Quad Cities Home Pros
Start here: the city your house is in decides
Permits are issued by the city your property sits in — not by the county, not by the state, and not by whichever office is closest. Davenport, Bettendorf, Moline and Rock Island each run their own building department, adopt their own amendments to the model codes, and publish their own list of what is exempt. Those lists overlap heavily, but they do not match, and the gaps are exactly the projects homeowners get wrong.
This guide covers those four cities. East Moline, Silvis and the smaller communities run their own departments on the same pattern, and there is a pointer to them at the end. If your address is not inside any city, the issuing authority is the county instead — also at the end, because it is the single easiest thing to get wrong in this metro.
One rule holds everywhere: confirm before the work starts, not after. Asking a building department whether your project needs a permit costs nothing and takes one phone call. Finding out from an inspector, an insurer or a buyer's attorney costs considerably more.
Projects that need a permit in all four cities
Anything that changes the structure, or that touches the electrical, plumbing, heating or cooling systems, needs a permit in all four cities. That is the general rule each of them states in its own words, and it is broader than most homeowners expect.
Structural and exterior work: additions, attached garages and carports, detached garages, decks, porches, new construction, demolition, and remodels — including finishing a basement or converting an attic, which are alterations even though nothing about the outside of the house changes. Roofing and siding need a permit in all four: Davenport names both explicitly, Bettendorf runs a combined roof and siding application, Rock Island issues a roofing permit as its own type, and Moline requires one for any repair or alteration of a structure.
Systems work: new electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning installations, and improvements to the existing ones. Replacing a furnace, an air conditioner or a water heater is systems work, not maintenance, and all four cities issue separate trade permits for it — in Moline the electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits are pulled separately from the building permit, and each subcontractor applies and pays for their own.
Outside the house: driveways and driveway approaches, sidewalks, excavation, sewer and water lines, and pools. Work in the public right-of-way — including a dumpster or a pod parked in it — is its own permit again.
If you are reading this because a contractor told you your job does not need one, the useful question is not whether they are right. It is which department told them so, and when.
Projects that generally do not need a permit
Finish work is exempt. Davenport's published list exempts painting, papering, carpet, resilient flooring and similar finish work; Moline's exempts painting, papering, tiling, carpeting, cabinets, countertops and similar finish work. So a kitchen where you replace the cabinets and countertops but move no plumbing, no gas and no wiring is a very different permit question from one where you move the sink.
Small maintenance is exempt too, with the trade lists drawn tightly. Moline publishes the clearest version: replacing switches, receptacles, fuses and lamp sockets is exempt, and so is replacing a branch-circuit breaker of the same capacity in the same place, but a new circuit is not. Clearing a stoppage or stopping a leak is exempt, and pulling a toilet and reinstalling it is exempt — but if a concealed pipe has to come out and be replaced with new material, Moline treats that as new work needing a permit. Replacing a minor part on a furnace is exempt; replacing the furnace is not. Moline also exempts gutters and downspouts outright, and playground equipment at a one- or two-family home.
Emergency repairs are handled sensibly rather than being exempt: Moline asks for the permit application on the next working business day when equipment has to be replaced in an emergency. If a water heater fails on a Saturday, nobody expects you to wait.
Everything in this section is the published exemption, not a general licence. Every one of these cities states that being exempt from a permit does not exempt the work from the code, or from zoning, or from setback and easement rules.
The same project, a different answer five miles away
Three ordinary backyard projects get different answers in different Quad Cities, and these are the ones worth checking rather than assuming.
Sheds. Davenport, Bettendorf and Moline all exempt a detached one-story shed at 120 square feet or under — Davenport measures the projected roof area, Moline the floor area, and Bettendorf adds that an exempt shed must still follow the city's placement guidelines. Over 120 square feet, Bettendorf routes the application to both a city planner and a building inspector. Rock Island does not publish a threshold, so ask.
Fences. Davenport and Moline both exempt residential fences six feet high and under, and Moline attaches height limits regardless of the permit: 42 inches in a front yard and in the side-street front yard of a corner lot, 72 inches in side and rear yards, with a one-foot setback from front and side-street property lines and a visibility triangle at corners. Bettendorf does not publish a height exemption at all — it has a standalone fence permit application, and reviews the location against easements and setbacks — so do not carry the six-foot assumption across the river in either direction.
Pools. Davenport exempts a prefabricated pool less than 24 inches deep holding no more than 5,000 gallons, and Moline exempts the same thing if it is entirely above ground — but both still require the fencing and enclosure rules to be met. Bettendorf is stricter and states it plainly: any pool over 18 inches deep needs a permit, every pool needs a barrier at least four feet high, an automatic cover does not satisfy that, and if you do not already have a four-foot fence the fence application has to be submitted alongside the pool application. Bettendorf also sets placement distances — ten feet from a property line, eight feet from a building with a basement, five feet from one without. Rock Island issues a pool permit as its own type.
Two more thresholds recur and are easy to trip. Retaining walls are exempt in Davenport and Moline up to four feet measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, unless they support a surcharge — and Davenport exempts any wood or landscape-timber wall. Ground-level hard surfaces are partly exempt: Davenport exempts platforms, decks, walks and driveways on private property that do not serve a door, sit no more than 30 inches above grade, are not attached to a structure and are not over a basement; Moline exempts private sidewalks and driveways under 500 square feet on the same 30-inch rule. A deck that serves a door is not covered by either.
Davenport
Davenport publishes the most detailed public list of the four, covering both what needs a permit and what does not. Permits are required for additions, decks, fireplaces, garages, new construction, pools, remodels, roofing, siding and windows; for all new electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning work and improvements to it; and for driveways, excavation, fences over six feet, porches, retaining walls over four feet, sewer lines, sidewalks and water lines. Demolition, fill, alarm systems, mobile homes, temporary heat, and obstruction of the right-of-way are separately permitted activities.
The exemption list is the one quoted throughout this guide: sheds at 120 square feet or under, residential fences not over six feet, retaining walls not over four feet, ground-level unattached platforms and walks that do not serve a door, finish work, window awnings projecting no more than 54 inches, and small prefabricated pools.
Davenport also flags three things that add requirements on top of the permit: property zoning, being in a floodplain, and disturbing more than one acre of land. Any of those can change what you have to submit before work starts.
Bettendorf
Bettendorf organises its requirements around the application you file, which makes the scope easy to read off the form list. One building application covers new buildings, additions, alterations and remodels, decks, sheds, pools, accessory structures, sprinklers and demolition. Separate applications exist for electrical, mechanical, plumbing and gas piping; for fences; for roof and siding; for sidewalks and driveway approaches; for signs; for tents; and for fire alarms.
The city states the timing rule in capital letters at the top of its building division page: no construction work which requires a permit can be started until a permit has been issued. For a deck or a pool, Bettendorf notes that it strongly recommends whoever does the work pulls the permit.
A Bettendorf application typically wants a plot plan with the work drawn on it and an easement map, both of which the building division provides on request — worth knowing before you start, because it is the step that delays people.
Moline
Moline states the requirement broadly and then publishes its exemptions trade by trade. A permit is required to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move, demolish or change the occupancy of a building or structure, and to erect, install, enlarge, alter, repair, remove, convert or replace any electrical, gas, mechanical or plumbing system. The exemptions are grouped into building, electrical, gas and mechanical, plumbing, and repairs — each on its own page, and each narrower than it sounds.
Two process points matter for a homeowner planning a schedule. Plan review can take up to ten business days. And separate permits are required for the electrical, plumbing and heating or air conditioning trades, with every subcontractor registered with the City of Moline and applying and paying for their own permit — so "the contractor is handling it" can still leave a trade permit unpulled.
Once issued, the permit has to be posted visibly at the job site for the duration of the work, and inspections need 24 hours' notice. Fence rules are published by the zoning side rather than the building side, which is why the height limits live on a different page from the permit exemption.
Rock Island
Rock Island's Inspections Division issues permits by type, and the list of types is the clearest published statement of what needs one: building, demolition, electrical, excavation, fire sprinkler, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, sign, utility turn-on, temporary structure, and pool. Everything runs through the city's online self-service portal — contractor registration, permit applications, fees and inspection requests alike — and inspections need 24 hours' notice with a 2pm cutoff for the next day.
Rock Island does not currently publish a project-by-project exemption list the way Davenport and Moline do; several of the individual permit-type pages were marked "page under construction" when this guide was reviewed. What the city does publish is its adopted codes — the 2021 International Building, Residential, Mechanical, Fuel Gas, Energy Conservation, Existing Building and Property Maintenance Codes, the 2020 National Electrical Code and the State of Illinois Plumbing Code, all as amended locally.
The practical consequence is that in Rock Island you should ask rather than infer. Do not carry Moline's exemption list across the city line: the two cities adopt the same model codes but amend them separately, and it is the amendments that decide the edge cases.
Who is supposed to pull it, and when you can do it yourself
Normally the contractor pulls the permit, because the permit ties the work to the licensed party who did it. All four cities also let an owner-occupant do some of their own work, and all four draw the line in roughly the same place: general construction yes, systems work mostly no.
Davenport requires that building, specialty, mechanical, plumbing and electrical work generally be performed by a contractor licensed and bonded in the city, with the contractor pulling the permit on the owner's behalf. The exception is narrow: an owner holding legal title to a single-family dwelling may do new construction, remodelling or renovation without a contractor licence — and that exception explicitly does not extend to mechanical, electrical or plumbing work.
Bettendorf publishes the most detailed version. Only a homeowner who owns and lives at the home may do their own general construction — additions, remodels, decks, sheds, pools, fences, siding. A homeowner may pull an electrical permit but may not do panel or service work. On plumbing, a homeowner may replace water lines, faucets and water closets; everything else needs a permit pulled by a state-licensed plumber. A homeowner may replace small sections of private sidewalk but not the driveway approach, which must be applied for by a bonded contractor. And a homeowner who pulls their own permit is responsible for calling in their own inspections.
On the Illinois side the emphasis shifts to registration. Moline requires all subcontractors to be registered with the city and to pull their own trade permits. Rock Island requires every contractor doing business in the city to be registered and states that unregistered contractors may not be issued permits — registration there wants a certificate of liability insurance, a current State of Illinois licence where the trade requires one, and proof of workers' compensation cover or a statement that no employees will do the work.
So if a contractor asks you to pull the permit for work you are paying them to do, that is worth pressing on. Sometimes it is a scheduling shortcut. Sometimes it means they are not registered in that city, which is a different problem, and it moves responsibility for the work onto you.
Historic districts and floodplains add a second approval
A building permit is not always the only approval, and the second one is the one people miss. In Rock Island, a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Preservation Commission is required for any construction, alteration, demolition, repair or relocation affecting the exterior appearance of a Rock Island Landmark or a property in the Highland Park Historic District — which can reach material and appearance choices a building permit would not question. Davenport runs both a Historic Preservation Commission and a Design Review Board.
The timing is what matters. Preservation review happens before the work, not after, and a material that has to come back off is the most expensive outcome available. If your house is in or near a designated district, ask the city which review applies before you choose a product, not after the delivery arrives.
Floodplain is the other overlay in a river metro. Davenport names floodplain location, property zoning and disturbing more than an acre of land as three things that add requirements on top of the ordinary permit; the same considerations exist elsewhere in the metro under different paperwork.
If your address is not inside a city
If your property is in an unincorporated area, the issuing authority is the county rather than a city. The pockets between East Moline, Silvis, Carbon Cliff and Hampton are the common case, and a mailing address that says a city name does not settle it — plenty of properties have a city postal address and sit outside the city limits.
Scott County covers the unincorporated Iowa side and Rock Island County the unincorporated Illinois side. Confirm which authority applies to your address before work begins, not after.
East Moline, Silvis and the other communities in the metro run their own building departments on the same pattern as the four cities above, with their own exemption lists. Start with the city's own residential permit page.
What skipping the permit actually costs
The cost is rarely the fine. Davenport spells out the three consequences on its own permit page, and they are the ones that bite years later: property insurers may not cover work done without permits and inspections; a sale can be held up by unpermitted modifications; and the remedy can be tearing the work down, leaving it unoccupied, or paying for costly repairs.
The mirror image is the part worth remembering. An owner who can show that code requirements were met, evidenced by the code official's own records, has documentation on their side if something later goes wrong. A permit is a cheap piece of evidence about work you cannot see once the walls are closed.
This is also why the permit question is a useful screening question when you are choosing between contractors, even if you never look at the permit again. Ask who is pulling it and which department issues it for your address. A contractor who works in that city routinely will answer without pausing.
One caveat
Codes, thresholds and exemption lists change, and a directory is not the authority on them. Everything above was read from each city's own published pages on the date shown at the top of this guide, and it is a starting point for the question to ask — not a substitute for asking it.
Before you rely on any threshold here, confirm it with the building department for the city your property is actually in. Every one of them will answer that question for free, and they would all rather answer it before the work than after.