What Is Included in an ADU Plan Set?

When people say "the plans," they mean a plan set — a bound package of drawings and documents that tells the city (and later, the builder) everything about the project. A typical ADU set runs 15–30 sheets. Here's the tour.

Site plan. The bird's-eye sheet: your whole lot with property lines, the existing house, the proposed ADU, setback dimensions, utility routes, and easements. This is the sheet where Modules 2 and 7 become official — and the first sheet plan checkers scrutinize.

Floor plan. Each level, drawn to scale: walls, doors, windows, fixtures, appliances, room dimensions and labels. The document everyone — city, builder, you — reads most.

Elevations. The building's four exterior faces, showing heights (there's your 16/18/25 from Module 2), rooflines, materials, and window placements.

Sections. Vertical slices through the building revealing ceiling heights, roof structure, and foundation depth — how the building works, not just how it looks.

Structural sheets. The engineer's contribution (lesson 9.3): foundation plan, framing plans, shear wall locations, and pages of connection details and calculations.

Electrical, mechanical, plumbing sheets. Outlet and fixture locations, panel schedules, HVAC equipment and ducting, water and drain routing. Simple ADUs sometimes merge these; the load calc from Module 7 lives here.

Title 24 energy documentation. The compliance report (lesson 9.4) proving the design meets California's energy code — stapled into the set, checked like everything else.

Supporting documents as needed: survey (lesson 9.5), soils report (9.6), solar plans, fire-sprinkler drawings, and any city-specific forms.

Why completeness matters: cities review what's submitted, and missing information is the #1 cause of correction cycles (Module 10). A complete, coordinated set — every sheet agreeing with every other sheet — is the single best predictor of fast approval. That coordination is lesson 9.7's whole story.