Tippecanoe County Building Commission

Tippecanoe County, Indiana

county

20 N. 3rd Street, Lafayette, IN 47901

Required

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WHERE, AND WHICH OFFICE. The Building Commission is at 20 N. 3rd Street, Lafayette, IN 47901, on 765-423-9225, fax 765-423-9203, email [email protected], open Monday to Friday 8:00AM to 4:30PM with inspectors reachable 8:00 to 9:00AM. Check the address first: the Commission covers the county excluding the cities of Lafayette and West Lafayette, which run their own offices on 765-807-1050 and 765-775-5130. Zoning compliance is a separate office again, the Area Plan Commission on 765-423-9242, and section 151.07(C) requires that check before a permit issues. WHAT A SUBMITTAL CONTAINS. The Commission's own requirements sheet lists the application and Advanced Structural Components form, a subcontractor list, a letter of consent signed by the property owner, one detailed set of construction plans, a site plan, an energy path, a septic or sewer permit copy where applicable, a County Surveyor drainage sign-off and a driveway permit where applicable. Every contractor named on the permit must already have a bond on file. MONEY AND TIME. A twenty dollar filing fee is non-refundable and does not count toward the permit fee. Payment is by check or exact cash only, taken until 3:30PM. On timing the sheet is explicit: "Following a full submittal of all applicable forms, there could be as much as a ten (10) working day processing time to issue a Permit." Fees effective April 20, 2026 run twenty-five cents a square foot for a single-family residence, attached garage, finished basement, room addition or remodel, twenty cents for miscellaneous and accessory work, each with a seventy-five dollar minimum. Building without a permit costs the fee plus fifty percent plus the filing fee, and a re-inspection is seventy-five dollars.

THE COUNTY'S ADOPTION IS EXPRESSLY FLOATING, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF THIS DIRECTORY'S USUAL DEFAULT. Section 151.05, "Adoption of Regulations by Reference", adopts the state rules and says in terms that later amendments come with them: "Pursuant to IC 22-13-2-3(b), the rules [of the] Indiana Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission as set out in the following Articles of Title 675 of the Indiana Administrative Code are hereby incorporated by reference in this ordinance and shall include later amendments to those Articles as the same are published in the Indiana Register or the Indiana Administrative Code with dates as fixed therein", listing Article 13 Building Code, Article 14 Indiana Residential Code, Article 16 Plumbing, Article 17 Electrical, Article 18 Mechanical, Article 19 Energy Conservation, Article 20 Swimming Pool, Article 22 Fire, Article 24 Migrant Day Care Nursery Fire Safety and Article 25 Fuel and Gas. So the County does not freeze an edition; it tracks whatever Article 14 currently says. WHAT ARTICLE 14 CURRENTLY REACHES. The Indiana residential rule is 675 IAC 14-4.4, the 2020 Indiana Residential Code, which incorporates the 2018 International Residential Code. The County writes no roofing amendment of its own to it anywhere in Chapter 151. NOTE THE ONE THING NOT ESTABLISHED HERE: the operative text read for this record is Ordinance No. 2005-14-CM, which repealed and re-enacted Chapter 151 in full, and the codification is published on a vendor platform that refuses automated access, so a Chapter 151 amendment enacted after 2005 and not surfaced by search would not have been seen. The fee subchapter was certainly amended after it, in 2010 and again before the schedule effective April 20, 2026.

THE COUNTY'S PERMIT TRIGGER IS SCOPE-BASED, NOT SIZE-BASED, SO THERE IS NO SQUARE-FOOTAGE OR DOLLAR FLOOR TO SHELTER UNDER. Chapter 151 was read in full, all twenty sections of it, and it sets no threshold below which roofing work escapes a permit. Section 151.07(A) reads: "A permit shall be obtained before beginning construction, demolition or alteration of any building or structure, using forms furnished by the Building Commissioner." Section 151.04 applies the chapter to "construction, demolition, alterations, use, occupancy, and additions to all buildings and structures" and exempts only fences, mobile structures, industrialized buildings, and detached storage buildings of 120 square feet or less not set on a masonry or concrete foundation. None of those exemptions reaches a re-roof on an existing dwelling. WHAT IS NOT SETTLED IS THE FEE, NOT THE PERMIT. The County's current fee sheet carries no line item named Roof or Re-roof, so a re-roof is priced under one of the general categories, most plausibly Remodel at twenty-five cents a square foot or Miscellaneous at twenty cents, each with a seventy-five dollar minimum plus the twenty dollar filing fee. Which category the office applies is not published, and the Commission's own standing advice is to ask: "A permit price is based on square footage. It is always better to call the office at 765-423-9225 and ask for the exact price before you come in."

NO COUNTY RULE AND NO STATE AMENDMENT, SO THE BASE CODE APPLIES UNMODIFIED. Chapter 151 was read in full, all twenty sections, and the terms that would carry a layer rule were counted across it and across every other instrument this record rests on: "layer", "R908" and "shingle" each occur ZERO times. The County's adoption at section 151.05 is by reference to Title 675 with no technical amendment attached, so nothing local touches the model reroofing provisions. On the state side the residential rule is 675 IAC 14-4.4, the 2020 Indiana Residential Code incorporating the 2018 International Residential Code, and its only amendments anywhere in the roof assemblies chapter delete the word "approved" from two asphalt-shingle attachment and flashing sections, delete "printed" from a third, and delete one sentence from the rooftop photovoltaic section; it makes no amendment whatever to the reroofing section. Nor could the County add one: IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars a city, town or county from an ordinance "that conflicts with or includes more stringent or detailed requirements than the commission's rules", and IC 22-13-2-3(a)(2) gives the state rules precedence over any local ordinance covering the same subject matter. So the answer on a Tippecanoe County job is the base International Residential Code rule on recovering an existing roof, in the 2018 edition, unchanged by Indiana and unchanged by the County. Base-code rule, read at 2018 International Residential Code Section R908.3.1.1, Roof recover not allowed, and quoted here rather than left behind the ICC paywall: a roof recover "shall not be permitted" where "the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering." One existing layer may be recovered; a second existing layer means a tear-off to the deck. Establish the existing layer count and settle it with the Building Commission before quoting a recover.

NO LOCAL SHEATHING RULE, AND THE COUNTY'S INSPECTION LIST DOES NOT CONTAIN A ROOFING STAGE. Chapter 151 writes no sheathing or decking provision: read in full, it deals with adoption, permits, plan review, inspections, rights of entry, certificates, violations, appeals, penalties and the bonding of contractors, and contains no technical roof-covering content at all. The word "inspection" occurs eleven times in it and every occurrence concerns the general permit and plan-review cycle rather than a roofing stage. So the sheathing requirements that apply are those of the adopted state code, 675 IAC 14-4.4 incorporating the 2018 International Residential Code, unmodified by the County. Because no roofing inspection stage is published, agree with the Commission on 765-423-9225 when it wants to see the deck if a tear-off will expose it.

7.00% in Tippecanoe County, the Indiana state sales and use tax rate, with no county or municipal add-on. Indiana authorises no local-option general sales tax, so neither the County nor any city within it levies anything on top of the state rate, and 7.00% is the full rate a roofing contractor pays on materials purchased here.