Vigo County Building Inspections Department

Vigo County, Indiana

county

151 Oak Street, Terre Haute, IN 47807

Required

Not required

IT IS TWO DESKS, AND THAT IS THE THING TO PLAN AROUND. A re-roof is filed as a Demo or Remodel permit with the AREA PLANNING DEPARTMENT at 159 Oak St, Terre Haute, IN 47807, on 812-462-3354, email [email protected], Monday to Friday 8:00AM to 4:00PM, online through the County document centre or on a Word application brought or emailed in. After Area Planning approves, the applicant contacts the BUILDING INSPECTIONS DEPARTMENT separately, at 151 Oak St on (812) 462-3365, to pay Building Inspections' own fees and collect the permit. Building Commissioner is Terry Bays; Building Inspections is open 8:00AM to noon and 1:00PM to 4:00PM. SCOPE: the County's building ordinance says at section 4-61-2(C) that it "shall not be applicable nor of any affect whatever within the corporate limits of the city of Terre Haute, Indiana", so a job inside the city is not this department's. Zoning is the other way round - the Unified Zoning Ordinance covers the unincorporated county together with Terre Haute, Riley, Seelyville and West Terre Haute under one Area Planning Department. FEES, AND THE PART THAT IS NOT SETTLED. Area Planning's schedule effective May 1, 2026 charges a flat twenty dollars for a Demo or Remodel permit. Separately the codified Chapter 63 fee ordinance, whose most recent scanned text is a September 2007 amendment, prices the closest catch-all category - porch, pools, cosmetic remodel, miscellaneous - at twenty-five dollars for the first thousand dollars of estimated cost plus one dollar per additional thousand. Whether that Building Inspections fee still applies on top of the twenty dollars, or has been superseded since, is not established, because the County's scanned code was last refreshed in 2022. Both figures are reported; do not collapse them into one number, and ask at the second desk.

THE COUNTY'S CODIFIED TEXT STILL NAMES 1969-TO-1974 PREDECESSOR CODES, AND THE REASON IT STILL WORKS IS THAT EVERY ITEM IN IT FLOATS. Section 4-61-4, Incorporation of State Codes, reads: "All matters pertaining to the erection, construction, repair, alteration or change of use of buildings and structures in Vigo County, Indiana, shall be in accordance with the following which are adopted and made a part of this Building Code", then lists the Building Rules and Regulations of the Administrative Building Council of Indiana, 1969 edition, "as amended from time to time"; the Plumbing and Electrical Code of the Indiana Administrative Building Council, 1974 edition, "as amended from time to time"; the National Electrical Code, 1971 edition, "as amended from time to time"; the Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning Rules and Regulations, 1969 edition, "as amended from time to time"; and the One and Two Family Dwelling Code promulgated by the Administrative Building Council and approved March 30, 1972, "and as amended from time to time". WHY THAT DOES NOT MEAN A 1972 ROOF. Every incorporation is expressly floating, so the ordinance tracks the current rule of the named state body rather than the edition frozen in its own print date, and the Administrative Building Council's function now sits in the 675 IAC framework administered under IC 22-13. IC 22-13-2-3(a)(2) gives the state rules precedence over any local ordinance covering the same subject matter, and IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars a more stringent or more detailed local departure. So the rule for a Vigo County reroof today is the current state residential rule, 675 IAC 14-4.4, the 2020 Indiana Residential Code incorporating the 2018 International Residential Code. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: the County has adopted no instrument naming that code by citation, so the chain runs through the floating language above rather than through a modern adopting ordinance.

Required — REQUIRED BY THE STATE, NOT BY VIGO COUNTY. The Indiana State Building Commissioner's own memo reproduces the adopted provision: "R905.2.8.5 Drip edge. A drip edge shall be provided at eaves and rake edges of shingle roofs. Adjacent segments of drip edge shall be overlapped not less than 2 inches (51 mm). Drip edges shall extend not less than 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) below the roof sheathing and extend up back onto the roof deck not less than 2 inches (51 mm). Drip edges shall be mechanically fastened to the roof deck at not more than 12 inches (305 mm) o.c. with fasteners as specified in Section R905.2.5. Underlayment shall be installed over the drip edge along eaves and under the drip edge along rake edges." 675 IAC 14-4.4 amends R905.2.8 only by deleting the word "approved" and does not touch R905.2.8.5. The County's own code contains zero occurrences of the word drip, and IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars it from varying the provision. About drip edge

Not required — NOT REQUIRED BY THE TABLE, AND THAT IS NOT THE WHOLE ANSWER. The Indiana Residential Code's Table R301.2(1) runs county by county, and the Vigo row reads wind speed 115, seismic design category B, ground snow load 20, frost depth 24, winter design temperature 9 degrees, decay slight to moderate, termite moderate to heavy, weathering severe, ice shield underlayment required No, air freezing index not more than 1500, mean annual temperature 53.1 degrees. WHAT THE STATE'S OWN MEMO SAYS THAT No MEANS. It means only that Vigo is not among the counties where the barrier is mandatory. R903.1, R904.1 and R905.1 still require roofing to be installed in accordance with the manufacturer's installation instructions, so where those instructions call for an ice-and-water membrane on the assembly being installed, that governs the job whatever the table says. Vigo County writes no ice-barrier provision of its own. CONTRAST WORTH CARRYING: Porter County reads Yes in that same column, so an Indiana roofer cannot move a practice between counties in either direction. About ice & water barrier

Not required — NO ROOFING INSPECTION STAGE EXISTS. Vigo County Code section 4-61-19 provides for generic stop-work and completion inspection and names no staged schedule for roofing work - no dry-in, no underlayment, no mid-roof hold point. Nothing in the County's permit paperwork or its fee chapters names a roof inspection either. So a roofer should not build a Vigo County schedule around an inspector attending before the covering goes on; if the deck should be seen, arrange it with Building Inspections on (812) 462-3365 rather than expecting a published stage.

Not required — NOT REQUIRED, AND THE NEGATIVE IS COUNTED. Across the OCR'd text of Vigo County Code Chapters 61, 62 and 63, the terms "UL 2218", "Class 4", "Class IV" and "hail" return zero occurrences. The state rule the County's floating adoption reaches, 675 IAC 14-4.4, makes no impact-resistance amendment to the roofing chapter, and IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars a more stringent local requirement. Impact-resistant shingles are an insurance and warranty decision in Vigo County, not a code one.

FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS, AND THE SAME FIGURE APPEARS IN THREE INSTRUMENTS SPANNING FOUR DECADES. The codified building ordinance, Vigo County Code section 4-61-8(C), reads: "No permit shall be required for minor repairs or alteration to or in buildings which do not involve any change in their supporting walls, members or structural parts or in their stairways or other means of communication or ingress or egress, or light and ventilation where the cost of such alterations or repairs does not exceed $500.00. Such exemption does not include sewer, plumbing, heating, or electrical installations." The Unified Zoning Ordinance section 5(A)(9) sets the same bar for the Improvement Location Permit, exempting minor repairs where "the cost of such repairs or alterations does not exceed $500.00", no additional living or useable space is created, and setbacks are complied with. And the County's own current application instructions restate it in plain terms: the Demo or Remodel permit "is for removal of a structure or remodel of an existing structure. This includes roof, gutters, windows, doors, and interior remodels equal to or exceeding $500." HOW IT LANDS ON A ROOF. A re-cover creates no living space and moves no setback, so cost is the operative test of the three. Any ordinary re-roof clears five hundred dollars comfortably; a small repair may not, and that is the one case worth a call to 812-462-3354 before starting.

THE FIGURES ARE THE STATE'S COUNTY-INDEXED TABLE, READ FROM THE STATE BUILDING COMMISSIONER'S OWN PUBLICATION. Table R301.2(1) gives the Vigo County row as wind speed 115 mph, seismic design category B, ground snow load 20 psf, frost depth 24 inches, winter design temperature 9 degrees Fahrenheit, decay slight to moderate, termite moderate to heavy, weathering severe, ice shield underlayment required No, air freezing index not more than 1500 and mean annual temperature 53.1 degrees. TWO OF THESE ARE NOT WHAT A ROOFER FROM NORTHERN INDIANA WILL EXPECT. The seismic design category here is B where Porter and Tippecanoe are A, and the frost depth is 24 inches where Porter is 36 and Tippecanoe 30 - the shallowest of the three. A detail carried down from the north will be conservative on frost and light on seismic. The County publishes no design criteria of its own and could not vary these under IC 22-13-2-3(c).

NO COUNTY RULE AND NO STATE AMENDMENT, SO THE BASE CODE APPLIES UNMODIFIED. The County's own code was read where it matters and counted rather than skimmed: Chapter 61, the Building Code Ordinance, all nineteen pages and all of sections 4-61-1 through 4-61-19; Chapter 62, the Unsafe Building Code; and all three historical texts of Chapter 63, the Building Inspection Permit Fee Ordinance, from 1999, 2002 and September 2007. Across them the term "layer" occurs zero times, "R908" zero times and "shingle" zero times. The single word-anchored occurrence of "roof" is a fee line, "Residential Alterations Including Roofing and Siding" at section 4-61-9(A)(3), which prices work rather than regulating it. The 173-page Unified Zoning Ordinance was swept too: its twenty-five roof references are all building-height measurement and rooftop-equipment provisions, none touching layers, overlay or tear-off. On the state side 675 IAC 14-4.4 makes no amendment to the model reroofing section, and IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars the County from writing one. So the answer is the base 2018 International Residential Code rule. 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. A NOTE ON HOW THIS WAS READ: the County publishes its code as a 756-page image-only scan with no text layer, so the relevant chapters were rendered and read by OCR rather than extracted.

7.00% in Vigo 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 the City of Terre Haute levies anything on top of the state rate, and 7.00% is the full rate a roofing contractor pays on materials purchased here.