Egon, Good suggestion re the codes. As regards building inspectors... I am not inside the city limits in a rural area of Oklahoma. There is no inspection of what I build. If I should need a loan to build, the lender may require a level of code compliance but if I have the $ I can do whatever I want. Of course that is poor practice and I don't do that, but seems there are plenty that do. Pretty frightening. Of course fire insurance and so forth would be hard to get on these "impromptu" structures.
Pat