Houston has 1,040,576 housing units and a median build year of 1982. The largest single decade is the 1970s — 192,199 homes — and 41,296 Houston homes predate 1940. That is not a suburb's roofing market. It is a city where the roof in front of us might be a 2019 townhouse in the Heights or a 1952 ranch in Meyerland with three coverings on it, and the only way to quote it honestly is to look.
Roof Experts is the residential roofing partner Houston TX property owners trust. We bring DFW-quality crews and materials to every Houston project — asphalt shingles, metal, tile, and slate. Free inspections, transparent pricing, workmanship warranties. Need an estimate? Call Roof Experts at (469) 936-7663 or request your free roof inspection online.
Anything over an aggregate of 100 square feet needs a permit in Houston, and the city's own permit record says plan review required and inspection required. We apply through iPermits with the city's own Residential Re-Roof Only Worksheet or Roofing Overlay Only form, and the permit and worksheet stay on site for the inspection, as the city requires.
Houston publishes no single design wind speed. Its code requires the ASCE 7 hazard tool to be run against the property's physical address at Risk Category II, with the printout attached to the plans. We do that, and the fastening schedule follows from it.
Everything off, decking inspected, bad sheathing replaced and counted on the invoice. On Houston's older stock — 173,371 homes built before 1960 — decking varies enormously, and layers hide things. You cannot warrant a deck you have not seen.
Houston's own high-wind appendix puts it plainly: roof coverings shall be installed and fastened in accordance with the roofing chapter or the manufacturer's instructions, whichever is most restrictive. That is the standard we work to as a matter of course, not only where an inspector will check.
Self-adhering membrane at valleys and every penetration, synthetic underlayment across the field, all new metal. Worth knowing: Houston's own table answers the ice barrier question with a flat no, so anyone charging you for full-field ice barrier as a code requirement is charging for a choice.
Houston lists roofing materials and shingles by name as not accepted in heavy trash, and states that contractor-generated material must be removed by the contractor. A mixed pile can get your whole set-out refused. Ours goes in a roll-off.
Squares, pitch, penetration count, visible deck condition and the ventilation the roof actually has. A written number for the roof in front of us, not a per-square figure from a satellite image.
The ASCE 7 hazard-tool printout for your address goes into the file, then shingle line, starter, ridge, underlayment and metal get chosen against it. Note that Houston bars wood shingles and shakes in new construction outright, and allows replacement on an existing wood roof only with fire-retardant-treated material.
Administrative fee $33.56, permit fee with a $91.06 minimum, plan review at 25% of the estimated permit fee. The city's published processing time is ten business days and permits are valid six months. Starting without one carries an investigation fee of $333.42 minimum or double the fee, whichever is greater.
Tear-off and dry-in the same day — in Houston that is not optional in May. Then decking, underlayment, metal, field, ridge, the city inspection, and a walk-through with you. Two magnet sweeps before we leave.
Laminated asphalt covers the great majority of Houston roofs. The upgrade that matters here is usually the fastening and the ventilation rather than the brand — this is a wind city with a measured 96.7 mph gust on record, and uplift starts at the eave and the rake.
Houston averages 3.3 hail days a year within fifteen miles, with 21 days at golf-ball size or larger in the record. Class 4 is a laboratory impact rating that many carriers discount — we will explain what it is and is not, and quote the roof both ways so the premium is visible.
41,296 Houston homes predate 1940 and another 132,075 were built in the 1940s and 1950s. Those roofs are cut up, steep and seen from the sidewalk. Designer profiles and standing seam both suit them — and metal is a straightforward answer on the low-slope porch runs that keep failing in asphalt.
Five years on our labor for a full replacement, written and specific about what it covers, handed over at the end of the job rather than promised on a doorstep.
Install a complete manufacturer system — starter, field, ridge and underlayment from one line — and the manufacturer's system warranty applies in your name, with the registration and documentation handed to you.
Open-deck photographs, the sheathing replacement count, the products installed, the ASCE 7 wind printout and the permit. When you sell, that file is what an inspector asks for.
Don't see your question? Call us at (469) 936-7663 — we're happy to talk it through.
Yes, unless the job is genuinely tiny. Houston's Residential Code exempts roof covering work only up to an aggregate of 100 square feet — one square. Above that the city's own permit record for residential roofing states plan review required and inspection required, permits valid six months, processing time ten business days. The application goes through iPermits with either the Roofing Overlay Only form or the Residential Re-Roof Only Worksheet, and the permit and worksheet must be on site for the inspection.
No, and this is the most misused fact in the city. Houston has no conventional zoning ordinance and it does have a full Construction Code, with the Residential Code adopted by ordinance effective 1 January 2024. No zoning changes what can be built where. It does not remove the permit, the plan review or the inspection. If a roofer tells you Houston does not permit roofs, they are either mistaken or telling you what they would like to be true.
Whatever the ASCE 7 hazard tool returns for your address. Houston's Table R301.2(1) replaces the wind-speed value with a footnote requiring the property's physical address to be entered into that tool at Risk Category II, with the printout attached to the plans for verification. It is a genuinely unusual rule and it means there is no single Houston number to quote. We run it and put the printout in your file.
Not on new construction. Houston amends exactly one section of the residential roofing chapter, and that is the one: wood shingles and wooden shakes shall not be used in new construction, and on an existing wood roof they may be replaced with wood only if the replacement is fire-retardant-treated and installed accordingly. If the look is what you want, a designer asphalt profile or a metal shake panel gets you there.
Not as a code requirement. Houston's own Table R301.2(1) answers Ice Barrier Underlayment Required with a flat no. We still use self-adhering membrane at valleys and every penetration, because that is where water actually gets in here — but if a quote charges you for full-field ice barrier and calls it code, it is not. The same is true up in Dallas, incidentally, so it is not a Gulf-versus-North-Texas difference either.
Steadily, in moderate sizes. The record for 2000 through 2025 shows 85 distinct hail days within fifteen miles — about 3.3 a year — with 64 days at an inch or more and 21 at golf-ball size or larger. Only five days reached two inches. The largest stone in the record is 2.75 inches at Missouri City on 16 April 2001, reported by an emergency manager. Be aware that the two 2.50-inch reports came from broadcast and social media rather than trained observers; we will tell you that rather than let it read as gospel.
We will be straight with you about a data problem rather than pretend. Hurricane Beryl's July 2024 Houston impacts are completely absent from the NOAA Storm Events Database for Harris, Fort Bend and Brazoria counties — the local forecast office entered no July 2024 records at all. That does not mean Beryl did nothing; it means anybody citing NOAA storm data for Beryl in Houston is using a different source or inventing it. For the wind exposure we can document, the measured record is strong enough: 140 distinct damaging-wind days in the window and a measured 96.7 mph gust at Bush Intercontinental in June 2023.
No, twice over. Houston's heavy trash rules list roofing materials and shingles by name as not accepted, and separately state that material generated by contractors — roofing expressly included — must be removed by the contractor. Even resident-generated building material is capped at four cubic yards and excludes shingles. And if authorized and unauthorized items are mixed, the entire pile may be refused, so slipping a few bundles in is a good way to lose the whole set-out.
Free inspection, honest scope, real warranty. Most service work scheduled within 24–48 hours.
(469) 936-7663