Custom home builder in Currie, North Carolina.

Here's what the rules decide for your Currie lot.

We build new homes and remodel existing ones in Currie, from our home base in Southport.

• County health staff test your soil to judge whether it can take a septic system at all.
• One lot can hold up to three houses if each meets the district's lot size and yard rules on a survey.
• Where the map sets a flood height, the lowest floor must sit two feet above it.

At a glance

County

Pender County

Jurisdiction

Unincorporated. Pender County governs and permits it directly

Ultimate design wind speed

130 mph across Currie (2018 NC Residential Code)

Flood mapping

FEMA's Flood Insurance Rate Map, read for the parcel on the state's site, fris.nc.gov

From Southport

About 50 miles, roughly 65 minutes via US 17, I-140 and US 421, finishing on NC 210

Residential Contractor License #109520 · Member, Brunswick County Home Builders Association

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

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

Currie is unincorporated. Every question about building rules here goes to Pender County. That covers the zoning district, the setback and the floodplain permit. It is the same government that answers for the rest of the county's unincorporated land.

The county's zoning rules sit in the Pender County Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO. Article 4 sets the zoning districts and the dimensional table for each one. Among them are RA, Rural Agricultural, and RP, a residential district with smaller minimum lots. We read which district covers a given parcel from the county's zoning map.

The UDO's purpose statement for RA (Sec. 4.7.1) describes very low density housing in rural areas, next to farms. That housing relies mostly on individual wells and septic tank systems. We confirm with Pender County Utilities whether a given road has public water at all.

Article 3 sets the review path. Planning staff, in the role the ordinance calls the 'Administrator', handle day-to-day review. A rezoning or other zoning-map action goes past staff, to the Planning Board and Board of Commissioners.

Flood regulation sits in its own chapter: Chapter 18, Flood Damage Protection, in the county's Code of Ordinances. Before any development in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, Sec. 18-46 requires a floodplain development permit. It comes from the county's floodplain administrator.

Variances go to the county Board of Adjustment, which the ordinance calls the 'appeal board'. Two limits matter early. No variance may issue inside a designated floodway or non-encroachment area if it would raise flood levels during the base flood. A variance also has to be granted before a development permit is approved.

Some Currie tracts hold low or creek-side ground. On those, that review is the first one a formal site analysis has to plan for.

Septic and well review runs through a third office: the On-Site Wastewater Program, inside Pender County Environmental Health. It covers both septic systems and drinking-water wells. It sits apart from zoning and from the floodplain permit.

Its Environmental Health Specialists test the soil and judge whether a property can take a septic system at all. Under the state's on-site wastewater rules, the approvals generally run in three steps. First, an improvement permit for the evaluated site. Then a construction authorization for the system. Last, an operation permit once it is installed. We confirm the current steps with the county for each application.

The county also wants Environmental Health's water and sewer paperwork before it will process a construction permit. So the soil evaluation leads the schedule on acreage. Ground here can shift from ridge sand to heavy bottomland inside one tract. Where the test holes go decides the answer. That is why the soils finding comes early in a site analysis. It can rule a house site in or out before anything else does.

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

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)

Work on a Currie tract takes one of three shapes. The first is a new home on acreage that has never held a structure. The second is an older farmhouse or ranch, taken past what it was built to do. The third, where the tract and the ordinance allow it, is a second dwelling beside the first. Each project 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. On cleared ground, the site analysis has real choices: how the house sits against the road, the prevailing wind, and whatever tree line remains. Nothing is already built there to work around. On wooded ground, the analysis decides what to clear. 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. The well is sited clear of both.

Renovating a Currie farmhouse

Where a tract already carries a house, it is often an older one. That may be a farmhouse kept in the family, or a ranch built under an earlier code. Its well and septic system should be checked for age and remaining capacity. 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. Rebuilding might mean a roof and its opening protection brought toward FORTIFIED Gold. It might mean 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 first is the finished-floor elevation against the county's regulatory flood protection elevation, the line a house's lowest floor has to clear. The second is 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. That line 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. It can run as a second system, or as one permitted for the combined load. A well has to stay clear of it, with room left for two roofs. 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. The Pender County UDO offers two routes to it, summarized above. The first is a detached accessory dwelling unit, kept small and secondary to the main house. The second is 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. We confirm with the planning office how either applies to a given parcel before it shapes a layout.

Environmental Health decides how many roofs a piece of ground can actually carry. The planning office decides which route fits the parcel. The dimensional table above 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.

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

Currie is Black River and Moores Creek country, a scatter of farms, timber tracts and older homesteads in southwestern Pender County.

It 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. Moores Creek National Battlefield sits at the edge of what most people mean when they say Currie. It is a National Park Service unit, preserving the ground where Patriot militia met a Loyalist force on February 27, 1776. 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 here hold two kinds of ground, often inside the same survey lines. Sandy ridges rise a few feet above the surrounding land and drain quickly after a rain. That is 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. They stay 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. 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 above the bottomland beside it. It drains fast, and it's 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. Many Currie projects start from a house site carved out of a larger family or farm tract. 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. Burgaw, the county seat, sits farther off to the northeast. Each has its own town rules. A Currie parcel answers to Pender County.

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. 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. A base flood elevation is the flood height FEMA's map sets. Sometimes the study includes a regulated floodway down the middle. The smaller branches that run back into a farm or timber tract, where mapped at all, more often show as approximate Zone A. That zone has no base flood elevation behind it. Ridge ground usually sits above both. The job is finding where the ridge ends and the bottom begins, relative to those lines. That means reading the FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map panel for the parcel, or the same data through North Carolina's Flood Risk Information System. That matters because Pender County's flood chapter treats each tier differently.

• Approximate Zone A is common on smaller streams without a detailed study, and it has no base flood elevation. Sec. 18-74 bars fill, new construction, substantial improvement and other encroachment close to the stream. The buffer runs 20 feet from each side, measured from the top of the bank, or five times the stream's width, whichever is greater. The bar lifts if a registered professional engineer certifies no increase in flood levels during the base flood
• An AE reach has a base flood elevation but no floodway drawn. Sec. 18-75 allows encroachment only with an engineer's certification. The engineer must show that all existing and anticipated development, together, will not raise the base flood more than one foot anywhere in the community
• A designated floodway or non-encroachment area follows Sec. 18-76. It allows no encroachment unless a hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, presented to the floodplain administrator before the permit issues, shows no increase in flood levels. The other way through is a conditional letter of map revision FEMA has approved, with a final revision to follow once the work is done
• On ridge ground outside the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area, none of the three tiers reaches a house sited there. 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. Freeboard is the extra height the county's ordinance adds above the flood level. The 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. It covers what one calculated flood number cannot capture: wave action, bridge openings, and 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. The FIRM panel and the county's floodplain administrator confirm it.

A floodway, in the chapter's terms, is the channel and the adjacent land that have to stay open. Together they carry the base flood without raising the water surface more than one foot. 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 is its coastal and flood construction chapter. It 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 on Chapter 46 as well, alongside the county's elevation rules.

The floodplain administrator and the county's building inspectors confirm where the line falls against the survey. That 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. It 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. That band runs 75 feet for an estuarine shoreline. It runs 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. 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. 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. On a Currie tract, it does more work than 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. It also finds where the mapped flood-zone line crosses that same rise. 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. It is 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. 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. That decides where the well can sit clear of it, and only then where the house belongs, relative to both. Access matters just as much on acreage that has never carried a driveway. One question is how a drive reaches the building site from NC 210 or US 421, without crossing the wettest ground. The other is how far power has to travel to get there. The UDO adds a condition of its own. Every structure needs a lot on a public road at least 30 feet wide, or with access to one. Where it does not front the road, an access easement at least 20 feet wide serves instead (Sec. 5.3.2.B). That matters on a house site carved from the back of a family farm. It is far simpler to settle before a tract is divided than after.

The analysis also records wind exposure. On Currie's cleared fields, that finding tends to run one way. The residential code assesses exposure for each wind direction. It 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 instead. So is a house set in woods but directly beside open ground of that kind, stretching more than 600 feet (R301.2.1.4). A large hay or row-crop field can meet that test on its own. 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 for the house, the drive and the drainfield
• Where the nearest power line runs, and how far service has to extend to reach the building site. 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. 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 directly. There is 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. That is the figure note j to Table R301.2(4) gives the remainder of Pender County. At 130 mph and above, Section R301.2.1.1 requires a house to be designed under one of the methods it lists. They include the Wood Frame Construction Manual and ASCE 7. They also include the residential code's own high-wind and coastal chapters, 45 and 46. FORTIFIED Gold is the top tier of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety's program. We pursue it on every home we design, and a third party evaluates it. 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. Those are the parts of the house that answer open-field wind.

The other half of the standard is airtightness. On this ground, it is mostly about moisture. Our design target is under 1.0 ACH50, written into the drawings and carried into construction. A blower door test on that house checks it before handover. Humidity is why it matters here more than salt. Summers in the Cape Fear basin run hot and heavy. A house site at the edge of a swamp, or under a retained stand of hardwoods, sits in still, shaded air. A wet wall dries slowly there. 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. It 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. In a mapped flood zone, the rules the county administers reach any enclosed area below the regulatory elevation. It generally has to let floodwater in and out through openings. A sealed crawl space then has to accommodate that, without giving up its air seal. Both decisions come out of what the site analysis finds under the pad the house will stand on. 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.

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. It 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. 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. 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. It has 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. 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 design and direct the build under the directed-partner model. The practice carries North Carolina Residential Contractor License #109520 out of Southport, our home base. The drive is about 50 miles and 65 minutes, by US 17, I-140 and US 421, finishing on NC 210. We hold Brunswick County Home Builders Association membership and take calls at 910-946-5512.