Wellington.
Two villages, one code.
Find out which you are in.

We are not going to tell you, and you should be wary of any contractor’s website that does. We have read what the Village publishes about the overlay’s purpose — adopted by Council in 2003 to regulate development and activities within the preserve area “to protect the community’s character”, and to preserve and enhance the equestrian area and encourage land uses that support it. We have not read the overlay regulations themselves, so this page states no setback, no permitted use, no lot standard and no requirement of any kind from inside them. The Village is the authority, and getting its answer in writing is part of how we start.

On what the Village publishes, no. The Committee is established to advise Wellington’s Planning, Zoning and Adjustment Board about land development regulations and land use decisions within the preserve area, and it does so upon the request of the Village Council. It consists of seven residents who live in the preserve or are involved in equestrian activities or businesses, and it advises on matters including protecting preserve land as equestrian, the safety of riders and animals, and flooding and drainage. It is an advisory body — it is not the authority that issues or refuses your building permit.

The Village publishes a standard for it, and we would rather point you at that than guess. The Building department states that it strives to review permits promptly and efficiently in accordance with a published chart, created to set the standard of plan review time for all electronic permit submittals. We have not opened that chart and do not print numbers from it, because a stale figure is worse than none. Ask for the current chart when you file — and note that the standard is written around electronic submittal.

Early. Business and lobby hours run Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and building inspections run Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. That early start is genuinely useful on site: a first-thing inspection can release the rest of the working day rather than consuming it.

Possibly. The Village states that after hours and weekend inspections are available upon request and based on availability. Both halves of that matter: it is a request rather than a booking, and it depends on somebody being available. We would never build a critical path on it — but when a close-up or a pour would otherwise lose a whole weekend, it is worth asking, and very few municipalities in South Florida offer it at all.

The Florida Building Code, 8th Edition (2023). The Village records that it took effect on 31 December 2023, and that permit applications and plans submitted on or after that date must demonstrate compliance with it. If you have drawings that were prepared some time ago to an earlier edition, that is worth checking before filing rather than discovering in the first review cycle.

Building permits are processed electronically through the Village’s plan review system, and there is a separate self service portal for paying permit fees, scheduling inspections and checking permit status. Since the Village’s published plan review standard is written specifically around electronic submittals, filing that way is the route the service has been designed around.

No. The Building division’s stated mission includes enforcing Wellington codes and ordinances, the Florida Building Code, and architectural and property maintenance standards. On exterior work especially — finishes, elevations, the condition things are left in — there is more than the building code involved, which is worth knowing before specifying something unusual.

Then the zoning question comes before the construction question. Whether a property can carry additional or detached living space, and on what terms, is decided by land development regulation first — and inside the Equestrian Preserve Area the overlay district sits on top of that. So on this kind of project we establish what the Village permits at your address before anyone produces a design, which avoids the expensive version where drawings are done twice.

No. We are a residential and commercial general contractor — kitchens, bathrooms, additions, whole-home renovation, exterior structures and the trades behind them. Nothing on this page is a claim to design or build equestrian facilities, and none of the photography on it shows any. If your project is a barn or an arena, you want a specialist in that work, and we would say so on the first call rather than learn on your property.

Not from a page. We publish no permit fees for Wellington, and for review time the Village’s own published chart is the honest source rather than a number from us. What we can do first is establish whether the address sits inside the Equestrian Preserve Area, confirm with the Village what applies there, check the drawings are on the current code edition, and then price against drawings.