City of Fort Dodge, Iowa - Building Safety

City of Fort Dodge, Webster County, Iowa

city

819 1st Avenue South, Fort Dodge, IA 50501

Required

Required

Fort Dodge Municipal Code section 14.04.030 adopts "the International Building Code, 2015 Edition, as published by the International Code Council (IBC), and the International Residential Code 2015 Edition, as published by the International Code Council (IRC), Chapters 1-24, with appendices B, C, D, G, H, and J ... by reference or the codes that are current with the state of Iowa with adopted amendments" (Ordinance No. 2254, section III, adopted March 27, 2017). THAT CLAUSE POINTS TWO WAYS AND THIS ENTRY REPORTS BOTH RATHER THAN CHOOSING BETWEEN THEM. Read as a dated adoption it fixes the 2015 editions; read through its closing alternative it floats to whatever Iowa currently has in force. The point is worth raising with the building official on any job where the edition would change the answer, not least because the city amendments in section 14.04.040 are written against the 2015 section numbering. The codification carrying these sections is current through Ordinance No. 2411, passed December 8, 2025 (Supplement No. 20). Iowa leaves this choice to the city in the first place: the state building code reaches a city only where the council has adopted it by ordinance under Iowa Code section 103A.12, and section 103A.22(1) preserves every subdivision power to enact its own building regulations.

Required — Required. Municipal Code section 14.04.040 completes Table R301.2(1) for the city and states at item (4)(f) "Ice shield underlayment: Yes." That entry is what switches the requirement on rather than merely describing the weather: the adopted International Residential Code conditions its ice barrier provisions on a history of local damage from ice damming as designated in Table R301.2(1), and Fort Dodge has made the designation. Where the barrier is required the code calls for it to extend from the lowest edges of all roof surfaces to a point at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line of the building. About ice & water barrier

Not required — Fort Dodge imposes no impact-resistance or hail-rating requirement on roof coverings. Chapter 14.04 of the Municipal Code, which is the whole of the city building code chapter, was read in full: the adoption at section 14.04.030 and the complete amendment list at section 14.04.040, running to twelve numbered amendments to the building code and nine to the residential code, together with the permit, registration, appeal and penalty sections that follow. Not one of them requires an impact-rated covering, and the chapter makes no reference to UL 2218, to FM 4473, or to a Class 4 or Class IV impact classification. To disambiguate, because Fort Dodge does make local roofing rules: its amendment to section R908.3.1.1 governs when an existing covering has to be torn off rather than what a new covering must resist, and the 90 mph entry in its Table R301.2(1) is a wind figure. Wind resistance and impact resistance are established by separate standards and neither one implies the other.

Fort Dodge publishes no dollar figure, no square-footage figure and no number of squares at which a roofing permit obligation begins, because the city does not work by threshold. It keeps the adopted code structure, under which work regulated by the code needs a permit unless the exemption list at section R105.2 reaches it, and its only amendment to that list - Municipal Code section 14.04.040, item (2) of the residential amendments - is to delete "Cabinets, Countertops" from item 6. Nothing in the exemption list as amended reaches roof coverings, so roofing work stays on the permit side of the line. Two further provisions shape how a roofer actually gets one. Section 14.04.050 provides that a permit required by R105 of the residential code "shall be issued only to a registered building contractor," with an exception for an owner who "shall personally purchase all material and perform all labor in connection with the work" - so a homeowner may pull their own permit, but may not hire an unregistered contractor and pull it on their behalf. Section 14.04.090(c) adds that "building contractors with expired registrations may not secure building permits," which turns a lapsed registration into a stop-work problem rather than a paperwork one.

Municipal Code section 14.04.040 completes Table R301.2(1) for Fort Dodge as follows: ground snow load 30 psf; wind speed 90 mph; seismic design category A; weathering severe; frost line depth 42 inches; termite slight to moderate; winter design temperature -8 degrees F; ice shield underlayment yes; flood hazards HUD Community No. 195181A; air freezing index 2132; mean annual temperature 46.4 degrees F. CONFIRM THE BASIS OF THE 90 MPH FIGURE WITH THE BUILDING OFFICIAL BEFORE APPLYING IT TO A DESIGN METHOD, because a wind speed means nothing without the basis it is stated in. Note d to Table R301.2(1) tells a jurisdiction to fill the speed column in from the ultimate design wind speed map, and 90 mph is not an ultimate design figure anywhere in Iowa; it matches instead the older nominal, allowable-stress basis that the model code used before its 2012 edition. Iowa jurisdictions working from later editions publish 115 mph in the same column - Ottumwa states "115 MPH (three-second gust)" in its own ordinance, and Urbandale and Mason City both publish 115 as well. Those two figures are close to a straight conversion of each other rather than a disagreement about the wind, and applying a nominal number in a method that expects an ultimate one, or the reverse, is an error in the direction that matters. This entry therefore reproduces what the Fort Dodge ordinance actually says and does not substitute a number the city has not adopted.

FORT DODGE HAS REWRITTEN THE MODEL RULE, AND THE EFFECT IS THAT AN ASPHALT SHINGLE ROOF CANNOT BE RECOVERED HERE AT ALL. Municipal Code section 14.04.040, in its list of amendments to the International Residential Code, provides at item (7): "Delete Section 908.3.1.1 condition 3 and replace with 'where the existing roof covering is asphalt shingles, wood shake, slate, clay, cement or asbestos - cement tile." In the unamended code, section R908.3.1.1 lists three conditions under which a roof recover is not permitted, and the third of them is "where the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering" - a count of layers. Fort Dodge deletes that count and puts a test of the existing covering material in its place. So the number of layers already on the roof stops mattering here and the material starts: where the covering in place is asphalt shingles, which is the ordinary residential case, a recover is not permitted and the existing covering has to come off even if there is only one layer of it. Wood shake, slate, clay, cement and asbestos-cement tile are barred on the same footing. A recover remains available over a covering that is none of those, subject to the conditions the amendment leaves standing, including a covering that is water soaked or has deteriorated to the point that it is not an adequate base for additional roofing. Because the governing test is the material rather than a layer count, no single number states this rule.

7% in Fort Dodge, Webster County - the 6% Iowa state sales tax plus a 1% local option sales tax, per the Iowa Department of Revenue local option sales tax tables effective July 1, 2026. HOW IOWA TAXES A ROOF IS UNUSUAL, AND IT CUTS BOTH WAYS. Iowa Code section 423.2(6) makes a list of enumerated services taxable at the state rate, and paragraph (l) of that list reads, in its entirety, "Roof, shingle, and glass repair." Against that, section 423.3(37) exempts "the sales price of services on or connected with new construction, reconstruction, alteration, expansion, remodeling." The materials side flips with the labour side. Under section 423.2(1)(b)(1), materials sold to a contractor "for the erection of buildings and other structures or for the reconstruction, alteration, expansion, or remodeling of buildings and other structures are retail sales of tangible personal property," on which the contractor pays the tax as consumer, while materials sold "for use in repairs to or for installation in existing buildings and other structures are purchases for resale." So a job characterised as a repair carries taxable labour and resale-purchased materials, and a job characterised as reconstruction or remodeling carries exempt labour and taxed materials. Which branch a particular tear-off and replacement falls into is a fact-specific question the statute does not answer, and it changes who owes the tax rather than only how much, so settle it with an accountant rather than assume it.