Every page of the zoning ordinance Giles County publishes carries the same running header: County of Giles Zoning Ordinance, 1992 as Amended effective August 24, 2026. Thirty four years of amendments, the latest of them weeks old. No other county rulebook we have read for these pages is that current.
We read all 152 pages looking for containers and found nothing: no screening standard, no day count, no size cap, no entry in any use table. What the ordinance does carry is the category next door, private storage building, which answers one way in R-1, another in R-3, and in R-4 splits at 300 square feet, the line between the two sizes we stock.
So the question here is never whether a container is allowed. It is which category the Zoning Administrator files a steel box under, and that turns on your district and on what is already standing on the lot. We do not pull permits. What follows is the reading to do before you dial, not the answer itself.
The rulebook here is new, and the county attaches its own warning to it
Section 102 is the enactment clause: the Board of Supervisors adopted "the Zoning Ordinance of the County of Giles, Virginia." Section 401 divides the county into sixteen districts, and Section 402 keeps the official map permanently in the Zoning Administrator's office. This is adopted law with a long amendment history, not a draft on a planning page.
What the county attaches to the posted copy matters more than the text does:
Take that as an instruction. Every quotation here came out of the copy the county publishes, and the county says that copy can run behind the text on file. If a sentence below is going to decide where your box sits, have it read back from the official version.
We searched all 152 pages. A container is not a land use in this county.
Checked, not assumed. The full text runs to just under 400,000 characters and we searched it for container, cargo container, intermodal, conex, sea container, semi-trailer, truck body, portable storage and outdoor storage. Nothing came back as a land use provision. The near misses, so you know the search was real: the trailer hits are the definitions of Truck Terminal and Truck Stop, and the one appearance of the word container sits in a rodent proof feed clause.
That is unusual around here. Montgomery County wrote a screening standard naming storage containers, Pulaski County a day count, the Town of Floyd a size cap, covered on our Floyd County page. Giles wrote none of it, and it is not the Carroll or Wythe County case either, where there is no countywide zoning to read at all.
The definitions are where the filing happens. Section 302.182 defines Structure as "Anything constructed or erected, the use of which requires a location on the ground," which a box on blocks will not argue its way out of, and 302.19 makes an accessory building "A subordinate building located on the same lot as the main building." Whether the county also calls your container a building, and which kind, is nowhere in writing. It is a determination.
One time limited clause exists in the document. Section 702.03 permits a temporary building "in conjunction with construction work only" in any district, capped at two years and removable when the work ends. It was not drafted about containers and we will not dress it up as though it were. If your box stays only as long as the construction does, put that clause in front of the county.
The listing next door, and it answers differently in every residential district
Here is the part nobody else has. The ordinance carries a use category called private storage building, the nearest thing in the document to what we sell, and it is handled four different ways across the residential districts.
| District | How a private storage building is listed | What that means at the counter |
|---|---|---|
| R-1 Residential Limited | Conditional use, at 604.03-4 | Board of Supervisors review and a public hearing, not a form you leave with |
| R-2 General Residential | Conditional use, at 605.03-6 | Same route as R-1 |
| R-3 Medium Density Residential | Permitted use, at 606.02-9 | Listed outright, the friendliest residential answer |
| R-4 Planned Development | Split at 300 square feet: conditional above at 607.03-1, accessory below at 607.04-4 | A 20-ft is about 160 sq ft and lands under. A 40-ft is about 320 sq ft and lands over |
| MH-1 Mobile Home | Accessory use, at 608.04-7 | Accessory rather than needing its own approval |
The ordinance never says a shipping container is a private storage building. It says nothing about containers at all. This is simply the category a container is most likely to be measured against.
The R-4 line stops people. Three hundred square feet falls between the two sizes we stock, so the ordinance's own arithmetic sends a 20-ft down the accessory path in that district and a 40-ft up the conditional one.
The provision that pulls against the table
Five districts, A-1, RRA-1, R-1, R-2 and R-3, open their accessory use section identically: "Where a lot is devoted to a permitted principal use, customary accessory uses and structures are authorized." A box behind a house that is already there reads naturally against that sentence, the way a shed does. A box on vacant acreage has no principal use to be accessory to, and that is where the private storage building listing bites. Same district, two answers, decided by what else is on the lot.
Which reading applies to a container is never resolved, because the ordinance never contemplates one. Table 1 does set accessory setbacks and heights district by district, and we are not printing a figure off it. Get yours from the Zoning Administrator.
The building code lets a storage box through. The county's own filing trigger may never fire.
The half Giles County does not get to decide
Section 302.20 defines Building Code as "The Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code, as adopted by the County of Giles and as amended," and the department page carries one building code link, outbound, to the state's current code. Giles wrote no local amendment and nothing of its own about containers, so on this side the state answer is the whole answer. 13VAC5-63-20, Section 102.3, Exemptions, item 11 exempts a container placed on site temporarily or permanently for use as a storage container, and the Industrialized Building Safety Regulations exempt it a second time at 13VAC5-91-20(E). What earns the exemption is what you put the box to, not what it is made of, and neither regulation starts a clock. Our Virginia permit guide takes both apart.
The zoning half, and a sentence worth reading twice
Section 802.01 has the Zoning Administrator issue "a Certificate of Zoning Compliance for any permitted use or any structural alteration" that conforms. The trigger is 802.02-1: "An application for a Certificate of Zoning Compliance for a permitted use shall be submitted at the time of application for a building permit; or, in cases where no building permit is required, at the time of a request for utility service."
Follow the two levers. A plain storage container sits outside the building code, so there is no building permit application for a certificate to ride along with, and it asks for no power or water, so there is no utility request. On the face of the text, neither stated trigger fires.
That is not permission. The district rules govern the parcel whether or not a certificate is ever filed: setbacks, the permitted use question, the private storage building listing. All the clause tells you is that the county may never see paperwork about your box unless somebody asks for it, and the Zoning Administrator is the only person who can say whether he wants one anyway. If he does, start early, because 802.02-3 gives him thirty days to act and thirty more on written notice.
Put people inside the box instead of things and it reverses. The storage exemption is gone, Section 3115 of the Virginia Construction Code governs from there, and Section 803 adds a local Certificate of Occupancy. Either way, we do not pull permits. A permit belongs to the parcel, and the name going on the application is yours, your builder's or your electrician's. Where we modify a unit, our wiring ends at the rough-in. Bringing it live and booking the inspection is a licensed electrician's job, never ours.
Thirty seven miles of New River, and the word storage sitting in the floodplain ordinance
The county's 2018 comprehensive plan counts thirty seven miles of the New River inside Giles County. If your ground runs down to it, or to a creek feeding it, this matters more than everything above. Two documents are in play: the zoning ordinance's Flood Hazard District FH-1 at Section 614, whose 614.03 requires full compliance with "this Ordinance and the Giles County Floodplain Ordinance," and that second ordinance, a separate book.
In the separate book, the definition of development reaches a container without anyone deciding whether a box is a building. Article II item E covers "Any man-made change to improved or unimproved real estate," then runs a list of examples that ends on "storage of equipment or materials." That tail takes in the box and what goes inside it.
Article IV, Section 4.1(A) is unconditional: "All uses, activities, and development occurring within any floodplain district shall be undertaken only upon the issuance of a zoning permit (floodplain development permit)." The districts, Floodway, Flood-Fringe and Approximated Floodplain, sit as overlays on your underlying district under 3.1(B), the Floodway strictest. The county's zoning application even carries a Floodplain: Yes / No checkbox on its face.
One trap, written to be misread: Start of construction excludes "the installation on the property of accessory buildings, such as garages or sheds" from what counts as permanent construction. That is a timing rule for flood insurance rating, not a permit exemption. The floodplain desk is also not the zoning desk. Bryan Reed is listed as Floodplain Manager, interim per the Administration page, with no direct line published, so reach him through a county number below.
Five towns became four, and the fifth one voted itself out of existence
The county's 2018 comprehensive plan: "Giles County has five incorporated towns: Glen Lyn, Narrows, Pearisburg, Pembroke and Rich Creek. The total area of Giles County is approximately 362 square miles of which 354 square miles is unincorporated area." Those proportions tell you the odds.
The count is now out of date, and this is the strangest civic fact in the atlas. Virginia's official charter records head the Glen Lyn page "Glen Lyn, Town of [Repealed]" and record "Charter, 1950, c. 558; repealed 2026, c. 13," following "a voter referendum and an order of the circuit court for Giles County that annulled the town's charter as of February 1, 2025." There is no Glen Lyn counter to call any more and Giles County is who to ask. How the county has administered that ground since is not something we checked.
The four remaining towns each run their own zoning, which is unusual density for a county this size.
| Town | Its zoning | Its building side | Who to call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pearisburg (county seat) | Its own ordinance, adopted April 13, 2010, amended through July 13, 2026 | Adopts the statewide building code itself at Town Code Sec. 22-31 and keeps its own building official | 112 Tazewell Street, (540) 921-0340 |
| Narrows | Its own ordinance of March 11, 1991, last revised February 17, 2014. We read all 130 pages, no container provision | Its own building inspector, appointed by the Town Manager | Narrows Town Office, 210 Main Street, (540) 726-2423 |
| Pembroke | Its menu carries a planning and zoning item, but every inner page of its site returned an error when we checked | Not confirmed by us | 500 Snidow Street, (540) 626-7191, Mon to Fri 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. |
| Rich Creek | Its own ordinance inside the Land Development Regulations of May 1988. We read all 145 pages, no container provision | Town zoning, but its flood article routes review through the Giles County Building Inspector | 250 Old Virginia Avenue, (540) 726-3260 |
Pearisburg and Rich Creek are opposites worth noticing. Pearisburg runs both desks itself. Rich Creek runs its own zoning but puts the county building inspector in the floodplain loop.
Two gaps we will not paper over
Pearisburg is the bigger one. The town posts its ordinance as a 172 page scan with a text layer on only 8 pages, so the container search we ran against the county, Narrows and Rich Creek could not be run there. We are not telling you Pearisburg has no container rule, because we do not know. Inside town limits, ring (540) 921-0340 and ask. Pembroke is the second: its menu proves a planning and zoning function, but every inner page returned an error the day we looked, so we read no ordinance and will not print a name we could not confirm.
Two governments, one name
Pearisburg is both the county seat and a town with its own ordinance and its own building official, so two governments answer to one name in one place, and the numbers are not interchangeable: Giles County Building and Zoning is (540) 921-2527, the Town of Pearisburg is (540) 921-0340. Which makes the line, not the container, the first thing to settle. A rural route address reading Pearisburg, Narrows, Pembroke or Rich Creek is a postal fact, not a jurisdictional one. Give the county your tax map number, or use its interactive GIS map, and have somebody read the line to you first.
One number does most of the work, and the address attached to it is not settled
The county side is small. One department covers building, planning and zoning, and Richard Chidester is the Zoning Administrator, the post that answers nearly everything above.
- Giles County Building, Planning and Zoning, (540) 921-2527, fax (540) 921-1329. District, setbacks, whether a container reads as a customary accessory structure or a private storage building on your lot, and whether he wants a Certificate of Zoning Compliance
- Giles County Planning and Zoning, (540) 921-2525, the number printed on the county's own Application for Certificate of Zoning Compliance, and also the County Administration line
- Floodplain goes to Bryan Reed, the Floodplain Manager. No direct line is published, so go through either number above and ask for the current effective FIRM panel for your parcel
- A number not to use. One town website here lists a Giles County building inspector line matching nothing the county publishes for itself. If a county number did not come off a county page, do not trust it
Two caveats we would rather state than guess at. The county publishes three different street addresses for that office across its own pages; two agree on 315 North Main Street in Pearisburg, so that is the best candidate, but we will not print it as settled until somebody confirms it by phone. And hours appear nowhere current, only on an eight year old brochure, while the current pages give two different names for the Building Official. Ask for the office, and ask when it is open.
Five questions, in this order, with your tax map number in front of you
Open with what you are actually doing, which is setting a steel storage box on the ground rather than building anything, and have the tax map number ready. Then work down in this order. The first answer settles which of five governments you are actually dealing with.
- What district is this parcel in, and is the address inside the limits of Pearisburg, Narrows, Pembroke or Rich Creek, or in the unincorporated county?
- In that district, do you treat a shipping container used for storage as a customary accessory structure, or as a private storage building? Ask it in those words, because private storage buildings are a conditional use in R-1 and R-2 and a conditional use means a hearing.
- Does your answer change if there is no house or barn on the lot yet?
- Do you want a Certificate of Zoning Compliance for a storage container even though it needs no building permit and no utility hookup, and what accessory setbacks apply in my district?
- Is any part of where I want the container inside a mapped floodplain district, and which current FIRM panel covers me?
Take down who answered and when, in the margin beside your tax map number. If it is an answer you intend to spend money on, ask for it in an email.
What this adds up to for one Giles County parcel
Own unincorporated ground with a house or a barn already on it, and want a locked steel box for feed, tools or shop overflow? You are in a good position: the state's regulation puts storage use outside the building code, the ordinance authorizes customary accessory structures where a permitted principal use already exists, and nothing in 152 pages says a word against containers.
The two cases to watch are the vacant lot and the residential district. Bare ground has no principal use for an accessory structure to attach to, and R-1 and R-2 carry a conditional use hook that means a hearing. Neither is a reason not to buy; both are reasons to call before the truck rolls, because moving a container you have already set is the most avoidable expense in this business. Our business is steel boxes, not statutes. Nothing here is legal advice or a code ruling, and the only office that can say which category your container falls into is the Zoning Administrator's.
That leaves price, the easy part. A used cargo-worthy 20-ft is $3,200 delivered, a 40-ft around $4,900. On the rental side, $165 a month buys a 20-ft and $235 a month a 40-ft, and the buy versus rent guide works out where those lines cross, about 18 to 20 months for most people. Delivery and leveling are already inside each figure anywhere within 75 road miles, and a welded lockbox goes on the doors of every box leaving Woodlawn, bought or rented. Approach and ground prep are covered on our Pearisburg page and in the delivery preparation guide. Send the parcel and we will have a number back before the day is out.