Building a geodesic dome in Greenlee County
What the county actually requires, who to call, and where people get caught out.
Green light
There is a real, usable path to building here without a full permit — but it has conditions, and they matter.
The only Arizona county with no residential building codes: permits are zoning/floodplain paperwork only, with zero plan review, zero inspections, and no C-of-O, making it the most permissive jurisdiction in the state for an owner-built dome (the trade-off being lenders/insurers may balk at uninspected structures).
- Building without a permit
- No square-footage exemption. There is no "small enough not to count" size in Greenlee County.
- Owner-builder opt-out
- Yes — one exists. Not an acreage-conditioned opt-out like Cochise's — it is county-wide and unconditional: Greenlee has adopted NO building codes, so there is no plan review, no construction inspection, and no certificate of occupancy at any size. You still file the paperwork (a Zoning Use Permit with a fee, a floodplain permit if applicable, and the building permit itself is then issued at no cost, some permits even issued by phone); the county engineer's official letter suggests owners voluntarily hire their own inspectors and build to a conservative code. The exemptSqFt of 0 means zoning paperwork nominally applies at any size — but code enforcement applies at no size.
- Who decides
- Greenlee County Planning & Zoning Office, in the County Engineer's office (253 Fifth St, 2nd Floor Annex, Clifton; Reed Larson, Engineer)
928-865-4762
County planning & development
Before you count on any of this
Call the office above and describe your actual build. Two things catch dome builders out in
every Arizona county, whatever the permit light says: septic is regulated by the
state regardless of what the county does about buildings, and no permit means no
certificate of occupancy — which usually means no conventional mortgage and no standard
homeowner's insurance, and a cash-buyers-only sale later.
Snow load is the other one. At elevation in Arizona it is a real engineering number, not a
formality — the calculator works it out for your site.
Work out your dome's struts, hubs and cost →
Other Arizona counties
This is a plain-English summary of published county rules, gathered for Tom
& Courtney's Desert Domes — it is not legal advice, and codes change. The county office
above is the authority; confirm with them before you buy materials.