A third of San Marcos was built before the turn of the century — 11,305 of the city's 30,349 housing units — and the median home dates to 2001, which means half the stock is now twenty-five years old or more. That is a mature replacement pool, and in San Marcos it comes with a rule worth knowing before you choose a material: the city only requires a permit when the new roof is heavier than the old one. Stay with asphalt or go to metal and you are generally exempt. Go to tile or slate and you are not.
Roof Experts is the roof replacement 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.
Everything comes off. You cannot inspect a deck you have not uncovered and you cannot warrant a roof over a deck you have not inspected. San Marcos has 2,806 housing units built before 1960 and another 2,839 from the 1970s — that stock has had covering over covering, and the only way to know is to open it.
Soft sheathing, split boards, delaminated plywood and gaps too wide to hold a nail all come out. You see the bad sheets before they hit the dumpster, and the replacement count goes on the invoice rather than being lumped into a number written before the roof was open.
San Marcos rewrote both its building and residential permit exemptions: roof covering replacement permits are not required unless the replacement is heavier than the existing covering. Asphalt to asphalt, exempt. Asphalt to metal, generally lighter and exempt on the face of the rule. Asphalt to concrete tile or slate, heavier — a permit, and a structural look at the frame first.
Self-adhering membrane at valleys and penetrations, synthetic underlayment across the field, all new metal, and an honest assessment of whether the attic is actually ventilated. San Marcos adopted no roofing technical amendments, so the unamended 2021 IRC governs and the install details are what decide the roof's service life.
Seven local historic districts — Hopkins Street, Burleson Street, Lindsey-Rogers, Dunbar, Downtown, San Antonio Street and Belvin Street. Replacing in kind generally reads as ordinary maintenance; changing the material generally does not. We settle that with Planning before anything is ordered, because a Certificate of Appropriateness is calendar time, not paperwork time.
Containment on site as the adopted code requires, adjacent streets kept free of dirt and debris, nothing washed into unprotected storm drains, and a hauler holding a valid city commercial hauler permit. On the west side, over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, that last point is not a formality.
Squares, pitch, penetration count, visible deck condition, existing ventilation against what the roof needs. A written number for the roof in front of us — not a per-square figure off a satellite image.
We settle the weight test and, in a historic district, the Certificate of Appropriateness question before material is ordered. Nobody should discover halfway through that the tile they chose needs a permit and a structural review.
Hays County hail peaks in April and damaging wind in May. A replacement booked for late summer, autumn or winter gets better crews, better material lead times and a roof that is new when the season arrives rather than queued behind ten thousand claims.
Tear-off and dry-in the same day — an open deck does not sit overnight in a Central Texas spring. Then decking, underlayment, metal, field, ridge, and a walk-through before the truck leaves.
Laminated asphalt covers the great majority of local roofs and keeps you comfortably inside the weight exemption. Impact-resistant lines carry a Class 4 rating that many carriers discount — a laboratory impact test, not a promise about your next storm, and we will say that out loud.
Metal suits the western half of San Marcos, sheds a Hill Country downpour, and is generally lighter than the asphalt it replaces — which normally keeps it inside the weight exemption as well. More expensive up front, and unforgiving of a poor detail, so the flashing work has to be right.
The one category that reliably crosses the San Marcos weight test into permitted work, and the one that needs a structural look first. A frame designed for a three-pound-per-square-foot covering does not simply accept ten. Done properly it is a roof that outlives its owner.
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, and any permit or Certificate of Appropriateness. If you sell the house, 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.
Only if the new roof is heavier than the old one. San Marcos removed the standard permit exemption from both its building and residential codes in Ordinance No. 2023-09 and replaced it with its own: roof covering replacement permits are not required unless the weight of the replacement roof is heavier than the existing roof covering. Asphalt to asphalt, no permit. Asphalt to standing-seam metal, generally lighter and exempt on the face of the rule. Asphalt to concrete tile or slate, heavier — permitted work. Because the ordinary re-roof is exempt, the city publishes no re-roof fee line, so for a heavier covering we confirm the amount with Planning and Development Services at (512) 393-8000.
The unamended 2021 International Residential Code, adopted with the rest of the 2021 I-Code family by Ordinance No. 2023-09 on second reading 7 February 2023. We searched the entire adopted amendment text for wind speed, ice barrier, underlayment, drip edge, ventilation, shingle layers, re-cover, sheathing and fastening, and found no roofing amendments at all. San Marcos has no local overrides on any of it — which means the quality of the installation, not a local rulebook, is what you are buying.
San Marcos does not publish one and neither will we. The city adopted no amendment to Table R301.2, so there is no San Marcos-specific mph value to quote. If a competitor's proposal cites a number for San Marcos, ask them for the ordinance. For an engineered assembly we obtain the figure from the Building Official in writing rather than borrowing a neighboring city's.
Most single-family tear-offs are one day, sometimes two on a steep cut-up roof or where decking replacement runs heavy. The variables that add calendar time here are a Certificate of Appropriateness in one of the seven historic districts, and — if you are moving to a heavier covering — the permit and the structural review that go with it. We start either of those the week you decide rather than the week we mobilize.
If your roof needs replacing, do not wait for a storm. Hays County hail peaks decisively in April, wind in May, and the record shows those hits arrive in concentrated bursts — 9 May 2024 alone produced fifteen hail reports and nine damaging-wind reports across the county in a single day. Booking outside that window gets you better crews, better lead times and a roof that is already new when the season opens.
Often yes, but it is a bigger conversation than a color choice. Tile is materially heavier than asphalt, which crosses the San Marcos weight test and makes it permitted work, and a frame designed for a shingle load does not automatically accept a tile load. We get a structural assessment before anyone orders material. What we will not do is quote a tile roof as though it were a shingle roof with a different surface.
No. San Marcos registers building, plumbing, mechanical, irrigation, electrical and swimming pool contractors — roofing is not on the list — and Texas issues no state roofing license. Nobody is vetting your roofer for you here. Ask for a current certificate of insurance, ask how long the company has traded under the same name and address, and treat a contractor who appeared after the last storm with appropriate caution.
They go into a contained roll-off and out with a hauler who holds a valid City of San Marcos commercial hauler permit. They do not go into your household cart: residential curbside service here is a 65-gallon cart with four bulk pickups a year at three cubic yards each, and a single-family tear-off exceeds that many times over. The city's adopted code also makes debris containment, street cleanliness and storm-water protection the contractor's express responsibility, which is how we treat it.
Free inspection, honest scope, real warranty. Most service work scheduled within 24–48 hours.
(512) 900-1054