San Marcos has a roofing rule you will not find in Austin, Kyle or anywhere in the Metroplex, and it is worth understanding before you get a quote. The city removed the standard permit exemption from both its building and residential codes and wrote its own: roof covering replacement permits are not required unless the weight of the replacement roof is heavier than the existing roof covering. Not the material. Not the layer count. The weight.
Roof Experts is the residential roofing partner San Marcos TX property owners trust. We bring DFW-quality crews and materials to every San Marcos 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.
Shingle to shingle is exempt. Shingle to concrete or clay tile, or to slate, is heavier and therefore permitted work. Shingle to standing-seam metal is generally lighter and falls inside the exemption on its face. We tell you which category your job is in and we do not invent a permit to add to an invoice.
Everything off, decking inspected, bad sheathing replaced and counted on the invoice. Just over a third of San Marcos homes date to 1999 or earlier, and the Blanco Gardens, Rio Vista, Hughson Heights and Victory Gardens stock in particular hides some interesting decking.
Self-adhering membrane at valleys and penetrations, synthetic underlayment across the field, and new metal instead of sealant over old metal. San Marcos adopted no roofing technical amendments at all, so the unamended 2021 IRC governs — which means the installation details are what separate a good roof from a bad one, not a local rulebook.
Hopkins Street, Burleson Street, Lindsey-Rogers, Dunbar, Downtown, San Antonio Street and Belvin Street are all local historic districts. A Certificate of Appropriateness is required for a change in design, material or outer appearance other than ordinary repair and maintenance — so replacing in kind generally reads as maintenance while switching material generally does not.
San Marcos writes contractor debris duties into its adopted code: containment on every site, streets kept clear, and nothing swept or washed into unprotected storm drains. On the west side that sits over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, which makes it a real obligation rather than a housekeeping note.
Every solid waste hauler operating inside San Marcos must hold a valid city commercial hauler permit. We verify our roll-off vendor's permit before the box goes on your driveway.
Squares, pitch, penetration count, visible deck condition and the ventilation the roof actually has. You get a written number for the roof in front of us, not a per-square figure from a satellite image.
If you are staying with asphalt, no permit. If you are moving to tile or slate, that is heavier and it is permitted work, and we say so before you fall in love with a sample. If your home is in one of the seven historic districts, we sort the Certificate of Appropriateness question first.
Hays County hail peaks hard in April — 12 of 27 hail days over eleven years — and damaging wind peaks in May. A roof booked for late summer or autumn gets better crews and better lead times than one booked into the queue behind a storm.
Tear-off and dry-in the same day. Then decking, underlayment, metal, field, ridge, and a walk-through with you. Two magnet sweeps of the drive, yard and street before we leave.
Laminated asphalt covers the overwhelming majority of San Marcos roofs and keeps you inside the weight exemption. Impact-resistant lines carry a Class 4 rating that many carriers discount — a laboratory impact test rather than a promise about your next storm, and we say so rather than let a brochure imply otherwise.
Metal suits the west side of San Marcos, sheds a Hill Country downpour, and is generally lighter than the asphalt it replaces — which usually keeps it inside the city's weight exemption too. It costs more up front and is unforgiving of a poor detail.
Beautiful, long-lived, and the one category that reliably trips the San Marcos weight test into permitted territory. It also needs a structural look before anyone orders material — a frame designed for three pounds a square foot does not simply accept ten.
Five years on our labor for a full replacement, written, specific about what it covers, and handed to you 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 over.
Open-deck photographs, the sheathing replacement count, the products installed, and any permit or Certificate of Appropriateness. If you sell, that file is what an inspector asks for.
Don't see your question? Call us at (512) 900-1054 — we're happy to talk it through.
Not for a like-for-like or lighter replacement. Ordinance No. 2023-09 removed the standard IRC R105.2 exemption #2 and added exemption #11 in its place: roof covering replacement permits are not required unless the weight of the replacement roof is heavier than the existing roof covering. The same words were added to the commercial code. So shingle-to-shingle is exempt; shingle-to-tile or shingle-to-slate is heavier and does require a permit. Since the ordinary re-roof is exempt, the city publishes no re-roof fee line, and for a heavier covering we confirm the current amount with Planning and Development Services at (512) 393-8000 before quoting it.
Mostly, with an important exception that catches people out. Texas Government Code Chapter 3000, from House Bill 2439 in 2019, generally bars a city from prohibiting or limiting the use of a code-approved building product. But the statute carves out historic districts and certified local government areas. San Marcos has seven local historic districts, so inside Belvin Street, Hopkins Street, Downtown or Dunbar the statewide protection may not help you. We raise this before you choose a material rather than after. We also have not independently confirmed the city's certified local government status, so for a specific address we check with Planning rather than assert it.
It depends on whether you are changing anything. The city's stated test is a change in design, material or outer appearance other than ordinary repair, maintenance and painting. On that language an in-kind replacement reads as maintenance, and a change of roofing material reads as a change in material and therefore a trigger. The city's published COA guidance does not name roofing explicitly, so for a home inside one of the seven districts we confirm with Planning before ordering material. The Historic Preservation Commission meets monthly on the first Thursday and an approved certificate stays valid for two years.
San Marcos does not publish one, and we will not invent one for you. The city adopted no local amendment to Table R301.2, which means there is no San Marcos-specific ultimate design wind speed to cite. What we can point to is the actual record: the strongest gusts logged in Hays County over eleven years reached 70 knots, about 80 mph, and on 9 June 2019 the NWS recorded a house in San Marcos with its metal roof partially peeled off by winds estimated at 75 mph. If you need the design figure for an engineered assembly, we get it from the Building Official in writing.
Twenty-seven distinct hail days in Hays County across the eleven years from 2015 through 2025, concentrated hard in spring: twelve of them in April, seven in May, and none at all in February, July, August, September, October or November. Two of the eleven years — 2018 and 2022 — recorded no severe hail day at all, so nobody should tell you it is an annual event. The worst day in the record is 9 May 2024, when three-inch hail fell at San Marcos Academy and two-inch hail in the city broke house windows and destroyed a solar panel.
No. San Marcos requires annual city registration for building, plumbing, mechanical, irrigation, electrical and swimming pool contractors. Roofing is not on the list, and Texas issues no state roofing license either. That gap is worth knowing about because it means nobody has checked your roofer's paperwork on your behalf. Ask for a current certificate of insurance, ask how long the company has traded under the same name, and be wary of anyone who appeared in your neighborhood the week after a storm.
We schedule normal daytime hours and keep noise reasonable. Being straight with you: San Marcos's posted noise ordinance contains no construction-hours provision, while the codified Chapter 14 does contain a section captioned Construction noise at Sec. 14.011 — and we have not been able to read its text from a primary source. Rather than publish hours we cannot verify, we confirm with the city for your job. If a neighbor has a concern, we would rather hear it early than have a crew turned away.
It changes who you are competing with for a good crew. San Marcos is 30.8% owner-occupied, the lowest figure in any market we serve, and more than half the housing stock is in buildings of three units or more. That means a lot of local roofing volume is bid by property managers on price alone. If you own and live in your home here, you are a different customer with different priorities, and a quote written for a turnover-driven rental portfolio is not the quote you want.
Free inspection, honest scope, real warranty. Most service work scheduled within 24–48 hours.
(512) 900-1054