Site work
Bellevue clearing, grading, and drainage permits for homeowners
Site work is often where a simple home project becomes a civil-engineering project. The amount of disturbed area matters, but so do slopes, trees, walls, drainage connections, and protected areas.
On this page8 sections
Official starting point: Bellevue minor clearing and grading. Check the current page before acting because forms and rules can change.
Screen the scope before drawing
- Estimate total clearing area and excavation or fill volume.
- Identify retaining walls, rockeries, driveway work, trenches, and material stockpiles.
- Map significant trees, critical areas, buffers, easements, and the public right-of-way.
- Trace where roof, footing, driveway, and yard runoff will go.
Know the common stand-alone thresholds
Bellevue identifies landscape changes over 1,000 square feet of clearing or over 50 cubic yards of grading, as well as certain walls over four feet, among the work that can require a minor clearing-and-grading permit. Critical areas or surcharge loads can trigger review below a simple height or volume threshold.
Treat erosion control as active work
A CSWPPP is not a filing exercise. Stabilized access, inlet protection, sweeping, sediment maintenance, daily inspection during active work, and storm-event response need an assigned person and budget from first disturbance through final stabilization.
Coordinate the civil documents
Survey, site plan, grading, drainage report, civil plans, landscape plan, arborist report, and architectural site plan should use the same grades, walls, trees, utilities, and building footprint. Conflicts between sets create predictable review comments.
Confirm separate connections and access
A storm connection, side sewer, or right-of-way permit may be required even when the building permit includes on-site work. List each related permit and its dependencies so one approval does not quietly hold up issuance or construction.
Practical homeowner guide
The civil plan should explain how water and earth move
Bellevue's residential civil-plan guidance connects existing and proposed grades, two-foot contours, trees, easements, utilities, walls, clearing limits, erosion control, drainage, and critical areas on one coordinated set.
Practical worksheet
Put this guide to work
Worksheet updated . This is a planning example. Regulatory sources and data have their own dates.
Connect approvals to the construction sequence
A remodel adds a bathroom and moves a wall. The structural, plumbing, electrical and ventilation scopes need to agree before the builder closes walls. Treating them as unrelated purchases creates conflicts that may not appear until inspection.
- Define the full change
- List the existing and proposed layout, structural work, system changes, exterior work and site disturbance. Identify occupied areas that must remain usable.
- Assign coordination
- Name who resolves conflicts between drawings and who seeks approval when existing conditions differ. Establish when the owner must choose fixtures and equipment.
- Mark hold points
- Link permit issuance, required inspections, tests and approved revisions to the work that follows. Do not cover work just because the next trade is booked.
- Close the loop
- Save approved substitutions, inspection results and final records for every related permit. Ask who hands those records to the owner.
Have the contractor show the next few weeks of work with the decisions and approvals each task depends on. That exposes an unresolved design question while there is still time to address it.
Common questions
What homeowners usually ask
Why does Bellevue ask for two-foot contours?
Contours provide a consistent picture of terrain for grading, drainage, access, walls, and critical-area review. Spot elevations and sections are still needed at important design locations.
Can a small house project avoid civil coordination?
Even modest work can affect drainage, trees, utilities, slopes, or the right-of-way. The required document level varies, but the physical conflicts still need to be solved before construction.
What is the best early drainage question?
Ask where water comes from now, where the project will collect it, and where it can legally and safely go afterward. Verify elevations and utility information before assuming gravity drainage works.
Action plan
Scope the site work before submission
- 1
Calculate disturbed area, cut, fill, export, walls, trenches, and driveway work.
- 2
Overlay trees, critical areas, easements, utilities, ROW, and construction access on one survey.
- 3
Trace every drainage source to its proposed discharge or management facility.
- 4
Make architectural, civil, landscape, arborist, and geotechnical documents agree.
- 5
Assign daily erosion-control maintenance and storm-response responsibility during construction.
Official resources