Custom home builder serving Chowchilla, California

A small city with its own permit counter

Chowchilla incorporated in 1923, and being a city rather than a county community changes who you deal with. Inside the city limits, the Chowchilla Planning and Building Division at City Hall on South 2nd Street reviews the plans and issues the permit, and the city accepts a permit application and a complete plan set by email, by mail, or over the counter.

It is worth knowing that the city's own guidance treats remodel work seriously: permits are called for on remodeling as well as new construction, in many cases on repairing or replacing existing features such as windows, and separately for plumbing, electrical, or mechanical changes to an existing system. We scope those in from the beginning so nothing shows up as a surprise at inspection.

Past the city limits, the rules change hands

Much of the ground people describe as Chowchilla is actually outside the city, in unincorporated northern Madera County, and so are the smaller communities scattered around it. On those parcels plan check and inspections run through the County's Building Division rather than City Hall, and water and waste are permitted through Madera County Environmental Health: a well construction permit for the well, and a septic permit that depends on a percolation test before the system can be sized.

Settling that one question, city or county, is the first thing we do on a Chowchilla property, because it decides the reviewers, the fees, and the sequence for everything after it.

Building on orchard and ranch ground

Chowchilla sits at about 240 feet on flat valley floor, and the practical work of a rural build there is everything that happens before the house. A well and a septic field. A power run that can be long enough to matter. A driveway and turnaround that a concrete truck and a lumber delivery can actually use. Drainage across ground that does not slope much on its own.

We have drilled wells and set homes on parcels like these, and the reason we insist on pricing that work up front rather than as an allowance is simple: on acreage, that is where a budget moves after the fact if nobody looked at it first.

• Well siting and a well construction permit through County Environmental Health
• Septic design sized off a percolation test, permitted separately
• Utility runs and service drops priced from the actual parcel, not a guess
• All weather access for concrete, lumber, and equipment deliveries

Same county, same crews, same inspectors

Because Chowchilla is in Madera County with us, your job runs with the same crews and the same subcontractors as the homes we build in Madera itself, and the county side of the process is one we are in every week rather than once a year.

Every job runs under CSLB #1095957, licensed, bonded, and insured, and Nick and Courtney Salinas stay on the project throughout. Nick also holds DRE #02054090, which helps if you are still choosing between two parcels.