Artificial turf permits, by city and county

Three offices, and only one of them writes the permit

A synthetic turf project in Central Florida answers to three separate authorities, and only one of them stamps a permit. The State of Florida sets a floor: since May 19, 2026, Rule 62-308.100 keeps a city or county from banning or singling out compliant turf on a single-family lot of an acre or less (the adopted rule; F.S. 125.572). Your city or county still runs its own permit counter, still reviews drainage and easements, and still decides what happens in a right-of-way or on a bigger lot. Your HOA, if you have one, is neither of those and answers to a different statute entirely.

This page is about the middle layer: which office has your parcel, what its published code says about synthetic turf, and who to call before a crew shows up. The eight pages below cover Kissimmee, Osceola County, St. Cloud, Orange County, Orlando, Polk County, Lake County and Seminole County one at a time, because each office publishes something different, or in most cases here, publishes nothing on the subject at all.

Do I need a permit for artificial turf in Kissimmee or Osceola County?

As of September 2026, neither the City of Kissimmee's nor Osceola County's Land Development Code mentions synthetic turf, and neither office has published a yes-or-no permit answer for a residential lawn swap. That silence isn't a green light: capping irrigation heads under the turf can need its own plumbing permit, and grading near a swale can draw a separate review. Call the Building Division before you schedule a crew.

Capping the heads is required by the state standard itself, not a local choice, so budget time for that step regardless of what the city or county says. The City of Kissimmee's Building Division is reachable at 407-518-2120; the Osceola County Building Department is at 407-742-0200. Both take applications online, and both are covered in more depth on their own pages: City of Kissimmee and Osceola County (unincorporated).

Does artificial turf count as impervious surface?

It depends on the office's older code, and since May 19, 2026 that question has a new ceiling. A compliant system must sit on permeable backing over a pervious subgrade, and a local government's only drainage lever is a permeability cap of at most 10 inches an hour. A code that flatly labels synthetic turf impervious can no longer be applied that way to a compliant system.

Orlando's landscape code is the one on this page that used to classify turf as impervious outright; the other seven never addressed the question in a published rule, so there's nothing old for the state standard to override there. Orlando is the exception, and that page walks through what changed for its specific rule.

Artificial turf rules by jurisdiction

Same state floor everywhere, different local starting point. This table is the short version; each linked page has the citations, the department contact and the parcel-lookup tool for that office.

Checked against each office's published code and website in September 2026; a jurisdiction's silence on synthetic turf is not the same as a written exemption from permitting.

How to find out which office actually has your parcel

A Kissimmee mailing address doesn't guarantee City of Kissimmee jurisdiction. Plenty of homes with a Kissimmee or Orlando ZIP code sit in unincorporated county land, because the postal service draws its lines differently than a city charter does. The fix is a parcel search on the property appraiser's site for whichever county the lot is in: Osceola County's site for Kissimmee and St. Cloud addresses, Orange County's site for Orlando-area addresses, and the Polk, Lake or Seminole county sites for the rest of the service area. Type in the address, and the parcel record lists the taxing jurisdiction, which tells you whether a city or the county handles your permit.

What the state rule changed, and what your local office still controls

HB 683 and Rule 62-308.100 stop a city or county from banning compliant turf on a covered lot or writing a rule that conflicts with the state's material, drainage and setback standards. They don't stop a local office from requiring a permit or a plan review, setting a permeability number of its own as long as it's 10 in/hr or looser, keeping a waterbody buffer that's no tougher on turf than it is on grass, or regulating a right-of-way, an easement, a commercial site, an apartment complex or a lot bigger than an acre. Those categories sit outside the state rule entirely, and every jurisdiction on this page keeps full authority over them.

So a code office that says nothing about synthetic turf specifically hasn't lost any of its ordinary permitting power. What it's lost is the ability to point to an old ban, or to treat compliant turf worse than natural grass on the water-buffer and drainage questions the rule now covers.

Your HOA runs on a different clock

None of the eight offices below can tell your association what to approve. F.S. 720.3045 is the statute that limits an HOA, and it only protects turf that isn't visible from the street or a neighboring lot. A city or county permit and an ARC approval are two separate steps, and getting one doesn't excuse the other.