Custom home builder in Currie, North Carolina.

A Currie tract often holds ridge ground and swamp bottom side by side.

Currie is a rural crossroads. NC 210 runs through it on the way west from Rocky Point, US 421 passes a short distance to the east. Moores Creek runs close by, and Moores Creek National Battlefield, a National Park Service unit preserving the ground where Patriot militia met a Loyalist force on February 27, 1776, sits at the edge of what most people mean when they say Currie. The battlefield draws the visitors; the ground a new house would stand on is the farm and timber land around it.

Many of the larger tracts out here hold two kinds of ground, often inside the same survey lines. Sandy ridges rise a few feet above the surrounding land, drain quickly after a rain, and are where a house, a well and a drainfield all want to sit. Between the ridges run the bottoms: swamp soils that back up toward Moores Creek and the Black River, wet through much of the year, carrying cypress and gum where the ridge carries pine. A twenty-acre tract can hold both conditions inside its own lines, and the soil decides which stretch of it will support a house, long before a floor plan is drawn.

• Sandy ridge ground, often only a few feet higher than the bottomland beside it, well drained and the first place a site analysis looks for a house pad, a well and a drainfield
• Swamp bottomland backing up toward Moores Creek and the Black River, wet for long stretches of the year and generally left to the trees
• Cleared row-crop and hay fields along NC 210 and the county roads feeding it, open ground with few obstructions but no existing drive or utility run to build from
• Planted-pine and hardwood timber tracts, some still under active management, where clearing a house site is itself part of the site plan

Working land sets the character here: row-crop fields still in production, planted pine stands, and family tracts held through several generations before anyone builds on them. Many Currie projects start from a house site carved out of a larger family or farm tract, where the question is which part of the acreage the house, the well, the drainfield and the drive should each claim.

Atkinson lies a short drive to the northwest, and Burgaw, the county seat, farther off to the northeast, each under its own town rules. A Currie parcel answers to Pender County.

Currie's farm district assumes a well and a septic system.

Currie is unincorporated, so every regulatory question a builder asks here (which zoning district covers a parcel, how deep a setback runs, what a floodplain permit requires) goes to Pender County, the same government that answers for the rest of the county's unincorporated land.

That ordinance is the Pender County Unified Development Ordinance. Article 4 sets out the zoning districts and the dimensional table attached to each, among them RA (Rural Agricultural) and RP, a residential district with smaller minimum lots, and we read which district covers a given parcel off the county's zoning map. The UDO's purpose statement for RA (Sec. 4.7.1) describes very low density residential development in rural areas next to agricultural operations, relying predominantly on individual wells and septic tank systems; we confirm with Pender County Utilities whether a particular road has public water at all. Article 3 sets the review path: planning staff in the role the ordinance calls the 'Administrator', with the Planning Board and Board of Commissioners stepping in for any zoning-map action beyond a staff-level call.

Flood regulation is written separately, as Chapter 18, Flood Damage Protection, of the county's Code of Ordinances. Before any development in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, Sec. 18-46 requires a floodplain development permit application to the county's floodplain administrator. Variances go to the county Board of Adjustment, sitting as what the ordinance calls the 'appeal board', and two of the chapter's limits deserve attention early: no variance may issue inside a designated floodway or non-encroachment area if it would raise flood levels during the base flood, and a variance has to be granted before a development permit is approved. On a Currie tract with any low or creek-side ground, that review is the first one a formal site analysis has to anticipate.

Jurisdiction

Unincorporated; Pender County governs Currie directly under its Unified Development Ordinance

Adopted code

Pender County Unified Development Ordinance (Article 4 zoning districts and dimensional standards, Article 5 accessory and multiple-structure provisions); flood regulation is codified separately as Chapter 18, Flood Damage Protection, of the county Code of Ordinances, most recently adopted November 18, 2024

Permit authority

Pender County planning staff, acting as the UDO's 'Administrator', for day-to-day review; a rezoning petition goes instead to the Planning Board and then the Board of Commissioners (UDO Sec. 3.3.9); building permits through the county's inspections and permitting office at 805 South Walker Street in Burgaw or its Hampstead annex, with applications filed through the county's PORT portal; a floodplain development permit from the county's floodplain administrator is required before work in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area (Code Sec. 18-46), with the county Board of Adjustment sitting as the appeal board for flood-ordinance variances (Sec. 18-49)

Flood-map source

The FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map panel for the specific parcel, read alongside North Carolina's Flood Risk Information System at fris.nc.gov; near the Black River and Moores Creek the flooding to check for is river and creek water, and only the panel says whether a given parcel is mapped at all

Ultimate design wind speed

130 mph. Note j to Table R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code sets 150 mph east of the Intracoastal Waterway, 140 mph in Topsail Township west of it, and 130 mph in the remainder of the county, which takes in Currie. Exposure category, open field or woods for each wind direction, is the lot-level variable the engineer settles (R301.2.1.4)

Septic and wells

Pender County Environmental Health, On-Site Wastewater Program: Environmental Health Specialists test the soil for septic suitability, and the program covers both septic systems and drinking-water wells

Septic and well review runs through a third office: the On-Site Wastewater Program within Pender County Environmental Health, which covers both septic systems and drinking-water wells and sits apart from zoning and from the floodplain permit. Its Environmental Health Specialists test the soil to judge whether a property can take a septic system at all. Under the state's on-site wastewater rules the approvals generally run in sequence (an improvement permit for the evaluated site, a construction authorization for the system, and an operation permit once it is installed), and we confirm the current steps with the county for a given application. The county also wants Environmental Health's water and sewer documentation before it will process a construction permit, so the soil evaluation leads the schedule on acreage. On ground that shifts from ridge sand to heavy bottomland inside one tract, where the test holes go decides the answer, which is why the soils finding comes early in a site analysis: it can rule a house site in or out before anything else does.

Currie's floods come down the Black River and Moores Creek.

On a Currie tract the flood question lives in the low ground along Moores Creek, the Black River and the smaller branches that feed them, and the flood map draws that ground in tiers. The main channels may carry a detailed study along some reaches, an AE zone with a base flood elevation, sometimes with a regulated floodway down the middle; the smaller branches that run back into a farm or timber tract more often show, where they are mapped at all, as approximate Zone A, with no base flood elevation behind them. Ridge ground usually sits above both. The job is finding where the ridge ends and the bottom begins relative to those lines, on the FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map panel for the parcel or the same data through North Carolina's Flood Risk Information System, because Pender County's flood chapter treats each tier differently.

• Approximate Zone A, common on smaller streams without a detailed study: with no base flood elevation, Sec. 18-74 bars fill, new construction, substantial improvement and other encroachment within 20 feet of each side of the stream, measured from the top of the bank, or five times the stream's width, whichever is greater, unless a registered professional engineer certifies no increase in flood levels during the base flood
• An AE reach with a base flood elevation but no floodway drawn: Sec. 18-75 allows encroachment only with an engineer's certification that the cumulative effect of all existing and anticipated development will not raise the base flood more than one foot at any point in the community
• A designated floodway or non-encroachment area: Sec. 18-76 allows no encroachment unless hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, presented to the floodplain administrator before the permit issues, shows no increase in flood levels, or FEMA has approved a conditional letter of map revision, with a final revision to follow once the work is done
• Ridge ground outside the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area: none of the three tiers reaches a house sited there, though a drive, fill or utility run that crosses the line still needs a floodplain development permit for the part inside it (Sec. 18-46)

Two feet of freeboard is the number to carry into any conversation about a mapped Currie parcel, and the county's flood ordinance is specific about how it applies. Where FEMA has already established a base flood elevation for a given reach, the regulatory flood protection elevation (the line a house's lowest floor has to clear) sits two feet above it. Where no base flood elevation exists yet for that stretch, the floor holds to at least two feet above the highest ground touching the house. The ordinance explains the margin as a hedge against what one calculated flood number cannot capture on its own: wave action, bridge openings, the effect of upstream development on how the watershed drains. Where that margin falls on a given parcel depends on the parcel's own flood-zone line, which the FIRM panel and the county's floodplain administrator confirm.

A floodway, in the chapter's terms, is the channel and the adjacent land that have to stay open to carry the base flood without raising the water surface more than one foot, and a non-encroachment area is defined the same way for ground shown in the county's flood insurance study; the chapter calls both extremely hazardous for the velocity, erosion and debris the water carries (Sec. 18-76). The residential code keys off the same map. Chapter 46 of the NC Residential Code, its coastal and flood construction chapter, applies in regulatory floodplain areas and in the 150 mph wind zone (R4601.1). Currie's zone is 130 mph, so on a Currie tract Chapter 46 reaches a house only through the flood map: sited on ridge ground outside the mapped line, the house answers to the main body of the code; sited in the bottom, it takes Chapter 46 on alongside the county's elevation rules. The floodplain administrator and the county's building inspectors confirm where the line falls against the survey, which is why the stream buffer and the floodway edge are site-analysis findings.

State coastal permitting runs on a separate track. Pender County's flood chapter defines the Coastal Area Management Act and names the state agency behind it, the Division of Coastal Management, and leaves the Act's reach on a particular parcel to the Division. On interior farm and timber ground the question rarely arises. Along a river, an area of environmental concern is a narrow shoreline band: 75 feet for an estuarine shoreline, or 30 feet for a public trust shoreline upstream of the state's line between coastal and inland fishing waters (15A NCAC 07H .0209). On a tract with real frontage on the Black River or Moores Creek, we check the bank against the Division's maps before the site plan is drawn, and its Wilmington office handles any Pender permit (the county has no local permit officer).

The ridge-and-bottom split tracks the flood map closely. Ridge sand drains fast and is less likely to fall inside a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area; bottomland soils hold water because they sit low, and the same low ground that floods is often the ground least able to dry out afterward. Moisture on bottomland ground sets out the drainage, drying and dehumidification thinking that ground like this demands, and the moisture-control specification is where that thinking becomes part of the drawings.

We start on a Currie tract by walking the ridge line.

A formal site analysis is the first deliverable on any home we design, and on a Currie tract it does more work than it would on a subdivision lot with a graded pad and a curb cut already in place. Here, almost nothing is fixed. The analysis starts by walking the ridge line: finding where the ground rises clear of the bottom, and where the mapped flood-zone line crosses that same rise, because the two rarely sit exactly on top of each other. What comes out of that walk is a written finding on where the usable high ground lies, filed in each client's online workspace as the first document of the project, well before a floor plan takes shape.

Ridge sand carries the house, the well and the drainfield; the bottomland belongs to the creek.

Soil comes next, and on a tract that shifts from sandy ridge to swamp bottom it is rarely uniform. An early soils reading shows where a drainfield has a realistic chance of working, which decides where the well can sit clear of it, and only then where the house belongs relative to both. Access matters as much on acreage that has never carried a driveway: how a drive reaches the building site from NC 210 or US 421 without crossing the wettest ground, and how far power has to travel to get there. The UDO adds a condition of its own. Every structure needs a lot on, or with access to, a public road at least 30 feet wide, or an access easement at least 20 feet wide where it does not front the road (Sec. 5.3.2.B), which matters on a house site carved from the back of a family farm and is far simpler to settle before a tract is divided than after.

The analysis also records wind exposure, and on Currie's cleared fields that finding tends to run one way. The residential code assesses exposure for each wind direction and assumes the sheltered category, Exposure B, only where a site meets no other definition. Open terrain with scattered obstructions generally under 30 feet, running more than 1,500 feet from the building site in any quadrant, is Exposure C, and so is a house set in woods but directly beside open ground of that kind that stretches more than 600 feet (R301.2.1.4). A large hay or row-crop field can meet that test on its own, and where a site falls between categories the code takes the one producing the larger wind forces. A pad at the edge of a field, with pines on three sides, is still an open-field site if the fourth side runs clear. The written analysis states the exposure assumption for each direction, so the 130 mph zone figure and the ground around the pad reach the drawings together.

• Where the ridge line falls on the surveyed parcel, and how it compares with the flood-zone line on the FIRM panel
• Whether the soil at a candidate house site will support a septic drainfield, and where a well can sit safely upslope and clear of it
• How a driveway reaches the chosen site from the public road without crossing the lowest, wettest ground on the tract
• Which stand of timber is worth keeping for shade and screening, and which has to clear to make room for the house, the drive and the drainfield
• Where the nearest power line runs, how far service has to extend to reach the building site, and whether public water reaches the road at all, a parcel-by-parcel answer from Pender County Utilities
• Which quadrants around the pad run open field and which run woods, since one open quadrant is enough to move the exposure category

The sequence our design work follows takes them in order because they are interdependent: move the drainfield to reach better soil and the house site often moves with it, and the reverse holds too. Designing a new house on open acreage begins with these findings.

A buyer weighing two Currie tracts before going under contract on either gets the most from this step. The site analysis shows which of the two will carry a house with less of the budget spent on the ground.

Open ground is Currie's real wind hazard.

A house set in a cleared field, or on a ridge just opened up for its pad, meets storm wind with little upwind to slow it, no matter how many miles lie between the lot and the ocean. The 2018 NC Residential Code puts Currie at a 130 mph ultimate design wind speed, the figure note j to Table R301.2(4) gives the remainder of Pender County, and R301.2.1.1 requires a house at 130 mph or above to be designed to one of the recognized high-wind standards the section lists, among them the Wood Frame Construction Manual and ASCE 7. FORTIFIED Gold, the top tier of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety's program, is pursued on every home we design and third-party verified: an independent evaluator inspects the work, and IBHS issues the designation. The evaluation checks a sealed roof deck, rated protection at the openings and one continuous load path from roof to footing, the parts of the house that answer open-field wind.

The other half of the standard is airtightness, and on this ground it is mostly about moisture. What we design to is a sub-1.0 ACH50 design target: written into the drawings, carried into construction, and confirmed by a blower door test on that house before handover. Humidity is why it matters here more than salt. Summers in the Cape Fear basin run hot and heavy, and a house site at the edge of a swamp, or under a retained stand of hardwoods, sits in still, shaded air where a wet wall dries slowly. Keeping that air out of the assemblies is the envelope's first job.

The foundation decision follows the ground. On a ridge site with the seasonal water table well below the pad, a sealed, conditioned crawl space is straightforward to detail and keeps the floor framing inside the controlled envelope. Lower down, nearer the bottomland, the water table rides closer to the surface for more of the year, and in a mapped flood zone the rules the county administers generally require any enclosed area below the regulatory elevation to let floodwater in and out through openings, which a sealed crawl space then has to accommodate without giving up its air seal. Both come out of what the site analysis finds under the pad the house will stand on, and we confirm the flood-side details with the floodplain administrator.

On Black River ground, the standard answers open-field wind and standing humidity.

Mechanical equipment answers to that same envelope. Equipment matched to the load a tight house creates runs in longer, gentler cycles that pull moisture out of the indoor air; oversize it and it satisfies the thermostat in short bursts while the damp stays. The long, mild shoulder seasons are the harder test near the bottoms: the air stays damp while the cooling system has little reason to run, so dedicated dehumidification carries the load the air conditioner cannot. The durability section of our standard and an insight on tight houses and fresh indoor air make the longer case: a tight house can be a comfortable one, provided ventilation is designed alongside the air barrier.

What's already on a Currie tract shapes the project.

Work on a Currie tract takes one of three shapes: new homes built on acreage that has never held a structure, an older farmhouse or ranch taken past what it was built to do, or, where the tract and the ordinance allow, a second dwelling beside the first. Each starts from how much of the tract is already committed: an existing house, a working drainfield, or a driveway cut decades ago.

Open field or cleared timber

Building new on a Currie tract starts from one of two conditions: cleared farmland, or a wooded tract where the ridge line has been found. Cleared ground gives the site analysis real choices: how the house sits against the road, the prevailing wind and whatever tree line remains, with nothing already built to work around. On wooded ground the analysis decides what to clear, and that decision runs straight through the drainfield, since only part of the tract may carry soil that will support one. Once work starts, the floodplain development permit is in hand before ground is disturbed in a mapped area, the drainfield area is flagged and kept clear of trucks and stockpiles, because compacting it changes the soil the evaluation approved, and the well is sited clear of both.

Renovating a Currie farmhouse

Where a tract already carries a house, it is often an older one: a farmhouse kept in the family, or a ranch built under an earlier code, sited around a well and a septic system whose age and remaining capacity should be checked. Reworking an older family house rarely stays cosmetic once the walls are open. The real decision is how much of what stands is worth keeping against how much is better rebuilt: a roof and its opening protection brought toward FORTIFIED Gold, a continuous air barrier drawn where the original house never had one. On any parcel that touches a mapped flood zone, two checks come before an addition is drawn: the finished-floor elevation against the county's regulatory flood protection elevation, and whether the scope reaches the flood chapter's substantial-improvement line (work costing 50 percent of the structure's market value within any one-year period), which brings the whole house under current elevation rules. The county's floodplain administrator makes that call for the specific scope.

A second dwelling or ADU on RA or RP ground

On a Currie tract the second-dwelling question usually starts in the soil. Where only the ridge will take a drainfield, that one strip of sand has to handle the wastewater for both houses, as a second system or as one permitted for the combined load, with a well clear of it and room left for two roofs, and that is often what decides whether a guest cottage or a second full house is possible at all. Acreage is what makes the conversation realistic, and the Pender County UDO offers two routes to it, summarized below: a detached accessory dwelling unit, kept small and secondary to the main house, or additional principal dwellings on one lot where the acreage covers the district minimum for each. RA and RP both count as residential districts under Sec. 4.5.1, so both provisions reach them, and we confirm with the planning office how either applies to a given parcel before it shapes a layout.

RA district standards

Minimum lot 1 acre, 100 ft width, 30 ft front yard, 15 ft side yard, 15 ft corner yard, 30 ft rear yard, 35 ft maximum height (up to 45 ft in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, at five added feet for every two feet built above the flood protection elevation), subject to the table's other footnotes (UDO Sec. 4.14, RA column)

RP district standards

Minimum lot 15,000 sq ft, 80 ft width, 30 ft front yard, 10 ft side yard, 15 ft corner yard, 25 ft rear yard, 35 ft maximum height (the same flood-zone allowance up to 45 ft applies), subject to the table's other footnotes (UDO Sec. 4.14, RP column)

Detached ADU

One per lot in the residential districts: clearly subordinate to the principal house, no more than 33% of its heated floor area, in the side or rear yard at principal-structure setbacks (UDO Sec. 5.3.2.E)

Additional principal dwellings

Up to three residential structures on one lot in a residential district, each meeting the district's minimum lot size, with a licensed surveyor's plat showing every yard requirement met (UDO Sec. 5.3.2.A)

Lot access

A lot on, or with access to, a public right-of-way, street or road at least 30 ft wide; where access runs by easement to the public road, the easement is at least 20 ft wide (UDO Sec. 5.3.2.B)

Environmental Health decides how many roofs a piece of ground can actually carry, and the planning office decides which route fits the parcel; the dimensional table only sets the district's outer limits. The feasibility check for a second dwelling works the zoning question and the soil question together; settle them one after the other and the second answer tends to undo the first.

Currie's roads stand in for neighborhoods.

A handful of roads stand in for Currie's neighborhoods, each fronting its own kind of ground. NC 210 is the spine: the highway passes Moores Creek National Battlefield, where Moores Creek Drive turns off to the park entrance, and links Currie to US 421 a short distance east. Canetuck lies roughly seven miles southwest, strung along Canetuck Road, a community with a long history of its own; its former Rosenwald school now serves as the Canetuck Community Center.

• NC 210 and the ground around Moores Creek National Battlefield, where farm and timber tracts run up close to the park boundary and the survey has to show exactly where the federal line falls
• Canetuck Road, running southwest through more farm and timber ground toward the Canetuck community
• Black River frontage, where some parcels meet the water directly and carry a different set of bank, buffer and floodway questions
• The farmland and timber tracts along NC 210 and US 421 that hold much of the community's buildable ground away from the water

East along NC 210, Rocky Point's wooded large lots answer to the same county ordinance, and there the site analysis usually starts in a stand of woods.

To the southeast, Castle Hayne across the county line is the nearest comparison in the next county: larger lots and river-influenced ground, answered under New Hanover County's ordinance instead of Pender's. Closer in, the town of Atkinson to the northwest brings many of the same inland farm-and-timber considerations, and Burgaw and its own town ordinance show the other side of the jurisdiction line: a town with its own development ordinance inside its limits.

In Currie we build under the directed-partner model, and the practice carries North Carolina Residential Contractor License #109520 out of Southport. We hold Brunswick County Home Builders Association membership and take calls at 910-946-5512.