City of Minot, North Dakota - Inspection Department

City of Minot, North Dakota

city

Minot, ND

Not required

An ordinary reroof in Minot is handled outside the building-permit system altogether: Section 9-6 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances adds "Re-roofing" and "Re-siding" to the International Residential Code Section R105.2 list of work exempt from permit. Consistent with that, the City's published Building Fees schedule carries no roofing, re-roofing or shingle permit fee of any kind. Work that does need a permit is applied for through the City's online portal at https://cityworks.minotnd.org/Portal/, and the Inspection Division is at 1025 31st St SE, telephone 701-857-4102. Two cautions. First, the City's Building Safety pages repeatedly direct applicants to a "Review, Permit and Inspection Guide" and to specific chapters of it - Chapter 2 for the adopted codes and Chapter 13 for contractor licensing - but the document behind that link is a single page reading only "Coming Soon," so the guide cannot be relied on and questions it would have answered should go to the Inspection Division directly. Second, Minot's building code reaches beyond the city limits: Sections 9-1 and 9-5 apply the adopted codes "within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the City of Minot, in which the city has asserted its zoning powers pursuant to Section 40-47-01.1, N.D.C.C.," which the City describes as a two-mile jurisdiction, so a job just outside the city line may still be Minot's.

Minot is an electing jurisdiction under North Dakota law. North Dakota has no building code that binds every municipality: NDCC 54-21.3-03(6) provides that the governing body of a city, township or county "that elects to administer and enforce a building code shall adopt and enforce the state building code," and adds that "the state building code may be amended by cities, townships, and counties to conform to local needs." That amendment power carries no stringency limit and no state approval requirement, so state text alone never settles a Minot question - the City's own chapter does. Minot has elected, and its adoptions sit in Chapter 9 (Buildings and Housing), Article I (Building Codes) of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances. Section 9-5 provides that "The International Residential Code, 2024 Edition (published by the International Code Council, Inc. and as amended by the State of North Dakota), is by reference thereto incorporated herein as fully as though set out at length hereafter (except and to the extent that the provisions thereof are amended as provided in section 9-6 below)," and applies it "in the City of Minot, and within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the City of Minot, in which the city has asserted its zoning powers pursuant to Section 40-47-01.1, N.D.C.C." The parallel adoptions are Section 9-1 (2024 International Building Code), Section 9-3 (2024 International Existing Building Code) and Section 9-7 (2024 International Energy Conservation Code), each in the same "as amended by the State of North Dakota" form and each carried by Ordinance No. 6150, adopted December 15, 2025. Houses and townhouses run under the IRC track, so Section 9-5 as amended by Section 9-6 is the operative code for a Minot reroof. The City's Building Safety division confirms the same edition on its own letterhead in its residential design-load guidance, which is written "Using the 2024 IRC & ASCE 7-22."

Required — Minot adopts the 2024 International Residential Code at Section 9-5 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances, as amended by the State of North Dakota and then by the City. Both amendment layers were read in full and neither touches Chapter 9 (Roof Assemblies): the City's Section 9-6 runs to fifteen amendments, none of them in Chapter 8 or Chapter 9, and the state's amendments to the 2024 IRC in the 2026 North Dakota State Building Code Book reach only Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 21. The base 2024 IRC drip-edge requirement therefore applies in Minot unmodified, with no local variation and no local exception. Note that the drip edge is still required on an ordinary reroof even though the reroof itself needs no Minot permit - the permit exemption removes the inspection, not the code. About drip edge

Not required — There is no city mid-roof or in-progress roof inspection on an ordinary Minot reroof, and the reason is the permit exemption rather than a separate inspection rule: Section 9-6 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances adds "Re-roofing" to the International Residential Code Section R105.2 list of work exempt from permit, and with no permit issued there is no city deck, underlayment or in-progress inspection to schedule. The City's published residential inspection checklist is a checklist for buildings under construction - building site and soils, foundation and footing, site drainage, backfilling, framing rough in, garage portal walls, insulation, moisture control, vapor retarder, roof and ceilings, slab insulation, windows and glazing, stairs and handrails, smoke alarms, electrical systems, plumbing systems, city flat work, flood zone construction and sanitary drainage - and it applies to permitted work, not to an exempt reroof. Work that goes beyond re-roofing and does require a permit in Minot, such as a job that replaces weight-bearing roof structure, is inspected on the terms of that permit, and those terms are not established in this record.

Not required — No impact-resistance mandate applies in Minot, and the negative rests on both layers of the city's adopted code being read in full. Section 9-6 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances - the City's complete set of amendments to the 2024 International Residential Code, fifteen numbered amendments running from Section R101.1 to Section M2005.5 - contains no amendment to Chapter 9 (Roof Assemblies) and no UL 2218, Class 4 or FM 4473 impact-rating reference anywhere in its text. Because Section 9-5 adopts the IRC "as amended by the State of North Dakota," the state layer was read as well: the 2026 North Dakota State Building Code Book, effective January 1, 2026, sets out the state's amendments to the 2024 IRC in its Section 12, and those amendments reach only Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 21 - scope and administration, definitions, building planning, foundations, floors, wall construction, energy efficiency and hydronic piping. Neither the state nor the city amends the roof-covering provisions, and neither imposes an impact-resistant shingle requirement. A hail-resistant shingle may still be worth specifying in Minot and an insurer may discount for one, but that is an insurance question, not a code requirement.

THERE IS NO THRESHOLD TO CLEAR, BECAUSE RE-ROOFING IS NOT PERMITTED WORK IN MINOT - and the exemption is one the City wrote itself rather than one it inherited. Section 9-6 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances, the City's amendment section for the 2024 International Residential Code, provides at subsection (7): "Section R105.2, subsection 'Building,' Items 11, 12, and 13 of the IRC are hereby added and enacted to read as follows: 11. Re-roofing. 12. Re-siding 13. Ordinary repairs or alterations which do not involve the structural (i.e., weight-bearing) elements of the building being altered and which do not affect the means of ingress to or egress from the building." IRC Section R105.2 is the code's list of work exempt from permit, and the preceding subsection (6) of Section 9-6 confirms Minot is working inside that list - it provides that "Section R105.2 of the IRC shall remain as adopted, with the exception of subsection 'Building,' Items 2 and 10 of the North Dakota State Building Code," which it then rewrites (fences, and decks under 120 square feet). So Minot added re-roofing to the exempt list by name, with no dollar figure, no square-foot figure and no distinction between repair, recover and tear-off. Two limits a roofer should plan around. First, the exemption is written as "Re-roofing" and item 13 separately exempts only repairs that "do not involve the structural (i.e., weight-bearing) elements" - work that replaces roof framing or rebuilds a structural deck is not ordinary re-roofing and should be confirmed with the Inspection Division before it is treated as exempt. Second, and this is the trap in Minot, an exemption from the permit is not an exemption from the code: the 2024 International Residential Code as adopted still governs how the roof is built, and the City's own minimum roof snow load still applies to the structure carrying it.

MINOT PUBLISHES SNOW AND SEISMIC CRITERIA BUT NOT A LOCAL WIND SPEED, AND A ROOFER SHOULD NOT SUPPLY ONE FROM A NEIGHBOURING CITY. The International Residential Code leaves Table R301.2 (Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria) for the adopting jurisdiction to fill in. Minot has not filled it in: Section 9-6 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances, the City's complete amendment set for the 2024 International Residential Code, does not amend Table R301.2, and neither do the State of North Dakota's amendments to the 2024 IRC published in the 2026 North Dakota State Building Code Book. What Minot does publish, and what governs a Minot roof structure, is a local snow rule and a seismic category. Section 9-6 amends IRC Section R301.6 to read "The roof shall be designed for the live load indicated in Table R301.6 or the ground snow load indicated in Table R301.2, whichever is greater. Minimum snow roof load shall be 30 pounds per square foot." The City's Building Safety division publishes the same 30 psf figure as design guidance headed "Minot Local Design Snow Load Calculations - Using the 2024 IRC & ASCE 7-22," which states that the minimum "Applies to IRC structures (one- and two-family dwellings, townhomes and accessory structures)," that designers and truss manufacturers "must use the greater of" the ASCE 7-22 calculated roof snow load or 30 psf, and that "The minimum applies before drift, unbalanced, sliding, step, or parapet effects." The same guidance says a site-specific ground snow load must be obtained from the ASCE 7 hazard tool, notes that Minot "typically falls in the 50-60 psf range," and states "Seismic Design Category A." For the wind loading, no figure adopted or published by the City of Minot or by the State of North Dakota was located, so the design wind speed must be established for the site under the method the adopted code prescribes rather than taken from this record. Do not import Fargo's 111 mph figure - that is a Fargo-specific local amendment and it has no application in Minot.

No Minot-specific cap on existing roof-covering layers exists, so the base code governs. Minot adopts the 2024 International Residential Code at Section 9-5 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances, "as amended by the State of North Dakota," and then amends it itself at Section 9-6. Section 9-6 was read in full - fifteen numbered amendments, reaching Sections R101.1, R102.1, R103.1, R103.2, R104.3.1, R105.2 (twice), R108.2, R108.6, R109.1.5.1, R112.1, R301.6 and R403.1.4.1, and adding Sections M1308.3 and M2005.5 - and it contains no amendment to Chapter 9 (Roof Assemblies), no reference to roof recover or overlay, and no layer count. The state layer was read as well: the amendments to the 2024 IRC published in the 2026 North Dakota State Building Code Book, effective January 1, 2026, reach only Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 21, and likewise say nothing about roof recover. So the number of existing layers that may remain before a tear-off is required in Minot is whatever the base 2024 International Residential Code says at its roof-recover provisions, unmodified by either North Dakota or the City. One practical point that is specific to Minot and easy to get wrong: because re-roofing is exempt from permit here, nobody from the City will look at the roof and tell a contractor the layer count is now too high. The base-code limit still binds the work.

Minot adopts the 2024 International Residential Code at Section 9-5 of the City of Minot Code of Ordinances, as amended by the State of North Dakota and then by the City at Section 9-6. Section 9-6 was read in full and its fifteen amendments fall in IRC Chapters 1, 3, 4 and the mechanical chapters; it contains no amendment to Chapter 8 (Roof-Ceiling Construction), the chapter carrying the code's roof sheathing and decking provisions. The state's amendments to the 2024 IRC, published in the 2026 North Dakota State Building Code Book effective January 1, 2026, reach Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 21 and likewise do not touch Chapter 8. The base 2024 IRC roof sheathing requirements therefore apply in Minot unmodified. What IS locally modified, and what will drive the structure carrying that sheathing, is the roof load: Section 9-6 amends IRC Section R301.6 to read "The roof shall be designed for the live load indicated in Table R301.6 or the ground snow load indicated in Table R301.2, whichever is greater. Minimum snow roof load shall be 30 pounds per square foot."