Inside or outside the town limits?
A Leesburg mailing address does not settle which rules apply. Loudoun County's own way to tell whether an address is inside an incorporated town is a parcel lookup: the Billing District field reads Leesburg Town only when the property is within the town's corporate limits. Inside them, the Town of Leesburg handles zoning and the county handles the building permit. Outside them, Loudoun County issues the permits, as it does across the unincorporated rest of the county; our Loudoun County page covers that path.
Inside the limits, the lot's zoning district under the Town's own ordinance sets the minimum setbacks from the property lines and the maximum building height. The Town lists three ways to find a lot's district: its zoning map, Loudoun County's WebLogis online map, or its zoning staff. For the standards themselves, it points owners to Article 5 of its Zoning Ordinance (additions and expansions) and Section 10.4.5 (minimum yard requirements).
What the Town asks of a patio
The Town's zoning permit is filed through its eTRAKiT portal. For work outside the house it needs a plat of the property showing every existing and proposed structure, patios included, drawn to engineer's scale. The Town's own table sorts a patio, and a retaining wall built with one, this way:
| Project | Town zoning permit | Town engineering approval | Loudoun County building permit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patio | Yes | When land disturbance exceeds 250 square feet | Yes |
| Retaining wall | Yes | When land disturbance exceeds 250 square feet | Yes |
The same 250 square feet decides the paperwork. A patio whose land disturbance exceeds it needs a Site Plan Waiver, and the Town's Plan Review Approval has to come before the zoning permit can be processed. The waiver goes to the Community Development counter at 222 Catoctin Circle SE, or in with the zoning permit. The Town's page also asks owners to confirm with Loudoun County's Department of Building and Development whether building or trade permits are needed, and it reminds them that a homeowners association may add restrictions of its own, so a patio inside the limits can face three reviews: the association's, the Town's and the county's.
Not sure which side of the line you are on?
Give us the address, and we will check the town limits and the historic districts before anything is drawn.
Patios in the Old and Historic District
In the Old and Historic District, every exterior alteration needs a Certificate of Appropriateness, even replacing a material in kind; in the Gateway and H-2 Corridor Districts, most exterior alterations do. Preservation staff can approve some small items in the office: a patio in the rear yard under 200 square feet, a residential walkway and a landscape wall no taller than 24 inches are on that list. A larger patio goes to the Board of Architectural Review instead.
Every case before the Board is a public hearing. A sign goes up on the property 15 days before the meeting and the adjacent owners get a letter 10 days before it, and an application that misses the month's deadline moves to the next month.
How we plan a Leesburg patio
At the estimate we check the Billing District, the zoning district and the architectural control districts for the lot, and we measure the ground the patio, its base and any wall will disturb, since 250 square feet is where the Town's engineering approval begins. The patio is then drawn onto the property's plat for the zoning permit. How the base is built and the stone is laid is on Patios and Hardscapes.
Other Leesburg projects we take on
- Porticos and covered porches at the front of the house
- Screened porches and composite decks out back
- Walkways, outdoor fireplaces and home additions