Hamilton County, Ohio - Buildings and Inspections

Hamilton County, Ohio

county

138 East Court Street, Room 801, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Required

Not required

Hamilton County's Buildings and Inspections division is at 138 East Court Street, Room 801, Cincinnati, OH 45202 (513-946-4550), and offers an online permitting portal at eztrak.cagis.org. A residential reroof requires the county's own Roofing Data Sheet to be completed and signed as part of the permit application, capturing the existing roof covering type, deck type, slope, area, existing shingle-layer count, and the proposed scope of work (repair only, tear-off, new shingles, new sheet/roll roofing, re-saturate/coating, or other); the applicant must initial acknowledgment of the ice-barrier requirement. The county's own Fee Schedule 2026 prices a residential "Re-Roof" permit at $133.77 up front ($176.20 with the technology fee and OBBS surcharge). Starting work without a permit triggers the permit fee plus a 200% penalty fee (HC.A105.1.1); a missed inspection carries a $296.08 fee and a failed/ not-ready re-inspection carries a $180.51 fee (both residential rates, with surcharge and technology fee included).

SET BY STATE RULE for the technical layer, with a Hamilton-County-specific administrative layer confirmed. Ohio regulates one-, two- and three-family dwelling construction statewide through the Residential Code of Ohio (RCO), adopted by the Ohio Board of Building Standards under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3781 and codified at Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4101:8; commercial and larger residential buildings are regulated by the Ohio Building Code (OBC). Ohio Rev. Code 3781.01(B), read in full this session from the state's own copy, lets a local governing authority add non-conflicting local regulations to the state residential building code. Hamilton County layers its own 2007 Hamilton County Building Code (HCBC) -- read in full this session -- on top of the RCO/OBC for unincorporated Hamilton County: the county's own Fee Schedule confirms that one-, two- and three-family dwellings are processed on the RCO track and 4+ family/commercial buildings on the OBC track. The 2007 HCBC's added provisions are administrative (permit application, fees, inspections, penalties, appeals) rather than roofing-specific technical amendments; no county-added drip-edge, layer-limit, or impact-resistance provision was found (see the individual fields below).

Not required — SET BY STATE RULE, confirmed this session from the state's own copy. The entire text of RCO Section 905.2.8.5 (OAC 4101:8-9-01, effective 7/1/2019) is: "905.2.8.5 Drip edge. Refer to Sections 903.1 and 905.1." Section 903.1 (General) requires only that roof coverings be secured "in accordance with the provisions of this chapter" and "the approved manufacturer's instructions," and Section 905.1 (Roof covering application) is a general wind-load-resistance provision -- neither imposes a drip-edge mandate with dimensions or fastening specifications. No Hamilton-County-specific drip-edge provision was found in the county's own 2007 Building Code (read in full this session) or in the Roofing Data Sheet. About drip edge

Required — COUNTY-CONFIRMED, and independently required at the state level. Hamilton County's own Roofing Data Sheet, Note 3, states verbatim: "Ice barriers are required from the lowest edges of all roof surfaces upward to a point not less than 24-inches (measured horizontally) inside the front face of the exterior building wall." This matches the statewide RCO floor: RCO Table 301.2(1) (OAC 4101:8-3-01, effective 7/1/2019), read in full this session from the state's own copy, pre-fills "Ice Barrier Underlayment Required" as "Yes" statewide, and RCO Section 905.1.2 requires the ice barrier to extend from the lowest roof edge to a point not less than 24 inches inside the exterior wall line (36 inches on slopes at or above 8:12). About ice & water barrier

Not required — Not established as a sourced affirmative. Hamilton County's own Building Code Section HC.A109.3 "Required Inspections," read in full this session, lists 16 numbered inspection stages (footing/foundation, slab/underfloor, lowest floor elevation, rough plumbing, rough electric, framing, fire-resistance-rated construction, insulation, sprinkler, final plumbing, final electric, driveway, final zoning, final fire, collector line, and final building/certificate of occupancy). None of the 16 is a discrete roof-covering, dry-in, or mid-roof inspection stage for a residential re-roof. Recorded as a sourced negative -- required: false -- rather than asserting an inspection-stage list that was not found in the document opened this session.

Not required — Neither Hamilton County's own instruments (the Roofing Data Sheet, the Fee Schedule 2026, and the 2007 Hamilton County Building Code, all read in full this session) nor the state's own RCO roof-assembly rule (OAC 4101:8-9-01, read in full this session) contain the strings "UL 2218" or "Class 4" anywhere. The only roof classification field present in any of these documents is the Roofing Data Sheet's "U.L. Classification (A, B, C, or Nonclassified)" line, which is a fire classification (ASTM E108/UL 790), not an impact rating.

No minimum-valuation or minor-repair exemption specific to roofing was identified. Hamilton County's own Roofing Data Sheet (the supplemental form that "will become part of the application for permit" for any roofing job) includes "Repair only (patch and/or flashing)" as one of the checkbox work-type categories captured on the same application used for a full reroof, and the county's own Fee Schedule prices "Re-Roof" as a standard fee-bearing residential permit category ($133.77 up front, $176.20 with the technology and state surcharges) with no minimum-valuation carve-out identified in the fee schedule.

SET BY STATE RULE. RCO Table 301.2(1) ("Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria"), OAC 4101:8-3-01 effective 7/1/2019, read in full this session from the state's own copy, pre-fills a Wind Design Speed of 115 mph (ultimate design wind speed) statewide, printed directly in the table. Wind exposure category is determined site-specifically per Section 301.2.1.4, not by state or county rule. Ground snow load is the one geographically-varying cell in the table and is left for local fill-in; no Hamilton-County-specific reading of that figure was found in a Hamilton County primary source this session, so no ground snow load figure is stated here.

SET BY STATE RULE. RCO Section 908.3.1.1 (OAC 4101:8-9-01, effective 7/1/2019), read in full this session from the state's own copy, states that a "roof recover" (installing a new roof covering over an existing one without tear-off) "shall not be permitted" where, among other listed conditions, "the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering" -- a statewide ceiling of two layers before a full tear-off to the deck is required. Hamilton County's own Roofing Data Sheet asks the applicant to state the number of existing shingle layers but does not itself state a different numeric maximum.

SET BY STATE RULE. RCO Section 905.2.1 (OAC 4101:8-9-01, effective 7/1/2019), read in full this session from the state's own copy, states verbatim: "Asphalt shingles shall be fastened to solidly sheathed decks." No Hamilton-County-specific deck-sheathing provision was found: the county's own 2007 Building Code, read in full this session, does not address deck sheathing, and neither the Roofing Data Sheet nor the Fee Schedule adds a sheathing requirement.

SET BY STATE RULE; no Hamilton-County-specific fastener requirement was found. RCO Section 905.2.5 (OAC 4101:8-9-01, effective 7/1/2019), read in full this session, requires fasteners for asphalt shingles to be galvanized steel, stainless steel, aluminum, or copper roofing nails, minimum 12-gage shank with a minimum 3/8-inch-diameter head, complying with ASTM F1667, of a length to penetrate not less than 3/4 inch into the roof sheathing (through the sheathing where it is thinner than 3/4 inch). Section 905.2.6 requires not less than four fasteners per strip shingle or two fasteners per individual shingle, per the manufacturer's approved installation instructions. About roofing nails

Hamilton County's combined state-and-local sales and use tax rate is 7.80%, per the Ohio Department of Taxation's Sales and Use Tax Rate Map (dated March 31, 2026, reflecting rates in effect as of October 2025): a 5.75% state rate plus a 1.25% Hamilton County permissive rate plus a 0.80% transit permissive rate, printed in the map's own county table as "Hamilton 1.25% 0.80% 7.80%." The map's narrative separately names Hamilton County (7.80%) among the counties with rates above 7.30%, behind only Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties at 8.00%.