Hondo, Texas metal buildings

Inside the limits, Development Services at 1600 Avenue M, 830-426-4737. Its construction permit application, revised in June 2025, goes in with the plans and the fees attached, the processing fee is not refunded, and every fee doubles if work begins before the permit issues. A permit lapses when the work has not started 180 days after issue, or sits idle for 180 days once under way, and nobody moves into the building until it passes a final inspection and gets its Certificate of Occupancy.

Hondo's code year is 2015. The Building Inspections page lists the 2015 International Building, Residential, Fire, Energy Conservation, Mechanical, Plumbing and Existing Building Codes, the 2015 Life Safety Code, the 2016 fire alarm code and the 2017 National Electrical Code, all adopted through Ordinance 1131-07-17. A designer used to newer editions should draw this building to those years.

Past the limits the picture changes twice. First comes a one-mile extraterritorial band where, by the city development guide, Hondo applies its subdivision rules; Texas law does not let a city require its own building permit out there, but where a development plat is required, no permit on the tract issues until the plat is approved. Beyond the city, Medina County names five required permits and none of them is a building permit, and its Fire Marshal page covers burn permits with no adopted fire code or commercial plan review (Medina County records, checked 2026-09-13). Read that as the county's own list, not as leave to skip septic, floodplain or driveway approval; the Medina County sheet has each office.

Checked at City of Hondo Development Services, construction permit application (revised June 2025), 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo Development Services, Building Inspections, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Development Guide, Chapter 3, platting, 2026-10-12.

Checked at Texas Legislature Online, Local Government Code Chapter 212, municipal regulation of subdivisions and property development, 2026-09-13.

Checked, and the item is not there. Checked at Medina County, What Type of Permits Are Required In Medina County?, 2026-09-13.

Checked, and the item is not there. Checked at Medina County, Emergency Management and Fire Marshall, 2026-09-13.

Yes, with a permit, and the checklists name no size small enough to skip one. The residential checklist opens with the rule that no building or accessory structure goes up inside the corporate limits, and no existing one is structurally altered or added to, until a building permit has issued. Even for a house lot it asks for two sets of plans, two copies of a site or plat plan drawn from a property survey, and two copies of a sealed engineered foundation plan with a geotechnical survey or soil test, plus a flood elevation certificate where one applies. The city reviews residential plans in about 10 to 15 business days.

Placement comes from the Unified Development Code as Ordinance 1205-07-19 rewrote it in July 2019. Garages, tool sheds and other utility buildings belong behind the front setback line. A carport, which the code defines as an open-sided structure with a roof on posts for parking an automobile, can sit as close as five feet to the front property line, and a detached carport keeps no set distance from the house or any other building on the lot. Attach either one to the house and it becomes part of the house, held to the house setbacks. No accessory building may be used for commercial purposes, so a shop that will run a business goes through the commercial process in the next section.

The setback for each zoning district lives in the Unified Development Code, so ask Development Services which district holds the lot before the site plan is drawn. Before any digging, the contractor stakes the property pins and outlines the building so the setbacks can be checked on the ground, and a new or widened driveway needs a city review and an inspection before the concrete or asphalt is placed. The building types are on detached garages and RV garages and metal shop buildings.

Checked at City of Hondo, Residential Construction Permit Checklist, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Ordinance 1205-07-19 (carports and accessory buildings, UDC sections 11.2 and 7.5), 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Development Guide, Chapter 5, residential building permits, 2026-10-12.

Zoning and the plat come first. The city requires every applicant to meet the Development Officer before filing anything, and its meeting agenda asks the owner to walk through building size, building materials and aesthetics, parking, drainage, landscaping, paving and delivery access. A use that needs a specific use permit or a zone change goes to a Planning and Zoning Commission hearing and then a City Council hearing, with letters to owners within 200 feet; the development guide puts a rezoning at about two months, and the fee schedule charges $500.00 for either request.

Then the checklist. The Non-Residential Permit Checklist asks for construction plans; site or plat plans showing setbacks, lot coverage, drainage, fire lanes and floodplains; a property survey with the legal description; a sealed engineered foundation plan with a geotechnical survey or soil test; an energy compliance report; a flood elevation certificate and an asbestos survey where they apply; and TDLR registration on a project over $50,000.00. Past 5,000 square feet of floor area, the mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans have to be sealed and engineered too. The general contractor or the owner files the building permit, a master electrician holding an electrical contractor license files the electrical permit, and a responsible master plumber holding a plumbing contractor license files the plumbing permit. The checklist calls for three copies of each set, while the development guide asks for two paper sets and an electronic one, so ask Development Services which count it takes now.

A third-party plan reviewer, joined by the City Engineers where needed, usually returns a complete set in 10 to 15 business days, and each resubmission starts that clock over. Every development files a drainage report, which can lead to required detention, and a site disturbing more than one acre adds a stormwater pollution prevention plan under the TCEQ general permit. The guide names a Highway 90 Corridor Overlay District and leaves its design criteria marked Reserved, so on a Highway 90 lot, ask about any overlay before the elevations are drawn. Registration is covered on TDLR registration for projects over $50,000, and the buildings on commercial steel buildings and warehouses and industrial buildings.

The fee follows the valuation, for everything except residential projects, which the city bills on a separate calculation. By this site arithmetic on the table below, a $250,000 commercial building carries a $1,833.75 construction permit fee and, at 65 percent of that, a $1,191.94 plan review fee, both normally collected when the permit issues. Fire code plan review and inspections bill at actual cost plus a five percent administrative fee, and the Fire Marshal safety inspection is $100.00.

Checked at City of Hondo, pre-application meeting agenda, 2026-10-12.

The guide names the overlay and publishes no criteria for it. Checked at City of Hondo, Development Guide, Chapter 6, overlay design criteria, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Non-Residential Permit Checklist (2020-01-16), 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Ordinance 1277-09-23, FY 2023/2024 Comprehensive Fee Schedule, 2026-10-12.

Checked at Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Architectural Barriers frequently asked questions, 2026-09-13.

Knippa clay, under most of the town. Running the NRCS soil survey against the Census Bureau city limits, this site finds Knippa clay beneath about 62 percent of Hondo, nearly all of it the level phase, and NRCS rates it very limited for small commercial buildings because it shrinks and swells. All told, about 77 percent of the mapped ground in the limits carries that very limited rating, about six percent rates somewhat limited, and about 16 percent rates not limited, the best of it Sabenyo clay loam, Valco clay loam and two Atco loam units. Two smaller clays, Monteola and Montell, bring a second reason onto the NRCS list: the risk of the ground sinking because of gypsum, alongside shrink-swell.

About 12 percent of the city is Divot clay loam mapped as occasionally or frequently flooded, with very brief floods of four to 48 hours listed from May through September. Those are the lots where the floodplain rows further down this page decide the order of work.

Hondo builds the soil question into the permit itself: the sealed foundation plan has to rest on a geotechnical survey or soil test, on a house lot and a commercial one alike. What the slab drawing and the anchor bolts need is on the slab and foundation sheet, and the dirt work before it on the pad grading and site prep sheet.

Checked at USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, soil survey of Medina County, Texas (SSURGO TX325, version of 2026-09-03), read through Soil Data Access against the Census Bureau Hondo city boundary, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Non-Residential Permit Checklist (2020-01-16), 2026-10-12.

The city runs most of it. Hondo's Utility Billing Department provides water, sewer, electric and garbage service inside the city limits and in parts of the ETJ, and the electric side is a city-owned distribution system that buys its wholesale power from City Public Service of San Antonio and serves more than 3,500 customers. The development guide also lists Medina Electric Co-op as an electric provider in the area and CenterPoint Energy for gas, so pin down which electric utility holds the address before the service is designed. Medina Electric charges a non-refundable $100 engineering fee before its site visit and quotes four to six weeks once a job is sent to construction.

A commercial account opens on an application signed in front of city staff or notarized, with ID and the deed or lease; the city lists deposits of $750 for commercial electric and $200 for commercial water, each adjusted for size, and $25 a meter to connect. On the fee schedule a new commercial electric service bills at actual cost plus a 10 percent planning fee, a temporary construction loop is $250.00, and a sewer tap runs $2,350 under five feet deep or $2,950 at five feet or more. New development that ties into city water also dedicates water rights sized to its projected demand, and where a plat is required, neither a building permit nor a utility connection comes until the plat is approved and filed with the County Clerk. Call Lone Star 811 at least two working days before any digging.

City water comes from deep wells in the Edwards Aquifer, Balcones Fault Zone, by the city's 2025 drinking water report. The TCEQ protection plan is a separate question, and inside the limits the map answers it: the TCEQ zone map puts none of the three regulated zones, recharge, transition or contributing, inside Hondo, and the nearest, the recharge zone to the north, lies about 4.4 miles from the closest city edge and about 5.8 miles from the Census Bureau interior point of the city. A lot farther out can still land on it, and there TCEQ wants an approved protection plan in hand before construction starts. The Edwards Aquifer Authority, which covers all of Medina County, takes a $25 permit application before a well is drilled into the aquifer. Zones and plan fees are on the Edwards Aquifer sheet, and service lines on the septic, water and electric sheet.

Checked at City of Hondo, Utilities, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo Public Works, Electric Division, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Development Guide, Chapter 4 and appendix, 2026-10-12.

Checked at Medina Electric Cooperative, start or stop service, 2026-09-13.

Checked at City of Hondo, commercial utility service agreement (2025), 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Ordinance 1277-09-23, FY 2023/2024 Comprehensive Fee Schedule, new service fees, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, 2025 Drinking Water Quality Report, 2026-10-12.

Checked at Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Edwards Aquifer regulated zones map service, queried against the Census Bureau TIGERweb Hondo city boundary, 2026-10-12.

Checked at Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Edwards Aquifer Protection Program, 2026-09-13.

Checked at Edwards Aquifer Authority, learn about the aquifer, 2026-09-13.

Checked at Edwards Aquifer Authority, well closure procedures and construction, 2026-09-13.

Inside the limits, a floodplain development permit and an elevation certificate go in with the building permit on any lot in a flood hazard area. The development guide is blunt about the regulatory floodplain and floodway: development there is prohibited unless a Texas-licensed engineer shows, through hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, that it would not raise flood levels anywhere in the community, and ground the city has flagged as a flood hazard can need a detailed study even where no floodplain is mapped yet. The city floodplain permit itself is $50 plus any consultant review fees.

Outside the limits, Medina County Environmental Health in Hondo, 830-741-6195, permits every septic system in the county, $200.00 conventional and $400.00 aerobic, and wants licensed individuals to design and install it; the same office takes the floodplain development permit at $45 and accepts only the 2020 FEMA maps. A driveway onto a county road goes through the Precinct Commissioner for that precinct, a lot with no public water registers a well through the Medina County Ground Water Conservation District, 830-741-3162, and a new address comes from county 911 addressing, 830-741-8997 (county records, checked 2026-09-13).

For a driveway connecting to a state highway, the permit is TxDOT Form 1058, filed with the San Antonio District at 210-615-1110, and right-of-way work waits for a fully executed permit and 24 hours of notice to TxDOT: the TxDOT and county driveway sheet.

Checked at City of Hondo, Development Guide, Chapter 5, floodplain development, 2026-10-12.

Checked at City of Hondo, Ordinance 1277-09-23, FY 2023/2024 Comprehensive Fee Schedule, 2026-10-12.

Checked at Texas Department of Transportation, access management manual, driveway permits, 2026-09-13.

Checked at Texas Department of Transportation, San Antonio District, 2026-09-13.

Checked at Medina County, What Type of Permits Are Required In Medina County?, 2026-09-13.

Checked at Medina County, Medina County Environmental Health Group, 2026-09-13.

Four answers move the first number more than the steel does: inside the limits or out, whether the use fits the zoning or needs a specific use permit, what the geotechnical report says about that Knippa clay, and how much of the parcel sits on mapped floodplain. A commercial quote that leaves out sealed MEP drawings on a building over 5,000 square feet, or the soil test the city asks for by name, is missing work the permit will require.

Each request from this page reaches one independent metal building contractor, who alone weighs whether to bid. No Texas agency licenses builders, a point the permit sheet for San Antonio and Bexar County covers, though Hondo's checklist still has a licensed master electrician and master plumber pull the trade permits. For a pole barn on acreage past the limits, see pole barns and post-frame buildings; the sequence from land to final inspection is laid out in the start-to-finish San Antonio guide.

Checked at Sunset Advisory Commission, Texas Residential Construction Commission; TDLR regulated industries list, 2026-09-13.

Checked at City of Hondo, Non-Residential Permit Checklist (2020-01-16), 2026-10-12.