A contractor walks the lot, looks at the 1930 house, and says the obvious thing: "you have all this depth — just go up." The lot is 145 feet deep, so it sounds right. In Temple City it is the one move that can make your allowance smaller instead of bigger.
Short answer: Downstairs, R-1 asks 5 feet on each side, leaving 31 feet of buildable width on this 41 foot lot (§ 9-1G-12). Upstairs the two sides must total 15 feet, leaving 26 feet. And any two-storey house is capped at a floor area ratio of 0.35 — about 1,799 square feet here — while a single-storey house has no such cap at all (§ 9-1G-12).
The property
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| City | Temple City |
| Lot area | 5,139 square feet |
| Lot width and depth | 41 by 145 feet |
| Year built | 1930 |
| House size | 1,304 square feet |
| Bedrooms and bathrooms | 4 and 2 |
| Zoning district | R-1, single-family residential |
| Zoning source | City of Temple City official GIS, live city layer |
Key numbers for this lot
| Standard | R-1 rule, interior lot | Applied to this lot | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side setback, first floor | 5 feet, or 10 percent of lot width | 5 feet each side, 31 feet of width | § 9-1G-12 |
| Side setback, second floor | 5 feet minimum, 15 feet total | 26 feet of width | § 9-1G-12 |
| Front setback | 20 feet, both floors | 20 feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Rear setback, first floor | 15 feet | 15 feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Rear setback, second floor | 20 feet | 20 feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Maximum height | 28 feet on lots under 75 feet wide | 28 feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Floor area ratio | 0.35, for two storeys or over 18 feet tall | 1,799 square feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Maximum lot coverage | (0.275 x lot area) + 1,125 | 2,538 square feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Minimum permeable surface | 25 percent on lots under 7,200 square feet | 1,285 square feet | § 9-1G-12 |
| Minimum dwelling width | 25 feet | 25 feet | § 9-1G-12 |
The width, floor by floor
A side setback is the gap the code requires between your wall and the side property line. Downstairs it is the greater of 5 feet or 10 percent of the lot width. Ten percent of 41 feet is about 4 feet, so the 5 foot figure governs, and subtracting both sides leaves 31 feet to build in.
Upstairs the rule changes shape. The second floor keeps a 5 foot minimum on either side, but the two sides together must add up to 15 feet — so the upstairs is 26 feet wide at most, five feet narrower than the floor below.
Now put that next to another line in the same table: the main dwelling must be at least 25 feet wide (§ 9-1G-12). Upstairs you have 26. One foot of slack, before an eave or a chimney is drawn — and eaves may project up to 30 inches into a required setback, which is a permission, not extra room (§ 9-1N-6).
The depth is generous, and it is not the constraint
Front is 20 feet on both floors. Rear is 15 feet downstairs and 20 upstairs. On 145 feet of depth:
- ground floor: 145 less 20 and 15 leaves 110 feet
- second floor: 145 less 20 and 20 leaves 105 feet
At 31 feet wide that is a ground-floor envelope of roughly 3,410 square feet — far more than anything else here allows. Depth is not what limits this lot.
One caution on the front: the setback must also be consistent with the average of the two adjacent houses, so 20 feet is a floor, not an answer. Setbacks must stay unobstructed, and a yard on your lot cannot do double duty for a neighbour's (§ 9-1N-5).
The rule that surprises people
Two limits govern the size, and they do not apply to the same house.
Lot coverage applies to every lot, by formula: 0.275 times the lot area, plus 1,125. On 5,139 square feet that is 2,538 square feet of ground the buildings may cover.
Floor area ratio only switches on above a certain height:
Any two (2)-story, single-family dwelling or single-story dwelling with a height of more than eighteen feet (18') must not exceed a floor area ratio (FAR) of 0.35
(§ 9-1G-12). At 0.35, this lot allows about 1,799 square feet of floor area — and that is a ceiling on the whole house, both floors together.
Set the two side by side. Stay single-storey and under 18 feet, and coverage is the limit: 2,538 square feet. Go two storeys, and the cap becomes 1,799 square feet across both floors. With 1,304 square feet standing today, that is roughly 1,234 square feet of room single-storey against 495 square feet two-storey.
So on this lot going up does not buy space. It changes which rule you are under, and the new one is tighter.
Two more limits ride along with a second storey: it may not exceed 75 percent of the first floor including attached garages, and in the front 40 feet of a lot deeper than 80 feet the floor area ratio is held to 0.25 (§ 9-1G-12). This lot is 145 feet deep, so that front-of-lot rule applies.
What else the table sets
Height is 28 feet on a lot under 75 feet wide, and the top plate of a two-storey house may not exceed 23 feet. Permeable surface must be at least 25 percent of a lot under 7,200 square feet — 1,285 square feet here — so coverage and paving are budgeted together. An accessory building on a lot whose main building exceeds 1,280 square feet is capped at the smaller of half the main building or 1,400 square feet, which here is about 652 square feet (§ 9-1G-12).
The lot is under the district minimum
R-1 asks 7,200 square feet and, on lots under 120 feet wide, a 50 foot minimum width. This lot is 5,139 and 41 feet. Those figures govern newly created lots — the table says so — not building on one that already exists. What the real dimensions still do is drive everything above: the width sets the side setbacks and the buildable width, and the area sets the coverage formula and the floor area cap.
What this does not settle
The floor area incentive bonuses are a separate table and are not reproduced here, so the caps above are the base figures. How floor area and lot coverage are measured has its own definitions. Accessory dwelling units follow their own section entirely. Corner lots use a different column throughout, and flag and tiered lots are different again. None of this covers easements, utilities, soils, a 1930 wall that no longer conforms, or how a plan checker will read any of it — these are the written standards on paper, not an approval. Confirm with Temple City planning before drawing. The Temple City overview collects the rest.
