City of Knoxville Plans Review and Inspections

City of Knoxville, Tennessee

city

Knoxville, TN

Required

Required

Knoxville building permits are administered through the One-Stop Permit Shop at the City-County Building and through the city's online permit portal at permits.knoxvilletn.gov. Permit applicants must first hold a City of Knoxville permit-puller registration appropriate to the type of work; see registration_details. Jurisdiction check before applying: work inside the Knoxville city limits is permitted by City of Knoxville Plans Review and Inspections under the city's 2024 I-Codes, while work in unincorporated Knox County is permitted by Knox County Codes Administration & Enforcement under the county's separately adopted amendments to the 2018 IRC. The two are different authorities applying different code editions.

CITY-SET, NOT STATE-GOVERNED. The City of Knoxville adopts its own construction codes by ordinance under its local-enforcement exemption from the state residential program. Knoxville's currently adopted residential code is the 2024 International Residential Code, adopted as part of the city's 2024 I-Code update package by Ordinance O-125-2024 (adopted 2024-10-29, effective 2025-01-01), which covers Knoxville Code of Ordinances ch. 6, art. II (Building Code), art. IIA (Residential Building Code) and art. IIC (Existing Building Code), together with the companion ordinances O-126-2024 (2023 National Electrical Code) and O-145-2024 (fire prevention codes), both also effective 2025-01-01. The prior adoption, which the Municode-hosted Code of Ordinances text still reflects, was the 2018 IRC with Appendices E, F, H, K, Q, R and S, adopted by Ordinance O-182-2018 effective 2018-11-20; Municode's codified text lags the 2024 ordinance. NOTE THE STATE/CITY DIVERGENCE: Tennessee's statewide residential standard is the 2018 IRC (Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 0780-02-23), one full cycle behind Knoxville. Because Knoxville is locally exempt from the state program, the 2024 IRC -- not the state's 2018 IRC -- is the operative edition inside the city limits, and Knox County's separately adopted amendments to the 2018 IRC apply only outside them.

Required — The City of Knoxville adopts the 2024 IRC as part of its 2024 I-Code update package, Ordinance No. O-125-2024 (effective 2025-01-01). The city's own amendment section, Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-42 (Article IIA, Residential Building Code, Amendments), read there in full, does not touch Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies, so the base 2024 IRC drip-edge provision, IRC Section R905.2.8.5, applies unmodified in Knoxville. About drip edge

Not required — Table R301.2(1) of the City of Knoxville's Residential Building Code amendments (Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-42, current through Ordinance No. O-125-2024, the same ordinance that adopted the 2024 IRC) lists "Ice Barrier Underlayment Required" as "No" for the city. No separate ice-barrier provision appears elsewhere in the city's local amendments. About ice & water barrier

Not required — The City of Knoxville's Fast Fact Guides page (read in full -- its complete run of topics, from Building Code Modification Requests through EV Permitting), its Inspections scheduling page, its Permits and Inspection Information page, and its Register To Pull A Permit page were all read. None of them describes a required mid-roof, in-progress, or dry-in inspection for roofing or reroofing work. The Fast Fact Guides page's "Third-Party Inspections for IRC Residential Projects" entry points generally to IRC Section R109, Inspections, for third-party inspection eligibility, but names no roofing-specific or mid-progress inspection type, and the Inspections and Permits and Inspection Information pages describe only general inspection-request and scheduling functionality without listing inspection types by trade or stage.

Not required — The City of Knoxville's codified local amendments to the 2024 IRC (Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-42, current through Ordinance No. O-125-2024) amend only Chapter 1 (Scope and Administration), Chapter 3 (Building Planning, including Table R301.2(1)), and the energy efficiency chapter; no provision in Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies, is touched. No UL 2218 or Class 4 impact-rating requirement appears among the city's local amendments.

CITY-SPECIFIC, AND ITS SOURCE HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN. The City of Knoxville's "Building Permits -- What is a Building Permit?" fast-facts guide treated roofing as permit-exempt in one narrow case only: roofing where the first layer of shingles is kept intact and a second layer is added -- i.e. a single shingle-over on an intact first layer needed no permit -- while any other roofing work, including the ordinary tear-off and replacement, required a permit. PROVENANCE NOTE (2026-08-22): that guide was published as a PDF on the City's former CivicLive site and did not survive the migration to the Granicus permits portal. Its Fast Fact Guides index is live and lists "Residential Permit Requirements" among its topics, but no live City page states the shingle-over exemption, and nothing in the adopted 2024 IRC creates it -- it was a local interpretation. The exemption is therefore recorded here as the City's last published position, not as a currently verifiable one.

Per Table R301.2(1), Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria, as codified in the City of Knoxville Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-42 (Article IIA, Residential Building Code, Amendments), last amended by Ordinance No. O-125-2024 (the same ordinance that adopted the 2024 IRC): the wind design speed is 90 mph, with topographic effects, special wind region, and windborne debris zone all marked "No." The same table shows a 10 psf ground snow load, Seismic Design Category C, severe weathering, a 12-inch frost line depth, moderate-to-heavy termite risk, a 19 degrees F winter design temperature, and confirms no ice barrier underlayment is required (consistent with the ice-and-water-shield finding elsewhere in this record). The table does not assign a single jurisdiction-wide exposure category.

The City of Knoxville adopts the 2024 IRC as part of its 2024 I-Code update package, Ordinance No. O-125-2024 (effective 2025-01-01). The city's own amendment section, Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-42 (Article IIA, Residential Building Code, Amendments), read there in full, amends only Chapter 1 (Scope and Administration -- renaming the enforcement agency, liability, demolition-delay and permit-fee provisions), Chapter 3 (Building Planning -- Table R301.2(1) climatic and geographic design criteria, Section 309, and the smoke-alarm provision at R314.6), and the energy-efficiency chapter (Sections N1102 and N1103). It does not touch Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies, or any roof-covering or reroofing provision. So the base 2024 IRC provision on roof layer limits, IRC Section R908.3, applies unmodified in Knoxville. Base-code rule, read at 2024 IRC Section R908.4 (Roof recover), Exceptions and quoted here rather than left behind the ICC paywall: a roof recover "shall not be permitted" where "the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering" (nor where the existing covering is water soaked or deteriorated, or is slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement tile). One existing layer may therefore be recovered; a second existing layer forces tear-off to the deck.

The City of Knoxville adopts the 2024 IRC as part of its 2024 I-Code update package, Ordinance No. O-125-2024 (effective 2025-01-01). The city's own amendment section, Code of Ordinances Sec. 6-42 (Article IIA, Residential Building Code, Amendments), read there in full, amends only Chapter 1 (Scope and Administration), Chapter 3 (Building Planning -- Table R301.2(1), Section 309, and Section R314.6), and the energy-efficiency chapter (Sections N1102 and N1103). It does not touch Chapter 8, Roof-Ceiling Construction, where the base IRC's roof sheathing provisions live, or Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies. So the base 2024 IRC provisions on roof deck sheathing, IRC Section R803, apply unmodified in Knoxville.

Knoxville's combined general sales and use tax rate is 9.25%: the Tennessee state rate of 7.00% plus the Knox County local option rate of 2.25%. The City of Knoxville levies no separate municipal sales tax and there is no special-district add-on, so the rate a roofing contractor pays on materials purchased in Knoxville is the same 9.25% that applies throughout Knox County. Knox County carries no local-option surcharge on top of its base 2.25% rate, unlike Davidson County (Nashville), which added a 0.5% transit-improvement surcharge in 2025. Tennessee's authoritative published source for the local component is the Department of Revenue's Local Sales Tax Rates Map, which gives each county's local rate with effective dates, FIPS and situs codes; the 2.25% Knox County figure and the 9.25% combined figure above are as reported for 2026.