General Contractor in San Bernardino, CA

What should a San Bernardino homeowner know before hiring a general contractor, with foothill fire rules, old tract homes and a county fire district in the picture?

San Bernardino's building story starts with a land purchase. The City's history page says a Mormon colony bought the 35,000 acre Rancho San Bernardino in 1851, and the Santa Fe's 1886 transcontinental link turned the town into a railroad hub, lifting the population from 6,150 in 1900 to 12,779 in 1910. Most of today's houses came later. Wikipedia's census table lists 63,058 residents in 1950, 91,922 in 1960 and 106,869 in 1970, and the City's Housing Element ties the postwar tracts in the north central and Del Rosa areas to railroad work, jobs at Norton Air Force Base and the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana. Census Bureau ACS 2024 one year estimates count 68,594 housing units, with a margin of error near 3,000, and about 46 percent of them went up between 1950 and 1979. Roughly 62.6 percent predate 1980, about 37 percent predate 1960 and around 9 percent are from 1939 or earlier. Renters occupy 48.3 percent of occupied homes, and the median owner-occupied value is $461,400. After Norton and Kaiser closed came the boom and bust cycles, the 2012 bankruptcy and the 2015 attack. The Housing Element says those years nearly halted housing investment, that the City emerged from all bankruptcy proceedings in 2022, that at least half the housing is 50 years old or more, and that staff estimate up to 20 percent of homes need moderate repair and 7 to 10 percent need major repair. For an owner, that usually means original roofs, windows, plumbing and paint, and a real chance that old paint holds lead.

The City issues its own permits. Building & Safety, a division of Community Development & Housing, works from a counter at 201 North E Street that opens Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at 8 a.m., Wednesday at 10 a.m. and Friday at 8 a.m., with the last sign in for permit issuance at 4:30 p.m. most days and 2:30 p.m. on Friday. The Building & Safety Division page says plans do not go in by courier, mail or email, apart from expedited residential solar and EV charging, and a submittal needs three printed sets at least 24 by 36 inches plus two copies of supporting calculations and reports. Architect or engineer plans must carry a wet stamp on the cover sheet. Online and email applications are limited to single-family electrical re-wires, water re-pipes, panel upgrades and re-roofs. Every contractor needs a state license and a current City business license, and the City checks both. Inspections are requested through SB Direct at 909-998-2000. The pages we read publish no plan check turnaround, so we promise none. Under Municipal Code 15.04.050, as we read it on GoCodebook's mirror (text as of October 4, 2026, because the City's code host blocked our tools), a 180 day stretch without an inspection and visible progress is prima facie evidence that the work is abandoned and the permit expired. The same mirror limits construction work to 7 a.m. through 8 p.m. Fire service is a separate agency: since July 1, 2016 the San Bernardino County Fire District handles it, and the City has no fire department of its own. Whether a plan check needs District review is a question for the counter, because the City pages do not spell out the routing.

What the counter asks for depends on the trade. A roof repair or replacement is permit work, though re-roofs are one of the few permits taken by email. Window replacement is missing from the City's exempt list, so we treat it as permitted and tell owners to confirm at the counter. A kitchen remodel or bathroom remodel needs no permit for cabinets, countertops, tile or paint, but moving gas, wiring or plumbing does. Painting and surface flooring are exempt finish work, yet EPA's lead-safe rule covers paid work on pre-1978 homes, South Coast AQMD caps nonflat coatings at 50 grams per liter, and Rule 1403 governs asbestos when old materials come out. A fence has a conflict of its own: the Municipal Code exempts fences up to 6 feet while the City's web page says 7, Planning must approve every fence plan either way, and front and street side yards cap solid fences at 3 feet and open ones at 4. Concrete sidewalks and driveways up to 30 inches above grade are exempt, retaining walls up to 4 feet are exempt, and work in the public right of way goes through Public Works rather than the permit counter. A deck skips a permit only if it is detached, 200 square feet or less and no higher than 30 inches. An ADU is a ministerial application that must be approved or denied within 60 days of a complete submittal, and the Housing Element reports ADU permits rising from about 80 after the 2021 update to 147 in 2022. A room addition goes through plan check and a zoning review, and the single-family RS zone table lists 35 percent lot coverage and a 5 foot side setback.

The overlays and the ground decide how much room a design really has. The County Fire District's Board adopted Ordinance 4489 on June 10, 2025 for Moderate, High and Very High zones in its local responsibility areas, while Municipal Code 15.10.030 still points to a City map dated October 29, 2008. Development Code 19.15 separately sorts foothill lots into Fire Zones A, B and C by slope, and in the stricter zones that brings no exposed wood on exterior elements, non-wood Class A roofs, ignition-resistant fencing, certified vinyl windows and, in Zones A and B, 50 foot wet zones and 100 foot thinning zones. The two chapters also disagree on when a repair triggers a retrofit, 25 percent in one and 60 percent in the other, so a foothill owner should ask for the Building Division's answer in writing. We do not say which streets sit in which zone. Downtown and most of the southern city lie in liquefaction susceptibility areas over the Bunker Hill Groundwater Basin, where Municipal Code 15.08 requires an engineer's report for listed building types and for structural changes over 25 percent of the building. The San Andreas and San Jacinto faults both carry Alquist-Priolo zones, and flood and hillside overlays cover other lots. We found no adopted historic overlay, because Development Code chapter 19.18 is still reserved, but any building 50 years or older needs a permit to be demolished. Colton, Rialto, Loma Linda, Highland and Redlands sit next to the city, and Riverside, Moreno Valley and Jurupa Valley have pages here too, but a permit answer from one place does not carry over to another. On a San Bernardino job, MDG Builders, CSLB #1040337, writes the scope, files the permit, books licensed trade subcontractors and the inspections, and walks the finished work with you. Two short reads help before you sign: how general contractors use subcontractors and how to check a contractor's license.