If you’re planning an in-law suite in Bucks County, start with the part most homeowners get backwards. Harrisburg hasn’t changed the rules yet. A bill that would make every Pennsylvania municipality allow one accessory dwelling unit per lot passed the state House and now sits in a Senate committee.
Your township’s zoning book is still the rulebook, and it probably already says something about a second kitchen and bath.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. The rules that decide whether you can build, how big the unit can be, and what the kitchen is allowed to include are all local right now. Some Bucks County townships already permit an accessory unit. Others don’t. What you can design depends on which one you live in.
Did Pennsylvania Just Legalize In-Law Suites?
No. House Bill 2186 would require municipalities with zoning to allow one accessory dwelling unit by right on any lot that already permits a home. It passed the state House by a vote of 139 to 62 and moved to the Senate. Until the Senate acts and the bill is signed, nothing about your township’s rules has changed.
The official record shows the bill received third consideration and final passage in the House before it was referred to the Senate’s Urban Affairs and Housing Committee in early June. That’s the whole status.
So treat this as a planning horizon, not a green light. There’s no scheduled Senate vote. If someone tells you the state has opened the door, ask which section of your own township’s ordinance they’re relying on.
An Accessory Dwelling Unit Is a Second Kitchen and a Second Bath
Strip away the acronym and an accessory unit is a small, complete home inside or beside your existing one. It needs a place to sleep, a full bathroom, and a kitchen with cooking, refrigeration, and a sink. That last piece is what separates an accessory unit from a finished basement with a bed in it.
It’s also what turns the job into a design-build project instead of a framing project. You’re running a second drain line, a second vent, and enough electrical capacity for a range and a refrigerator. Those are the same systems a full kitchen remodel touches, packed into a much smaller footprint.
Small space works against you here. A compact kitchen still needs the same appliances as a large one, so the layout gets tighter rather than cheaper. The same holds on the bathroom side, where a second bath carries the same fixture count as a big one. It’s why bathroom remodeling rarely scales down in cost the way people expect.
What Does Your Township Allow Right Now?
It depends on the municipality, and the differences are wide. Bucks County has dozens of townships and boroughs, and each one writes its own zoning ordinance. Some permit an accessory unit when conditions are met. Some require a hearing first. Some don’t address it at all, which in practice means no.
Doylestown Township is a useful example because its ordinance is unusually specific. It allows one accessory dwelling unit tied to a single-family detached home and then lists the conditions in the code itself. The township’s use regulations set the size limit, the parking requirement, and the approvals involved.
One detail is worth flagging, because it trips people up. That ordinance has been amended. An older version called the use an accessory family apartment, limited who could live in it to family members or a family caregiver, and barred renting it out. The current code drops the family restriction and the rental ban.
If you’re working from advice someone gave you a few years ago, it may describe rules that no longer exist.
The Conditions That Shape the Kitchen and the Bath
Three conditions do most of the work on your design, and versions of them show up across the county in different wording.
The first is size. In Doylestown Township the accessory unit can occupy no more than 25% of the principal home’s total usable floor area, with the garage excluded from that math. On a 2,400-square-foot house, that’s roughly 600 square feet for the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen combined. The kitchen that fits inside that number is a galley or an L. It isn’t an island layout.
The second is location. The unit has to be part of the principal residence or contained in an existing accessory structure such as a garage. A new detached cottage in the backyard isn’t what that section permits. It changes the question from where do we put it to what do we convert.
The third is wastewater, and it’s the one that surprises people. The ordinance requires certification that the wastewater facilities can serve the original house plus the new unit. On public sewer that’s usually quick. On septic it’s a real gate, and it’s the same capacity question that catches homeowners when systems sized for the original house suddenly have to carry more living space.
There’s paperwork behind all of it. The unit gets registered with the township zoning officer, that registration expires when the property changes hands, and the owner records a deed restriction. None of it is hard. It just has to happen before anyone orders cabinets.
If you’re not sure your house can absorb a second kitchen and bath at all, that’s the conversation to have before drawings start. You can walk through your home addition options with a designer who reads these ordinances every week.
Should You Wait for the Senate to Act?
Probably not, if the reason you’re building is a family member who needs somewhere to live soon. There’s no scheduled vote. And even if the bill becomes law, municipalities will still control building code compliance and plenty of design detail. Waiting trades a real need for an uncertain date.
There’s also a design argument for starting now. The slowest part of an accessory unit isn’t the approval. It’s working out what gets converted, where the plumbing can physically run, and how a full kitchen and bath fit the space you actually have. That planning keeps its value whether the law changes or not.
Lang’s runs this the way it runs any project, through a twelve-step process that puts an in-home analysis ahead of the final quote. A plan drawn from a showroom conversation can miss where a drain stack actually sits or how far a vent has to travel. Walking the house is how that gets caught early, and it’s also where the Good-Better-Best pricing analysis gets its numbers.
Families already living this question tend to arrive with a sharper brief, because they’ve spent years adapting a house for shared living in smaller ways.
If you’re earlier than that, the first question isn’t legal at all. It’s whether the space comes from converting what you own or from building up or out. Under the conditions Doylestown has on the books today, the answer leans hard toward conversion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an accessory dwelling unit the same as an in-law suite?
Mostly. In-law suite is what homeowners call it, and accessory dwelling unit is what the ordinance calls it. The zoning term is the one that matters on an application. A suite without its own kitchen is often treated as ordinary living space, while a complete second dwelling triggers a separate set of conditions.
Can I rent out an accessory dwelling unit in Bucks County?
That depends entirely on your municipality. Doylestown Township’s current ordinance no longer carries the no-rental clause an earlier version included, but other townships still limit occupancy to family. Confirm the language in force today with your own zoning officer before you count on rental income.
Does an in-law suite need its own septic system?
Not its own system, but the existing one has to be certified as adequate for both dwellings. On public sewer that’s usually straightforward. On septic it can mean testing and sometimes an expansion, which is worth learning early because it can decide whether the project pencils out.
How big can an in-law suite kitchen be?
The kitchen isn’t capped on its own. It’s capped by the limit on the whole unit, which in Doylestown Township is 25% of the principal home’s usable floor area excluding the garage. Bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen all share that allowance, so the kitchen footprint is really a budgeting decision.
Do I need a zoning hearing to add an in-law suite?
Sometimes. In a number of Bucks County townships an accessory unit is allowed by special exception, which means a hearing in front of the zoning hearing board. Elsewhere it’s permitted once the listed conditions are met. Your township zoning officer can tell you which path applies to your parcel.
Where to Start on a Bucks County In-Law Suite
The useful first step isn’t a zoning application. It’s finding out what your house can physically hold and what your township’s ordinance says as it reads today. Those two answers together decide whether you’re looking at a conversion, an addition, or a project that has to wait.
Lang’s designs kitchens and baths across Bucks County from the Newtown showroom, and an accessory unit is both of those in a single project. When you’re ready, walk through your home addition options and bring your township’s name with you. The ordinance is where the design starts.