Home Remodeling Contractors in University Place, WA

The city asks for a permit whenever a building is built, enlarged, altered, repaired or demolished, and whenever an electrical, gas, mechanical or plumbing system is installed, altered or replaced. That covers most kitchen and bathroom remodels. Applications and permit documents go to Planning and Development Services by email, and the department encourages sending preliminary plans early so code conflicts surface before the full set is drawn. For larger projects it holds a weekly Technical Review Committee meeting.

A residential submittal usually includes the application, a scaled site plan showing property lines, easements, existing and proposed structures and street frontages, construction drawings and, where the design calls for them, engineered drawings, calculations and a geotechnical report. A project that creates more than 2,000 square feet of new hard surface also needs small project drainage review, and any change after submittal goes in with a building revision form.

Inspections for building, plumbing and mechanical work are requested by phone or email; a request made before 3 p.m. is scheduled for the next business day. The approved plans and inspection card must be on site and the address posted, or the inspection is not performed. Electrical inspections are booked with Tacoma Power and sewer inspections with Pierce County. The city does not publish plan review times on these pages, so we set your start date once its first review comes back.

University Place adopted its current Shoreline Master Program in March 2015, and the Department of Ecology gave final approval that April; a periodic review was adopted in July 2018. The program sorts the shore into environments. Day Island and Sunset Beach, the two waterfront residential neighborhoods, are Shoreline Residential. The marinas, yacht club and mixed uses along the Day Island waterway are Day Island Medium Intensity. The homes backing onto the railroad right of way along the Sound, the Chambers Creek Properties and Kobayashi Park fall in Urban Conservancy, and most of the Chambers Creek channel is Natural.

Each environment has its own limits. In Shoreline Residential a 25 foot vegetation conservation area runs inland from the high water mark, although Sunset Beach, the South Spit and Day Island homes already built within 10 feet of the water are exempt from restoring it. Day Island lots may cover 35 percent with hard surfaces, or 40 percent with vegetation restored, and Sunset Beach lots 50 or 55 percent on the same terms. Homes may reach 35 feet on Day Island and at Sunset Beach and 30 feet on the South Spit, with accessory buildings held to 15 feet.

Some work inside shoreline jurisdiction can proceed as exempt, but clearing, filling, excavation, docks, shore stabilization and anything in a critical area or its buffer still needs a letter of exemption from the city before it starts.

The city sits on a rolling plateau that climbs from sea level to about 430 feet, with steep slopes dropping to Puget Sound on the west and into Chambers Creek Canyon on the south. Most of the ground is glacial deposit, including dense till that builders call hard pan, and the city's own plan warns that slopes over 15 percent, where till lies under well drained soil, can fail when water is present.

When a geotechnical report is needed, the code sets what goes in it: a contour map at one inch to 20 feet with slopes split into 15 to 29 percent and 30 percent or more, boring logs, groundwater levels and their seasonal change, the site's history of grading or slides, and setback recommendations. A report written for the same site in the last five years can be reused if nothing has changed. On slopes of 100 percent or steeper, where a porous layer sits over a tight one, no structure or clearing is allowed at all.

The city is in Seismic Design Category D1 for houses built under the residential code. It also gets about 39 inches of rain a year, two thirds of it between October and March, which is why we time excavation and exterior work around the drier months where the schedule allows.

Chapter 19.70 of the city code allows up to two ADUs with a detached house, but only one detached unit on a lot smaller than its zone's minimum lot size. A unit may be attached, a separate cottage or part of an accessory building such as a carriage unit over a garage, and it may not exceed 1,000 square feet. Inside the side or rear setback a detached ADU keeps 5 feet from the side and rear lines and 5 feet from the house, stays at or under 24 feet to the ridge and 10 feet at the top plate, and a carriage unit's ground footprint stays within 600 square feet. Only one detached ADU may use those reduced setbacks.

No off-street parking is required within half a mile walking distance of a major transit stop. Elsewhere the code asks for one space per ADU on lots of 6,000 square feet or less and two on larger lots. Before the building permit issues, the owner records a notice on the title with the Pierce County Auditor.

The city's plan traces its housing to the Menlo Park lots of 1889, Sunset Beach, subdivided in 1933, and Soundview Drive in 1939. Building took off in the mid 1950s, the south central and southwestern neighborhoods filled in from the 1950s through the early 1980s, and planned developments followed in the southeast and along Chambers Creek Road in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey puts the median year built at 1981. The 1970s were the busiest single decade, and just under half of all homes predate 1980. About 54 percent are detached single-family houses. A house from those decades can hold original wiring, aging supply lines and thin insulation behind the walls, and we allow for that in the written estimate from the start.