Home Remodeling Contractors in Pacific, WA

The City of Pacific runs its own building department on both sides of the King and Pierce county line. It issues building, mechanical and plumbing permits, reviews the plans and sends its own inspector to the site, working from the International Residential Code and International Existing Building Code as adopted and amended by the state. Building and land use applications go in through SmartGov, the city's online permit portal, where drawings and supporting documents are uploaded. Electrical permits are not the city's: they come from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries.

Pacific's code says an application must be signed by the owner of record, or by an agent carrying the owner's verified written authorization, which is how we file on your behalf. For project permit applications, the city has 28 days to say whether a submission is complete or to list exactly what is missing. Inspections happen on Wednesdays and Fridays between noon and 2 p.m.; requests go to the city by email and must arrive by 3 p.m. the business day before.

Pacific grew on the valley floor of the White/Stuck River, which the comprehensive plan puts at an average of about 70 feet above sea level, and the city incorporated in 1909. In January 2009 the river flooded along its right bank and hit the White River Estates neighborhood, homes along 3rd and 4th Avenues and Pacific Park, according to the King County Flood Control District. Temporary HESCO barriers went up after that flood, and across the channel the Countyline Levee Setback, finished in 2017, reconnected 1.3 miles of the lower White River to its historical floodplain.

The adopted 2020 flood maps govern a remodel. The plan also notes that the river's flood fringe is Pacific's main aquifer recharge area.

Pacific's comprehensive plan is direct about the ground. A lahar from Mount Rainier covered the Pacific area roughly 500 years ago, and citing a U.S. Geological Survey study, the plan says the city has one of the highest shares of population and assets in the mountain's lahar zone. It also lists river bottom soils prone to liquefaction and glacial till on the steep slopes among the reasons the city carries significant seismic hazard.

The municipal code defines seismic hazard areas as land where loose or soft saturated soils over a shallow water table can settle or liquefy in an earthquake. For a foundation, an addition or an ADU, that is a question for the structural design and the soils information the city may ask for, so it is answered before the drawings are final.

Pacific amended its accessory dwelling unit chapter in 2025. An ADU is allowed in the RS residential zones on the same lot as a larger principal house, attached to it or detached, and may have up to 1,000 square feet and a height of 25 feet. It has to keep the look of the house, matching its color, roof pitch, siding and windows.

Parking is the detail owners miss: an ADU on a lot of 6,000 square feet or less needs one off-street space, and a larger lot needs two, on top of the spaces the house already requires. The application calls for scaled plans, elevations of both units, and any water courses, wetlands or rockeries on the lot, and utility connection charges are counted per dwelling unit.

The median Pacific home was built in 1987, according to the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, and the 2000s were the busiest decade, with nearly a quarter of today's homes. A little over one in five predates 1970, much of it in the historic town site north of the county line, which the plan describes as mainly single-family.

About 63 percent of Pacific's homes are detached houses, and a little under six in ten occupied homes are lived in by their owners. A house from the 1980s or 1990s usually needs its kitchen, bathrooms and finishes updated together, and we price that scope line by line in writing before anything starts.