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Ohio building history, hazards and the rules

Which building code a Central Ohio house was built under, and what the record can say

A year built does not name a building code. Ohio's own house code says why: a building is an existing building under an edition if the plans for it were approved before that edition took effect. What can be said, and is set out below, is which rules were in force in a jurisdiction between two dates, each from its own record: an ordinance and its passage date, a statute, the Board of Building Standards' adoption table, a rule's own prior effective dates. Columbus wrote a building code of its own in 1905, kept a house code of its own until 1999, and has incorporated the state's residential code since 2006; the Franklin County townships answer to the county, and all four suburbs read here adopt the state code as it stands rather than by year.

Last updated September 2026 · Ordinances read in the Columbus City Bulletin and the city's legislative record, the 1905 and 1911 codes in their own printings, and the Board of Building Standards' adoption table, certification list and jurisdiction map were read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

What this page can say, and what it cannot

Section 102.7 of the Residential Code of Ohio answers the question: buildings constructed in accordance with plans which have been approved prior to the effective date of the code are existing buildings under it. The plan approval settles which edition a house was built to, not the calendar, and this page has nobody's plan approval. It sets out which rules were in force in a jurisdiction between two dates, and stops.

Two more sections follow from that. Section 113.2 says a device or safeguard already installed shall be maintained in conformance with the code edition under which installed. Section 113.4 says additions or alterations shall conform with the requirements of the code, and that portions not altered and not affected by the alteration need not comply with the code for a new structure. An old house is not carried forward to a new edition by time alone, and new work in it is judged by today's code.

One document does name the edition. Section 111.3 lists what a certificate of occupancy must contain, and item 5 is the edition of the residential code under which the plan approval was issued; the Ohio Board of Building Standards' commentary adds that the rule's effective date can be used as the edition the project complied with. Columbus holds such records in its Department of Building and Zoning Services, whose records section takes requests for certificates of occupancy. Under the city's 1905 code the plans stayed in the custody of the inspector of buildings until the work was finished; today the approval is issued by a certified residential building department.

Neighboring pages own what this one crosses: the Columbus permit page, the incidents page for the events behind rules, the hazards page for the sections hazards trigger, the floods page for the works behind the flood maps, and the heating page for furnaces and chimneys.

JurisdictionPeriodThe rules the record shows in forceThe record that dates it
Ohio1911An act for public assembly buildings, no dwelling in its listThe act, passed May 31, 1911, in the 1914 printing
Ohio1955 to 2006A state code by rule, one-, two- and three-family dwellings exemptedThe Board of Building Standards' history
Ohio1979 to 2007The Ohio Basic Building Codes, twelve editions, none residentialThe Board's adoption table
OhioFrom May 27, 2006The Residential Code of Ohio, statewideThe rule's prior effective dates
ColumbusFrom January 1, 1906The city's own code: an inspector of buildings and a permitThe ordinance, passed November 23, 1905
Columbus1986 to 1999Title 41 named the 1984 BOCA ninth edition from 1986; by 1998 it named the 1993 BOCA twelfth edition instead, though no record dates that change; and from 1998 it named no edition at allOrdinances 2229-86 and 480-98
Columbus1999 to 2006The Ohio Building Officials Association's One-, Two- and Three-Family Dwelling CodeOrdinance 1404-99, June 21, 1999
ColumbusFrom 2006The Residential Code of Ohio by reference, with city additionsOrdinances 0733-2006 and 1140-2006
Franklin County townshipsTodayThe county permits houses and names the 2019 Residential Code of OhioThe county department's own page
Four suburbs read hereTodayThe state house code as it stands, as amended or in its current editionEach city's adopting section

Ohio's steps, 1911 to 2006

Ohio's first building code act was passed on May 31, 1911 and approved by the governor on June 14, 1911; the word first is the Board of Building Standards', from its own history. Its title reads as establishing a building code, regulating the construction of, repair of, alteration on and additions to public and other buildings, and its own list runs from opera houses, halls and theaters through churches and school-houses to armories and assembly halls. No dwelling appears in it.

The act left the cities alone, and that sentence outlived it. Its section 5 says the act does not modify or repeal any portions of any building code adopted by a municipal corporation and then in force. Ohio Revised Code section 3781.01 still says the state's building chapters do not modify or repeal any portion of any building code adopted by a municipal corporation and in force on September 13, 1911 that is not in direct conflict with them. The two repeat each other with the date fixed; nothing read here says why that date.

The Board of Building Standards says the legislature authorized a state building code by administrative rule in 1955, named the Board as the responsible agency, and specifically exempted 1-, 2-, 3-family dwellings and agricultural buildings. Central Ohio house rules stayed local for about fifty years as a result; the decades that exemption shaped are on the page about who shaped Central Ohio houses. The Board adopted the model codes of the Building Officials and Code Administrators International as the Ohio Basic Building Codes on September 29, 1978, effective July 1, 1979, and says those were replaced by the International Code Council family from the mid 1990s into the early 2000s, dating the change for Ohio at March 1, 1998 for mechanical and plumbing and January 1, 2002 for building.

Two records cover this ground and do not end together: the Board's table of twelve editions stops at July 1, 2007, while the administration rule of the Ohio Building Code carries prior effective dates beginning July 7, 1969. Revised Code section 3781.06 defines a residential building as a one-family, two-family or three-family dwelling house with any accessory structure incidental to it. Every chapter of the Residential Code of Ohio carries May 27, 2006 as its earliest prior effective date, and the eight dates in that field are the whole edition history of Ohio's house code. Only one has a published model year: the Board's commentary says the 2013 edition was based on the 2009 model code documents of the International Code Council, and for the other seven nothing admissible was found.

The code in force today

The Residential Code of Ohio now in force took effect July 1, 2019, and the Board adopted it on December 14, 2018 in the package it calls Amendments Group 97. The Board says it rewrote the residential chapters to reflect the 2018 edition of the International Residential Code; section 101.1 names that edition, first printing, chapters 2 through 24, 29 and 44. The state's other code sits on a newer model year: the Ohio Building Code in force since October 15, 2025 incorporates the 2021 International Building Code. The two do not overlap: the City of Worthington's own page says the 2019 Residential Code of Ohio applies only to 1-, 2-, and 3-family dwellings.

Under section 105.1 an owner who intends to construct, alter, repair or move a house, or to work on its electrical, gas, mechanical or plumbing systems, must first make application to the residential building official of a certified residential building department. No department reaches past its own certificate: Revised Code section 3781.10 says building departments have jurisdiction only with respect to the types of buildings and subject matters for which they are certified.

Columbus wrote its own code first

Columbus had a building code, an inspector and a permit before the state had any of the three. The City of Columbus's building, plumbing, wiring and smoke inspection offices are each dated by the record that made them on the page on how Columbus came to inspect its houses. The council passed the code on November 23, 1905 and the mayor approved it four days later; it took effect on January 1, 1906 and repealed an earlier building ordinance passed November 14, 1904, whose number is not printed here because the surviving printing gives it two ways. Section 2 made it unlawful to build, repair or alter without having made application to and received a permit from the inspector of buildings. Whether it was still in force on September 13, 1911, the date the Revised Code fixes, is not shown by any document read here, so this page stops at January 1, 1906.

Columbus: Title 41, and what it pointed at

The building title of the Columbus City Code is Title 41, and the city's own legislative record calls the code it sits in the Columbus City Codes, 1959. Much of its present shape was set by Ordinance 2229-86, passed September 15, 1986 and printed in the Columbus City Bulletin of September 27, 1986: it revised twenty-one chapters of Title 41 and seventeen of Title 43, and pointed the city's building code at the Ohio Basic Building Code, which its own new text identified as the BOCA Basic/National Building Code 1984, ninth edition, as amended by the state. The Board's adoption table carries the same pairing at March 1, 1985, so the city's record and the state's agree.

Columbus kept a chapter of its own for houses until 1999: Title 41 carried chapter 4177, One-, Two- and Three-Family Dwellings Code, which ran to section 4177.221 when it was repealed. The codified ordinances keep no repealed text, so only the editor's note survives. Then the city stopped naming editions. Ordinance 480-98, passed February 23, 1998, replaced the specific references to the Ohio Basic Building Code with a general one; its footnote prints the text it replaced, which had named the BOCA National Building Code 1993, twelfth edition, as the 1995 Ohio Basic Building Code. Ordinance 1404-99, passed June 21, 1999, then repealed chapter 4177 and put the Ohio Building Officials Association's One-, Two- and Three-Family Dwelling Code into the city code for every structure the state building code did not cover.

The state's house code arrived in 2006 in two ordinances: 0733-2006, passed May 3, adopting the most recent Ohio Building Code and the newly promulgated statewide Residential Code of Ohio, and 1140-2006, passed July 12, repealing the chapter that had held the city's own residential construction standards. Section 4103.03 now declares the Residential Code of Ohio in full force and effect as adopted or republished by the Board of Building Standards, and its history note carries ordinances from 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2006. Ohio's statute leaves one door and no other: section 3781.01 says the state code does not prevent a local governing authority from adopting additional regulations governing residential structures, and section 3781.10 says no local code may differ from the state residential building code.

The townships, and the county that permits them

In the unincorporated townships of Franklin County the county is the building department. It says it is responsible for issuing building permits for 1-, 2- and 3-family residential structures, that the State of Ohio issues commercial permits, and that for the Franklin County building code an applicant should refer to the 2019 Residential Code of Ohio. Ohio law lets a board of county commissioners adopt local residential building regulations governing residential buildings in the unincorporated area, under the same rule against differing from the state code that binds a city; when Franklin County first enforced one is not stated on any record read here.

Zoning is a separate map: seven townships and six villages issue their own zoning compliance, ten townships get it from the county's planning department, and Groveport and Obetz issue both the zoning compliance and the building permit. Those counts are from the county's Building page; its Building Permits page lists a seventh village, Canal Winchester, and both counts are printed here. A house with a Columbus mailing address may sit in one of these townships, so the address does not settle which office holds the record.

Who is certified today, and where nobody is

The Board of Building Standards keeps a Residential Building Department Certification List naming the certified county and municipal departments; the copy read here carries a generation stamp of August 16, 2023. The Board also publishes a jurisdiction map whose dataset was last edited September 18, 2025, and on one point the two records disagree.

Six of the seven Central Ohio counties hold their own residential certification: Delaware, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union. Fairfield County is absent from the county section of the list and marked not certified for residential on the map, though certified for commercial work. The list carries separate certified departments for Columbus and for the suburbs a reader is likeliest to live in, among them Bexley, Dublin, Gahanna, Grove City, Hilliard, New Albany, Pickerington, Powell, Reynoldsburg, Upper Arlington, Westerville, Whitehall and Worthington. Violet Township, in Fairfield County, is the only certified township in the seven counties on the Board's current map.

Who inspects the plumbing differs between neighboring suburbs. On the map dataset last edited September 18, 2025, Grove City, Powell and Worthington enforce plumbing locally, while Bexley, Dublin, Gahanna, Hilliard, Reynoldsburg, Upper Arlington, Westerville and Whitehall are served by the county health agency. The list generated August 16, 2023 put Bexley and Reynoldsburg in the local column; the newer record is printed here, and both are dated. The county-by-county plumbing picture is on the Ohio plumbing code page.

Where no certified residential building department has jurisdiction, Ohio law does not send the house to the state: Revised Code section 3791.04 provides that the owner is not required to make the submissions the section otherwise describes, while the clause before it sends a nonresidential building in the same position to the superintendent of industrial compliance. The state backstops commercial work and does not backstop houses.

The suburbs, and why their ordinance dates cannot date a house

All four suburbs read for this page adopt the state house code in its current edition or as amended rather than by year, so their rules change when Ohio's change and no local ordinance marks it. Westerville adopts the Board of Building Standards' codes as they may be amended from time to time, and its adopting section carries three ordinances, passed May 16, 2006, June 2, 2009 and July 7, 2026. Worthington gives the house code a chapter of its own, chapter 1305, adopted by an ordinance passed May 6, 2019, and adds Appendix G of the 2012 International Residential Code for swimming pools. Upper Arlington's building code is Part 13 of its codified ordinances, whose section 1300.01 adopts the Residential Code of Ohio for One, Two and Three Family Dwellings in its current edition and carries no history note of any kind.

Bexley files its rules the older way, a chapter for each code: 1410 for the Residential Building Code of Ohio, 1412 for the Ohio Building Code, 1414 for the National Electrical Code and 1416 for the Ohio Plumbing Code. Its section 1410.01 rests on an ordinance passed December 11, 2007 and adopts the state house code together with any and all amendments to it, so the layered shape is Bexley's alone and the dynamic adoption is not. Which edition of the National Electrical Code Ohio's house code has referenced, and from when, is on the wiring page.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

Common questions

Does the year a Central Ohio house was built tell you which building code it met?

No, and the Residential Code of Ohio says so in its own words. Section 102.7 provides that buildings constructed in accordance with plans which have been approved prior to the effective date of the code are existing buildings under it, so the plan approval decides the question rather than the calendar year. Section 111.3 requires a certificate of occupancy to contain the edition of the residential code under which the plan approval was issued, and the Ohio Board of Building Standards' commentary adds that the effective date of the rule can be used as the edition complied with.

What building code was Columbus using in 1970?

No record read for this page names an edition for that year, and the honest answer is the framework rather than a code name. The Ohio Board of Building Standards' own history says the legislature authorized a state building code by administrative rule in 1955 and specifically exempted 1-, 2-, 3-family dwellings, so a Columbus house answered to city rules. The city's building title is Title 41 of the Columbus City Codes, 1959. The earliest dated step in that title's own record after the 1905 building code is Ordinance 2229-86, passed September 15, 1986.

Which building code did Columbus houses meet between 1999 and 2006?

The city's own record answers this one. Ordinance 1404-99, passed June 21, 1999 and printed in the Columbus City Bulletin of June 26, 1999, repealed the city's chapter 4177, One-, Two- and Three-Family Dwellings Code, and put the Ohio Building Officials Association's One-, Two- and Three-Family Dwelling Code into the city code for every structure the state building code did not cover. Columbus then adopted the statewide Residential Code of Ohio in two ordinances of 2006, one passed May 3 and one passed July 12. That is what was in force in the city, not what any one house was approved under.

When did Columbus first require a building permit for a house?

At least as early as 1905. The city council passed a building code on November 23, 1905, the mayor approved it four days later, and it took effect on January 1, 1906. Its section 2 made it unlawful to build, repair or alter without having made application to and received a permit from the inspector of buildings, and the plans stayed in his custody until the proposed work was finished. That code repealed an earlier building ordinance the city had passed on November 14, 1904, so permits were not new in 1905 either.

Which Central Ohio counties have their own certified residential building department?

Six of the seven. On the Ohio Board of Building Standards' Residential Building Department Certification List, generated August 16, 2023, and on the Board's jurisdiction map dataset, last edited September 18, 2025, Delaware, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union counties hold residential certification. Fairfield County has no entry in the county section of the list and is marked not certified for residential on the map, although it is certified for commercial work. Violet Township, in Fairfield County, is the only certified township in the seven counties on the Board's current map.

Do Westerville, Worthington, Upper Arlington and Bexley adopt Ohio's house code by year?

No. All four adopt it in its current edition or as amended, so their rules change when Ohio's change and no local ordinance marks the change. Westerville takes the Board of Building Standards' codes as they may be amended from time to time. Worthington's chapter 1305 rests on an ordinance passed May 6, 2019. Upper Arlington's section 1300.01 adopts the code in its current edition and carries no history note at all. Bexley's section 1410.01, by an ordinance passed December 11, 2007, takes it with any and all amendments. A suburb's ordinance date cannot date a house's rules.

Which code does an addition or alteration to an older Ohio house have to meet?

Today's, for the part being worked on. Section 113.4 of the Residential Code of Ohio says additions or alterations to residential buildings shall conform with the requirements of the code, and that the portions of the building not altered and not affected by the alteration are not required to comply with the code for a new structure. Section 113.2 runs the other way for what is already in place: a device or safeguard already installed shall be maintained in conformance with the code edition under which it was installed.

What happens where no certified residential building department covers a house in Ohio?

Ohio law does not send the house to the state. Revised Code section 3791.04 provides that where no certified residential building department has jurisdiction, the owner is not required to make the plan submissions the section otherwise describes, while the clause immediately before it sends a nonresidential building in the same position to the superintendent of industrial compliance. The state backstops commercial work and does not backstop houses, which is the statutory reason a house in such a place can be built with no state or local plan approval at all.

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