Roofing Contractor Keller TX

On the evening of May 24, 2011, the National Weather Service logged a single-sentence report that still stands as the largest verified hailstone anywhere in this part of Tarrant County: softball sized hail was reported on the northwest side of Keller. Four and a quarter inches, two miles from the center of town, with $300,000 in damage coded against it. The same storm dropped baseball-sized hail near the intersection of Highway 377 and Keller Parkway, tennis ball hail a mile west of Keller and again between Highway 170 and Golden Triangle Boulevard, and 70 mph estimated winds on the northwest side of town. The NWS summary of that day notes a High Risk from the Storm Prediction Center, ten confirmed tornadoes across North Texas, and softball sized hail in the northern portions of the Metroplex.

Keller has taken thirteen separate reports of two-inch hail or larger within five miles since 2010, across 32 distinct storm days. That is nearly double what Colleyville logged over the same period. On April 28, 2021 Keller was the epicenter of the storm the NWS put at over $500 million in damage: 3.25-inch hail just east of Hillcrest Airport, three-inch hail half a mile from the center of town, 2.25-inch hail near Highway 377 and Mt Gilead Road. And on March 29, 2017, an off-duty National Weather Service employee measured an 83 mph gust in north Fort Worth while, in the same storm, estimated 80 mph winds damaged large trees and roofs in Keller and destroyed at least four roofs outright. An EF0 tornado that night cut a convergent damage path near US 377 and North Tarrant Parkway, with several homes suffering minor roof damage and one business losing part of its roof and several awnings.

A note on numbers before we go further. Keller's raw count is 80 hail reports within five miles, but 23 of those are crowdsourced entries from a system that did not exist before 2019. In the 2010 to 2018 era: 24 reports across 14 days. From 2019 on: 56 reports across 18 days. The count more than doubled while storm days rose by four. We quote storm days, because that is the number that means something.

Now something worth knowing if you have lived here a while. Keller used to have one of the strictest wood-roofing bans in North Texas. The old ordinance said outright that wood shingles are not allowed, shall not be allowed as an alternative material, and shall not be installed or used on any new construction or re-roofing of any structure, with an identical block for wood shakes, a rule that a repair could not exceed 25 percent of the roof's square footage, and a minimum Class C requirement that applied to every individual replacement shingle. None of that survives. Ordinance No. 2054, passed February 15, 2022, repealed and replaced the whole article and did not carry the wood-roofing prohibition forward. Keller today has no wood shake ban, no 25 percent repair rule and no individual-shingle class requirement. If somebody tells you otherwise, they are working from a memory of the old code.

What Keller does still have is a fire-classification rule that is stricter than the regional default. Its R902.1 amendment strikes the qualifier limiting Class A, B or C roofing to designated areas or roofs near a lot line, so classified roofing is required everywhere in the city, not just at the property line. The design criteria are the regional ones: 115 mph three-second gust, 5 pound ground snow load, ice barrier underlayment not required. Worth a historical footnote, because it tells you something about how this region's thinking has changed: Keller's 2006-era table listed a 90 mph design wind speed. It is 115 now.

The permit rule here turns on decking, not shingles. Keller's Building Services FAQ lists roof repairs not including decking on residences as exempt from permit requirements, which by implication means roof work that does touch decking needs one. The city does not define whether a complete tear-off and replace counts as a repair, and we are not going to guess on your behalf. We also cannot quote you a fee with confidence, because we read the entire adopted fee schedule and there is no line item for a roofing permit and no line item for contractor registration anywhere in it. We call Building Services at 817-743-4110 for the job in front of us. Anyone quoting you the Keller roof permit fee off the top of their head has not looked.

What the fee schedule does contain, and what matters: work without a permit costs $250 or double the fee, whichever is greater. Reinspection is $50, assessed only after an inspection fails more than once for the same violation.

Contractor registration in Keller is the strictest in this part of the county. The code requires a copy of liability insurance or a surety bond in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars per occurrence, plus a picture ID, business address and a list of licensed employees. Registration runs until December 31 of the year the fee was paid, and a permit will not be issued to a contractor who is not currently registered.

And one rule that decides what time your Saturday starts. Keller prohibits construction, alteration, repair or related work other than between 6 am and 7 pm on weekdays and 8 am and 6 pm on weekends. A crew cannot begin a Saturday tear-off before eight. We schedule around it rather than waking your neighbors and collecting a complaint.

Two more Keller specifics a roofer runs into: no water heaters are permitted in attic spaces with the single exception of tankless units, and attic access must be a minimum 20 by 30 inch clear opening with either a permanent stair or a pull-down stair rated to 300 pounds.

The housing is young and synchronized. Twenty-nine percent of Keller's 16,892 units — 4,944 homes — went up in the single decade from 2000 to 2009, so an unusually large cohort of roofs is hitting 17 to 26 years old together. Only 9.6 percent of the city predates 1980, the youngest stock of its neighbors. Median value is $594,300 and 83.5 percent of occupied homes are owner-occupied.

One last thing, because Keller has a reputation for regulating appearance. For a detached single-family home outside Town Center, it does not. We read all of the zoning districts — SF-36 through SF-8.4 — and every one of them contains zero roof material, color or pitch requirements. Keller regulates roofs in Town Center, in multi-family, and in the Neighborhood Service and Office districts, where pitch minimums and even material lists apply. On your house, the restriction comes from your HOA.