Artificial turf in Sunset Beach, NC, planned around the 200-square-foot stormwater trigger.

Two numbers set the size of your job: 200 and 45.

The Town of Sunset Beach lists three limits on its Stormwater Requirements page (checked September 2026). New construction and additions of more than 200 square feet of impervious coverage need a stormwater design. Impervious coverage is capped at 45% of the lot. Adding more than 4 inches of fill to any part of the lot needs a Brunswick County stormwater plan.

The Town’s Unified Development Ordinance, adopted September 5, 2023 and amended since, fills in the detail. The 45% cap covers single-family and duplex lots. The conservation and agricultural-forestry districts (CR-1, CR-2 and AF-1) allow 20%. The stormwater plan is due before permits are issued, and a professional engineer, registered landscape architect or surveyor must design it.

Whether turf spends that budget depends on how the Town classifies it. The UDO treats an alternative material as pervious when a North Carolina professional engineer certifies, in a letter under seal, that it meets a hydraulic conductivity of 1.41 inches per hour or more. For scale, the Town’s stormwater page puts an average lawn at about 2 inches per hour. State law on draining turf is covered in our built-upon area guide. Ask the Town which documents it wants before you count on either route.

Line up the Town’s permits before the old lawn comes up.

Inside town limits, Sunset Beach handles zoning, flood, building inspection and CAMA review itself, according to Brunswick County’s jurisdiction table. Stormwater is shared. The table lists the Town, but the County’s Stormwater Ordinance page says it administers that ordinance in Sunset Beach under an agreement.

Under the UDO, any activity that proposes to increase impervious square footage needs a zoning permit, and site disturbance can’t start until the UDO Administrator issues it. No lot may be graded, filled or excavated without a Town Fill and Grade permit either. On a single-family or duplex lot, you don’t need a scaled grading plan when fill stays at 4 inches or less. Work under that permit must be finished within 90 days.

A turf base is dug, graded and sometimes built up, so take your layout to Planning & Zoning and ask which of these permits your yard needs. Staff meet property owners, and appointments are recommended. If the Town asks for an as-built survey, it must show impervious percentages, including inside any CAMA Area of Environmental Concern.

Seaside, off Seaside Road, sits inside this same review. The Town's approved subdivisions and site plans list shows The Townes at Seaside approved, with its entrance off Seaside and clearing underway, so the 200-square-foot trigger, the 45% cap and the zoning and Fill and Grade permits above reach that ground. Some parcels along Seaside Road sit outside town limits; if yours does, the unincorporated Brunswick County rules on our Grissettown page apply instead. Ask Planning & Zoning which side of the line your parcel falls on before you plan the layout.

Bonaparte, Lakewood Estate, Oyster Bay, Seaside Station and Shoreline sit on the Town's own mosquito control spray schedule, which treats them as five named routes it services directly. That schedule places each area but doesn't settle whether a given lot sits inside Town corporate limits or in unincorporated Brunswick County, so the 200-square-foot stormwater trigger and the rest of the rules on this page apply once Planning & Zoning confirms your parcel is inside the Town. The island portion of Sunset Beach, reached over the causeway bridge, is its own route on the same schedule and already sits inside the coastal shoreline Area of Environmental Concern described below, so the 30-foot buffer and 30% impervious cap there apply regardless of which side of the town line the rest of your lot falls on. None of these five subdivisions or the island carries a published homeowners' association rule on turf. If yours has its own association, get its current architectural or landscaping guidelines before you plan a layout — the numbers above are the Town's and the state's, not an association's.

Leave the 30 feet nearest the water out of the plan.

Lots on the marsh or a waterway answer to a state coastal rule as well. Under 15A NCAC 07H .0209, as amended effective November 1, 2025, the estuarine shoreline Area of Environmental Concern runs 75 feet landward of normal high water, or 575 feet beside Outstanding Resource Waters. Impervious surfaces may not exceed 30 percent of the part of the lot inside it. New development must sit 30 feet back from normal high water, with a short list of exceptions.

Artificial turf is not on that list. The list does include grading, excavation and landscaping with no wetland fill. But in September 2021 the Coastal Resources Commission voted 10 to 1 to prohibit artificial turf within the 30-foot buffer, Coastal Review reported, and state staff had required its removal in the enforcement cases they handled. The commission’s August 2025 agenda still carried a variance request for artificial turf within the buffer in Carolina Beach.

The Town’s Building Inspections department includes a CAMA Local Permit Officer. Under the UDO, that officer decides CAMA minor permits, while general and major permits go to the state Division of Coastal Management. Before you settle on a layout, ask where the Area of Environmental Concern and the 30-foot line fall on your lot. We draw the turf edge to that line.

What the UDO says about fabric, rubber and fences.

Only landscaping fabric that lets rain water flow through is allowed, and solid plastic cover is prohibited. Check that the fabric named in your written scope drains.

The UDO keeps manmade mulch, including recycled tire mulch and other rubberized products, out of the beach districts (BR-1, BR-2 and BB-1), CR-1 and at least 30 feet from any water body. It doesn’t say whether rubber infill under turf counts. If you want rubber in any form, ask Planning & Zoning first.

Fencing a dog area? The UDO requires a zoning permit for fences, and the Town takes fence applications online. Fences in the BR-1, BR-2 and CR-1 districts stop at 4 feet, and mainland residential districts allow 6. Any fence facing the ocean, a waterway, marsh, a lake or a golf course may not exceed 4 feet and must be at least 50% transparent. Our Grand Strand pet turf page covers the dog area itself.

Take numbers to Town Hall, not guesses.

At the free visit, we measure the area you want to change and check the ground: where water sits after rain, how deep the base goes and whether it adds fill. The custom layout you approve before work starts shows the turf area in square feet. You can set it against the 200-square-foot trigger and your lot’s 45% cap.

In a golf or association community, check its rules as well; our Grand Strand putting greens page covers how several communities treat backyard greens. With the approvals in hand, we prepare the site, build a base for your soil, lay, seam and edge the turf, add infill, clean up and walk you through the care it needs.