Montgomery County, Tennessee - Building and Codes Department

Montgomery County, Tennessee (outside Clarksville city limits)

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Clarksville, TN

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This office permits the unincorporated county only. A job inside the city limits of Clarksville goes to the City, not to the County, and this reference holds a separate record for Clarksville - check which side of the city line an address falls on before applying anything in this record. The County publishes its permit types and an adopted fee schedule separately from the codes page. The Building Commissioner or a designee has a right of entry "upon any premises in Montgomery County at any reasonable time for the purpose of making inspections of buildings or premises necessary to carry out his duties."

The County publishes its adopted codes as the 2018 International Building Code, 2018 International Residential Code, 2018 International Plumbing Code, 2018 International Mechanical Code, 2018 International Fire Code and 2018 International Fuel and Gas Code, together with the 2018 International Energy Conservation Code with amendments. The County records the adopting act and its commencement: "On October 12, 2020, the Resolution to adopt the 2018 IBC, IRC, IPC, IFGC, IEC, IPMC, as well as the 2009 ICC/ANSI A117.1 Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facility Code was passed. The effective date of the 2018 edition of the International Codes Resolution will take effect and be enforced beginning January 1, 2021." A copy is available for public view at the County Clerk's Office and the Building and Codes Office. Montgomery County sits exactly at the Tennessee statewide minimum, which is the 2018 International Residential Code; the state scheme bars a local government from adopting standards less stringent than that minimum and requires its adopted edition to be within seven years of the latest published.

NOT PUBLISHED FOR ROOFING, and worth one call before bidding rather than an assumption in either direction. Montgomery County publishes a list headed "Permit Types Issued by Building and Codes" and roofing is not on it. What the list does include is: "Building Permits - for single family homes with basements/garages, detached garages, additions, swimming pools (inground and above ground), mobile homes, barns/sheds/utility buildings, renovations, fire restoration," together with separate barrier, pool, fireworks tent, sign, deck, communication tower, commercial, plumbing, mechanical and demolition permits. THE WORD THAT MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT CARRY A REROOF IS RENOVATIONS, AND THE COUNTY DOES NOT SAY WHICH. It matters because Tennessee gives that word a defined meaning at state level that squarely includes roofing: Tenn. Comp. R. and Regs. 0780-02-23-.01(1)(j) defines renovation as "interior or exterior painting, papering, tiling, carpeting, cabinet installation, counter top installation, reroofing, residing, glazing or replacing windows or doors ... repairs to existing chimneys, stairs, porches, underpinnings, exterior siding or roof and similar activities." But that definition governs the STATE residential permit scheme, which expressly excludes renovation from the "construction" its permit requirement attaches to - so at state level a reroof needs no permit, and a county running its own permit programme is free to use the word differently. This record therefore does not assert whether a re-roof needs a permit in unincorporated Montgomery County. It also does not read the silence as an exemption: an enumeration that names many kinds of work and omits roofing is evidence of nothing either way. Contact the Building and Codes Department before starting, and note that the office is closed every Friday.

Two layers maximum - one overlay is permitted, and a second existing layer requires a tear-off. Montgomery County adopts the 2018 International Residential Code by its Resolution 20-10-6, passed and approved October 12, 2020 -- read in full (all four pages, rasterized and OCR'd, since the County's own published copy is a scanned/image PDF with no text layer). The Resolution's own amendment list touches Section R101.1 (inserts "Montgomery County, Tennessee"), Table R301.2(1) (climatic and geographic design criteria, see wind_design_criteria), Section R313 (Automatic Fire Sprinkler Systems, deleted entirely), Section R314.6 (a smoke-alarm interconnection exception), Section R807 (a new attic-access subsection), the N1102/N1103 energy tables, Section P2603.5.1, and Chapters 34 through 43 (Electrical, deleted entirely). No provision in Chapter 9, Roof Assemblies, is amended -- the OCR'd text was searched for "Chapter 9," "roof," and every section number from 905 through 909, with and without the "R" prefix, and none appears anywhere in the Resolution. So the base 2018 International Residential Code text governs unmodified. Section R908.3.1.1 of the 2018 International Residential Code provides that a roof recover shall not be permitted where any of three conditions occur, the third being "where the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering." One existing layer may be recovered; a second forces removal. The other two conditions apply whatever the layer count: a covering that is water soaked or has deteriorated to the point that it is not an adequate base for additional roofing, and a covering of slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement tile. TENNESSEE PUTS A FLOOR UNDER THIS THAT IS WORTH KNOWING: the statewide minimum for one- and two-family dwellings is the 2018 International Residential Code, and Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0780-02-23-.12(2) provides that "no city, county, town, municipal corporation, metropolitan government, or political subdivision of the State of Tennessee shall adopt or enforce any ordinance prescribing less stringent standards ... than those established hereunder" without the state fire marshal's written approval. A Tennessee jurisdiction may therefore be stricter than the two-layer rule but cannot be more permissive than it.

9.50% in Montgomery County - the 7% Tennessee state sales tax plus the 2.50% local tax levied by the county. Tennessee sets the state rate and lets each county or incorporated city levy its own local tax on top: the Department of Revenue states that "any county or incorporated city, by resolution or ordinance, may levy the local sales and use tax on the same privileges that are subject to the state's sales or use tax," and that "the local tax rate may not be higher than 2.75% and must be a multiple of .25." THAT CAP IS WHY A CITY RATE IS NOT ADDED TO ITS COUNTY RATE: several Tennessee cities levy the full 2.75% while sitting in a county that levies less, and stacking the two would exceed the statutory maximum. Where an incorporated city has its own rate, that rate is the local rate inside the city; where it has none, the county rate applies. The figures here are from the Department of Revenue's own machine-readable rate file for the third quarter of 2026, which the Department publishes for use in tax calculation applications. Montgomery County is one of the few Tennessee counties in this reference that levies neither the statutory maximum nor one of the common lower figures: its 2.50% sits between them. The rate here is the county rate because it is the unincorporated county that this office permits; the City of Clarksville is a separate jurisdiction and a job inside the city limits should be checked against the city's own entry rather than assumed to match.