Barndominium Builders in Horry County, SC

Also worth knowing before you build in Horry County

More than half the county's mapped soil is poorly or very poorly drained

A query run against the USDA soil survey for Horry County (survey area SC051) returns, across the 721,803 acres the survey classifies by drainage, 257,920 acres rated poorly drained (35.7 percent) and 145,427 acres very poorly drained (20.1 percent) — 55.8 percent of the county between them — against 82,956 acres well drained, 11.5 percent. The dominant components tell the same story by name: Johnston 51,125 acres, Woodington 44,411, Pocomoke 38,889, Ogeechee 38,823, and the Leon spodosol at 36,614 acres, whose cemented spodic horizon perches water above it. On this ground the winter water table sits close to the surface, and two decisions follow from that rather than from the house design. The first is pad height: how much fill goes under the slab is the foundation decision on a flatwoods parcel, not a detail. The second is septic. S.C. Regulation 61-56 sets site suitability from soil morphology — texture, restrictive horizons and depth to the zone of saturation — not from a percolation test, and § 61-56.200.7 requires a usable repair area of at least 50 percent of the original system on soil proven suitable. The parcel has to hold the system, its full setback envelope and a proven reserve, all of it above the seasonal water table. Get the evaluation before you close.

USDA-NRCS Soil Data Access, survey area SC051 (Horry County, South Carolina), tabular query posted to https://SDMDataAccess.sc.egov.usda.gov/Tabular/post.rest 5 Sep 2026, aggregating component drainage class and component acreage by map unit; S.C. Regulation 61-56, Onsite Wastewater Systems, §§ 61-56.102, 61-56.200, https://des.sc.gov/sites/des/files/Library/Regulations/R.61-56.pdf ; SCDES Professional Soil Classifiers, https://des.sc.gov/permits-regulations/septic-tanks/professional-soil-classifiers

Zoned countywide since 17 April 2001 — and the FA district is where the acreage is

Horry County's Planning and Zoning department states it flatly: "The entire county has been zoned as of April 17, 2001." There is no unzoned remainder to hope for. The district carrying the inland acreage is Forest Agriculture (FA), intended by the ordinance "for agriculture, forestry, and low-density: residential, commercial, social, cultural, recreational, and religious uses," with Limited Forest Agriculture (LFA) and Commercial Forest Agriculture (CFA) either side of it and Rural Estates (RE) for family farms. In FA, Table 2-1 sets a single-family dwelling at a minimum half acre (21,780 square feet), 40-foot front, 10-foot side, 15-foot rear, 15-foot corner side, 35-foot maximum height and 90 feet of lot width at the building setback line; a non-commercial personal use building takes a 60-foot front instead; an agricultural building for farm animals needs an acre and a half and a 60/25/40 envelope. Two more rules bite on rural parcels. Section 205.B.1, added by Ord. No. 24-2024, forbids any structure within 60 feet of the right-of-way of a named list of roads that covers most of the county's rural spine — Highways 19, 31 (Red Bluff Road), 57, 90, 319, 378, 701, 905, 917, Highway 9 Business, Highway 9 from the Marion County line to Highway 90, Nichols Highway, Hardwick Road off Highway 501 and Pee Dee Highway. And Section 404 requires at least 50 feet of frontage on a street for any newly created lot. A rezoning application runs $250 and the process takes 90 to 120 days.

Horry County Current Planning & Zoning, https://www.horrycountysc.gov/departments/planning-and-zoning/current-planning-zoning/ (read 5 Sep 2026); Horry County Zoning Ordinance §§ 205.B.1 (Ord. No. 24-2024, § 2, 1 Apr 2024), 404, Article II district intents and Table 2-1, https://www.horrycountysc.gov/media/i0pfcm2o/appendix-b-zoning-ordinance-upated-912026.pdf

The permit is priced by the square foot, and it expires in six months

Horry County does not price a residential permit off your contract. Its published schedule charges a plan review fee of twenty cents per square foot when plans are submitted, and, if the plans are approved, fifty cents per square foot when the permit is issued, with a minimum of fifty dollars plus a twenty-five dollar zoning fee. A plan revision is twenty-five dollars. A manufactured home permit is a flat one hundred fifty dollars plus zoning fees. Separately, no permit is valid at all without a certificate of zoning compliance: Section 106 of the zoning ordinance says no building or structure may be erected, moved, added to or structurally altered without one, and no building permit issued for construction in the ordinance's jurisdictional area is valid unless the Zoning Administrator has approved it. Section 109 then puts a clock on it — if the work described in a building permit has not begun within six months of issue, the permit expires and is cancelled. The Planning and Zoning counter is at 1301 Second Avenue, Conway.

Horry County Code Enforcement, "Cost of a Building Permit," https://www.horrycountysc.gov/departments/code-enforcement/permits/building-permit/cost-of-a-building-permit/ (read 5 Sep 2026); Horry County Zoning Ordinance §§ 106, 109, https://www.horrycountysc.gov/media/i0pfcm2o/appendix-b-zoning-ordinance-upated-912026.pdf ; department address from https://www.horrycountysc.gov/departments/planning-and-zoning/current-planning-zoning/

The beachfront baseline and setback line, how they are set, and how often they move

If the parcel you are looking at is on the ocean side of Highway 17, a second regulator sits above the county. S.C. Code § 48-39-280 requires the department to establish a baseline that parallels the shoreline for each standard erosion zone and each inlet erosion zone; for a standard zone the baseline is "established at the location of the crest of the primary oceanfront sand dune in that zone." The setback line is then drawn landward of the baseline "a distance which is forty times the average annual erosion rate or not less than twenty feet from the baseline for each erosion zone." Both lines "must be established anew during establishment cycles that are not less than every seven years, but not more than every ten years following a previous establishment cycle," and until new lines are established for an area the existing ones apply. Two consequences a buyer feels directly. Under § 48-39-290(A) no new construction is allowed seaward of the baseline at all, bar a short list of walkways, small decks, piers and dune work. Between the baseline and the setback line, § 48-39-290(B)(1)(a)(i) allows a new habitable structure only if it "is no larger than five thousand square feet of heated space" and is "located as far landward on the property as practicable." And § 48-39-330 requires a contract of sale for property seaward of the setback line to carry a disclosure statement naming the lines and the local erosion rate. SCDES is currently running a phased re-establishment: a schedule was released 30 January 2024 for a review running between 2024 and 2028, with the first group of lines — Daufuskie, Hilton Head, Bay Point, St. Phillips, Little Capers, Pritchards, Fripp, Hunting and Harbor islands, all in Beaufort County — established and in effect as of 24 July 2026, and the greater Charleston and greater Edisto areas following in Phase II.

S.C. Code §§ 48-39-280, 48-39-290 and 48-39-330, served text read at https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t48c039.php 5 Sep 2026; SCDES Bureau of Coastal Management, State Beachfront Jurisdictional Lines, https://des.sc.gov/programs/bureau-coastal-management/beachfront-management/state-beachfront-jurisdictional-lines (page HTML fetched and the review-schedule section read 5 Sep 2026)

South Carolina's karst is small, Coastal Plain, and one of its named pockets is in this county

Sinkholes are a Blue Ridge and Valley-and-Ridge worry in most states; in South Carolina they are not, because the Upstate is crystalline rock that does not dissolve. What karst the State has is a limestone phenomenon of the middle and lower Coastal Plain, mapped in a handful of discrete places on SCDNR's Geologic Hazards of the South Carolina Coastal Plain — and one of them is here. The map's reference list cites Hockensmith, B.L., and Pelletier, A.M., 1987, "Investigation of sinkhole occurrences at Goretown, near Loris, South Carolina," South Carolina Water Resources Commission Open-File Report 11, 31 p. Goretown is a Horry County place, a few miles from Loris, in exactly the part of the county where the inland acreage is. The hazard sheet's legend carries the categories Potential for Collapse, Potential for Sinkholes, Known Sinkhole Occurrences and Limestone Cave, and it prints a photograph captioned as a cover-collapse sinkhole in Horry County. Read the map's own limits before anyone quotes it at you: SCDNR states the information "should not be used for land-use zoning, building-code requirements, or defining insurance rate zones," and that hazard potential "should be evaluated through site-specific geotechnical investigation by qualified practitioners." It screens a parcel around Loris and Green Sea; it does not decide one. What decides one is a walk for closed depressions and, if anything flags, a geotechnical investigation before the slab is designed.

SCDNR Geological Survey, Geologic Hazards page and its reference list naming Hockensmith and Pelletier (1987), https://www.dnr.sc.gov/geology/geologic-hazards.html (read 5 Sep 2026 — the linked Open-File Report 11 PDF at hydrology.dnr.sc.gov returns 404); SCDNR Geological Survey and SC Emergency Management Division, General Geologic Map Series 5, Geologic Hazards of the South Carolina Coastal Plain, 2012, 1:600,000, https://www.dnr.sc.gov/geology/pdfs/GGMS5.pdf

A barndominium is never a farm structure in South Carolina — and the ordinance keeps the two apart

S.C. Code § 6-9-65(A) defines a farm structure as one constructed on a farm "other than a residence or a structure attached to it," and adds that the term "does not include a structure originally qualifying as a 'farm structure' but later converted to another use." A barndominium is a residence, so it is outside the exemption from day one; the shop half of a shouse is outside it too, because it is attached to a residence; and putting up a pole barn under the exemption and finishing it into living space later pulls the whole building back under the code. § 6-9-65(C) also makes the exemption conditional on filing an affidavit with the local building official before construction, stating the purpose and intended use — it is not automatic. Horry County's zoning ordinance draws the same line from the land-use side without pretending it is a code exemption: Section 108 lets genuinely agricultural accessory structures — greenhouses, open sheds, tobacco and bulk barns, packhouses, electric water pump sheds "used in connection with a bona fide agriculture use" in the LFA, FA, CFA and AG districts — be shown on a plan without being drawn to scale, while still requiring them to meet the district's exterior setbacks. That is a drafting concession about site plans, in a zoning ordinance. It is not permission to live in the building.

S.C. Code § 6-9-65, served in full at https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t06c009.php (read 5 Sep 2026); Horry County Zoning Ordinance § 108, https://www.horrycountysc.gov/media/i0pfcm2o/appendix-b-zoning-ordinance-upated-912026.pdf