Home remodeling San Rafael

What 500 square feet sets off in a San Rafael remodel

San Rafael puts a second code on a remodel. Chapter 12.360, its FlexPath reach code, covers any addition or alteration to a house first permitted before 2011 where the work affects more than 500 square feet, and sets a point target by vintage: 12 for a pre-1978 house, 8 for 1978 to 1991, 4 for 1992 to 2010. Opening walls and ceilings pulls whole rooms into that count.

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  • Rules on this page checked against 15 public sources, October 2026

Asked most

San Rafael remodel questions, starting with the points

Does our kitchen remodel have to earn FlexPath points?

Only if the work affects more than 500 square feet of floor area in a house first permitted before 2011. The count is not just the kitchen. Chapter 12.360 adds the floor area of every room where walls, columns, beams, girders, floor or ceiling joists or their coverings are changed. A kitchen refitted inside finished walls can stay under the line; the same kitchen with the dining room opened into it can go over.

What counts toward the target score and what does not?

Measures from the city's menu, including ones already in the house. On an older house its table gives 6 points for R-38 attic insulation, 6 for duct sealing, 5 for replacing at least half the windows at a U-factor of 0.30 or better, 7 for R-13 wall insulation and 12 for a heat pump water heater in place of gas. What does not count is anything the state energy code already requires for the project. LED lamps throughout and photocells on exterior lights are mandatory either way.

Can we raise the roof on our Terra Linda Eichler?

Not without a planning step, and not far. Roof modifications to Eichler and Alliance homes in the -EA combining district need an Administrative Design Permit, and the district's limit is seventeen feet to the peak with one habitable floor. That rules out a second story and shapes anything above the existing roof plane, so the design permit is the thing to settle before a structural drawing is paid for.

Albert Park in San Rafael
Albert Park in San Rafael. Photo: Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Free to request, and you agree the scope and price with the person you hire before work starts. In California, a job over $1,000 in labor and materials, or one that needs a building permit, must be done by a contractor licensed by the CSLB in the right class. Ask for the license number and check it at cslb.ca.gov.

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Permits and local rules

The code and the permits behind the drawings

  1. FlexPath, Municipal Code Chapter 12.360

    Added in May 2024, the chapter reaches additions, alterations and remodels of a single-family building first permitted before 2011 where the work affects more than 500 square feet of existing or new floor area. The measure menu is written for Climate Zone 2, and on a pre-1978 house R-38 attic insulation is worth 6 points, duct sealing 6, replacing at least half the windows at a U-factor of 0.30 or better 5, R-13 wall insulation 7, and a heat pump water heater in place of gas 12. Swapping screw-in incandescent, halogen and compact fluorescent lamps for LEDs and adding photocell controls to exterior luminaires is mandatory whatever the score. Measures the house already has may count; measures the state energy code demands anyway may not.

    San Rafael Municipal Code, Chapter 12.360 (opens in a new tab)

  2. Three levels of design review, Section 14.25.040

    The Planning Division sorts residential work by level. The Zoning Administrator hears new houses on hillside lots, hillside additions over 500 square feet, upper-story additions over 500 square feet, and accessory structures or additions in ridgeline areas. An Administrative Design Permit covers roof modifications to Eichler and Alliance homes in the -EA district, elevated decks over 100 square feet on hillside lots, retaining walls over three feet, and detached accessory structures in hillside areas. Nothing is required for a one-story house or a deck outside the hillside areas, for ordinary maintenance and repairs, or for solar panels on an existing structure.

    City of San Rafael Planning Division (opens in a new tab)

  3. The standards the hillside guidelines carry

    The Hillside Residential Design Guidelines Manual holds the development standards that arrive with the overlay: a maximum gross building square footage tied to lot area, a building stepback along front and side lot lines to hold bulk down, a changed method of calculating building height, and the natural-state percentage. It also lets a structure encroach into up to half of a required yard when the Design Review Board recommends it and the encroachment cuts grading. Where an adopted neighborhood plan is stricter than the citywide standard the city enforces the plan, and Fairhills, Sun Valley, Gerstle Park and Peacock Gap each have one.

    City of San Rafael Design Guidelines (opens in a new tab)

  4. A survey of 305 sites, and only three districts

    The City Council adopted a Historical/Architectural Survey of 305 sites, last updated in 1986, and a structure on it is presumed a significant resource unless evidence says otherwise. Chapter 2.18 of the Municipal Code sends exterior modification or demolition of a designated Landmark, or of anything inside a historic district, to the Planning Commission. Three historic districts have been designated: the Victorian Village at 1623-27 Fifth Avenue, the French Quarter at 901-911 Irwin Street, and 1811-1817 Grand Avenue. For a potential resource, the city usually asks for an evaluation by a qualified architectural historian against the Secretary of the Interior's Standards.

    City of San Rafael Planning Division (opens in a new tab)

State license for this work: B General Building, B-2 Residential Remodeling. Look up a contractor's license on the CSLB website (cslb.ca.gov).

The work

What a San Rafael remodel answers for, scope by scope

  • A kitchen rebuilt inside its own walls

    Kitchen and bathroom remodels sit on the city's list for a General Permit Requiring Plan Review rather than a counter permit, and the Building Division publishes a sample floor plan for one. Applications run through OpenGov, which took over new permit submittals on February 23, 2026, the day the city stopped accepting paper; inspections moved there on February 17. Plans upload as one unsecured PDF, and the division asks applicants to allow up to three weeks for the first review. A permit issued since January 1, 2023 stays valid two years, with a renewal fee if it is not finaled by then.

  • Taking out the wall to the dining room

    Two things change when a wall goes. The structural work falls outside a B-2 Residential Remodeling license, which by statute may not contract for structural changes to load-bearing portions of an existing house, footings, foundations, load-bearing walls, partitions and roof structures named among them. The reach code also counts the room: Chapter 12.360 says that where walls, columns, beams, girders, floor or ceiling joists or their coverings are changed, the floor area of every room affected goes into the 500-square-foot calculation. A kitchen and a dining room opened into one another can cross that line between them.

  • Reworking the roof on an Eichler or Alliance house

    In the -EA combining district over Terra Linda, roof modifications to Eichler and Alliance homes need an Administrative Design Permit, and the district caps height at seventeen feet to the peak with one habitable floor. That is what a flat-roofed post-and-beam house runs into when the plan calls for a gable over the kitchen, a raised ridge for clerestory glass or a deep skylight well. The design permit comes first, because the roof line is decided at Planning rather than at plan check.

  • An addition on a hillside lot

    Section 14.16.200 catches additions over 500 square feet and any construction that raises the roof height, inside the Hillside Overlay (-H) district or on a lot whose average slope passes 25 percent. Those go to Environmental and Design Review, judged against the Hillside Residential Design Guidelines. Two numbers usually shape the plan first. Permitted floor area is held to 2,500 square feet plus 10 percent of the lot area, capped at 6,500. And the share of the parcel that must stay in its natural state is 25 percent plus the average slope figure, to a maximum of 85 percent, so a 20 percent slope leaves 45 percent of the lot undisturbed.

  • Adding a story over the existing footprint

    An upper-story addition over 500 square feet, and any lift-and-fill modification, needs a Design Review Permit decided by the Zoning Administrator under Section 14.25.050(F)(6). Zoning caps the upper floor itself as well: on a lot under 5,000 square feet it may reach half the district's maximum lot coverage, and on a larger lot three-quarters of it, which means lot size often settles the upstairs plan before the architecture does. Worth checking at the same time is whether the house already sits on a nonconforming setback, since a legally built nonconforming house that is destroyed may be rebuilt only to its original condition, and only within a year.

A kitchen partway through a renovation, with new floors, painted walls and a built-in microwave
A kitchen partway through a renovation, with new floors, painted walls and a built-in microwave. Photo: Tomwsulcer, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The houses here

Three housing vintages, three different point targets

The reach code sorts houses by the year the building permit went in, and the oldest stock pays most for it. As the oldest city in Marin, San Rafael has a great deal of housing inside the pre-1978 bracket, the one that carries the top 12-point target; a house from those years also puts the demolition under the federal renovation rule, which wants a firm with EPA or state approval and renovators trained for lead-safe work. Terra Linda's Eichler and Alliance tracts, from the mid-1950s, sit in that same bracket and under the -EA combining district, where the limit is seventeen feet to the peak and one habitable floor, so a vaulted ceiling is a planning question before it is a framing one. On the ridges above, floor-area and natural-state limits settle the shape of an addition before any energy measure does. The Building Official may reclassify a vintage from what turns up in the walls.

Part by part

Four parts of town where the answer changes

  • Terra Linda

    The Eichler and Alliance tracts carry the -EA combining district, so a roof change needs an Administrative Design Permit and the height limit is seventeen feet to the peak with one habitable floor. Built from the mid-1950s, these houses also land in the pre-1978 vintage, the one the reach code asks twelve points of.

  • Gerstle Park and the West End

    Marin's oldest city keeps its oldest houses in this part of town, and a structure on the 305-site survey is presumed significant until evidence shows otherwise. Gerstle Park has had a neighborhood plan of its own since 1979, and where that plan is stricter than the citywide standard the city enforces the plan. Settle any exterior change with Planning before the drawings are finished.

  • Fairhills, Sun Valley and Peacock Gap

    Hillside neighborhoods with adopted plans from 1980, 1980 and 1983. Here the overlay, or an average slope above 25 percent, brings the natural-state share and the floor-area cap into the first sketch, and an addition over 500 square feet goes to Environmental and Design Review instead of straight to plan check.

  • The Canal and the creek edges

    Structures answer to a 25-foot setback from a creek or from the San Rafael Canal under Section 14.16.080, and 50 feet from a wetland. On a narrow lot beside the water, that line can decide whether a kitchen may grow outward at all, which is worth confirming before a designer measures anything.

Timing

Hours on the site, clocks on the paperwork

Chapter 8.13 allows construction between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Saturday, and bars it on Sundays and holidays. The paperwork runs on its own clocks. OpenGov has taken inspection requests since February 17, 2026 and new permit applications since February 23, after which paper applications were no longer accepted. The Building Division asks for up to three weeks on a first plan review, with corrections posted in the portal. A hillside, Eichler-roof or upper-story project files its planning application ahead of all of that, which is the part most schedules underestimate.

Before you hire

Settle these before a San Rafael contract is signed

  • Ask how much floor area the scope really affects, counting every room whose walls, ceilings or joists open up, and whether that passes the 500-square-foot line.
  • If it does, ask which FlexPath measures will reach the target score for your house's vintage, and which of them the house already has.
  • Ask whether the parcel sits in the Hillside Overlay or above a 25 percent average slope, and who prepares the Environmental and Design Review application.
  • On a Terra Linda roof, ask who files the Administrative Design Permit for an Eichler or Alliance house, and when, relative to the building permit.
  • Check the number at cslb.ca.gov: a B-2 may not contract for structural work on load-bearing walls, so a wall removal wants a licensed contractor (B General Building).

Free, no obligation. Next, add your details in the request form.

More questions

Still deciding?

Is Gerstle Park a historic district?

Not a designated one. The city has designated three: the Victorian Village at 1623-27 Fifth Avenue, the French Quarter at 901-911 Irwin Street, and 1811-1817 Grand Avenue. What a Gerstle Park house may be instead is one of the 305 sites on the City Council's Historical/Architectural Survey, which presumes significance unless evidence shows otherwise, and that is enough to bring CEQA review and an architectural historian's evaluation into an exterior change.

What hours can a crew work on our house here?

Chapter 8.13 permits construction from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and prohibits it on Sundays and holidays, which matters for a demolition day or a long pour. The permit runs on a longer clock: one issued since January 1, 2023 stays valid for two years, and work not finaled by then needs a renewal fee.

Does taking out a wall change who we can hire?

Yes. A B-2 Residential Remodeling license is written for projects using at least three unrelated trades, and the statute bars that class from contracting for structural changes to load-bearing portions of a house, naming footings, foundations, load-bearing walls, partitions and roof structures. A B-2 holder also may not install, replace or substantially alter electrical, mechanical or plumbing systems without those classes or a subcontractor who holds them. For a wall removal, look for a licensed contractor (B General Building).

Where these facts come from

Checked against these public sources in October 2026. Rules and programs change: confirm permit requirements with the city before work starts, and a contractor's license on the CSLB website.

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