as conditional uses. Four conditions travel with the exemption even for a genuine farm building: no structure for feeding or sheltering animals or poultry within 100 feet of any dwelling or street, street and highway setback lines may still be required, nothing in the floodway and nothing in the 100-year floodplain that would raise flood heights or obstruct flow, and no use that violates the city's nuisance ordinance. Kentucky's separate building-code exemption for a farm dwelling is narrower still and does not help you here — it reaches a dwelling on a PVA-registered farm of ten contiguous acres located outside city limits, which by definition excludes anything inside Somerset. So a barndominium you intend to live in needs a city permit, plan review, inspections and a certificate of occupancy, whatever the surrounding land is used for. The word barndominium does not change what the building is.

What about sinkholes, radon and flooding on a Somerset lot?

All three are live questions and only one of them is regulated. The Kentucky Geological Survey names Somerset itself as one of three cities in its Eastern Pennyroyal karst area, and publishes a printable karst groundwater basin sheet for the Somerset quadrangle, so sinkholes are a specific local design question rather than a regional generality. Check the parcel against the KGS Karst Potential Index viewer before you commit, and expect the health department's site evaluation to be the thing that rules ground in or out — 902 KAR 10:085 makes an area unsuitable within seventy feet of an open sinkhole throat, anywhere downslope of the sinkhole sideslope midpoint, or where it is subject to flooding damage. Radon is the same geology seen again: EPA maps Pulaski as one of only thirty Kentucky counties in radon Zone 1, its highest predicted class, and the Kentucky Residential Code adopts appendices K, R and S but not Appendix F, Radon Control Methods, so nothing requires radon-resistant construction anywhere in the state. A passive sub-slab rough-in is inexpensive while the slab is open. Flooding is the regulated one. Somerset participates in the National Flood Insurance Program as CID 210199 on a current effective map dated 22 July 2010, the zoning ordinance establishes a Flood Plain District by that federal map with buildings approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission, and on top of the city approval Kentucky requires a state Division of Water floodplain permit for construction in the base floodplain under KRS 151.250 and 401 KAR 4:060 §2, on form DOW 7116.

Building in Somerset?

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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