City of West Lafayette Building Department

City of West Lafayette, Indiana

city

222 N Chauncey Ave, West Lafayette, IN 47906

Required

Required

WHERE. The Building Department is at Margerum City Hall, 222 N Chauncey Ave, West Lafayette, IN 47906, on (765) 775-5130, email [email protected], Monday to Friday 8:00AM to 4:30PM, with Jason Hardebeck as Building Commissioner. The general city hall line, (765) 775-5100, is a different desk. WHAT IS SUBMITTED. The City's own form is the Improved Location Permit and Advanced Structural Components Application, filed with a list of contractors where applicable, a state design release where applicable, a full set of plans and a site plan. Every contractor must already have a bond on file, and no permit issues until they do. TIME AND MONEY. The Building Permits page states plainly: "The Building Department has 10 working days to review permit applications." Under the fee chapter at section 12-29, the Residential Improvement category - the one a permitted reroof falls into - carries a base fee of $250.00 described as covering review, certificate of occupancy and three inspections, plus two dollars per thousand dollars of project cost up to one million. Re-inspections are free once, then $100.00 and $200.00. Starting work without a permit draws an investigation fee of double the normal permit fee under section 6-52(c), on top of the fee itself. TWO THINGS THAT CATCH PEOPLE OUT. Property in the New Chauncey Historic District must clear the Historic Preservation Commission before the Building Department will review or issue anything. And there is no online permitting portal - the only portals on the City site are for parking and GIS - so applications are PDF forms brought or emailed in.

THE CITY ADOPTS NO EDITION OF ITS OWN; ITS ADOPTION IS EXPRESSLY FLOATING. Section 6-136(a), Adoption of rules by reference, reads: "Pursuant to IC 22-13-2-3(b), the rules of the state fire prevention and building safety commission as set out in the following Articles of Title 675 of the state administrative code are hereby incorporated by reference in this Code and shall include any later amendments to those rules." The enumerated list includes Article 14, the state residential code. So West Lafayette tracks whatever Article 14 currently is rather than freezing an edition, and the last amendment to that section was Ord. No. 19-2024, adopted August 5, 2024. 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 City writes no roofing amendment to it anywhere in Chapter 6. A SEPARATE ADOPTION WORTH KNOWING ABOUT. Article III adopts, at section 6-152, the International Property Maintenance Code, 2018 edition, first printing dated August 2017, and section 6-155 amends only two of its sections, 602.3 on heat supply and 602.4 on occupiable work spaces. Neither touches roofing.

Required — REQUIRED, BUT BY THE STATE RATHER THAN BY WEST LAFAYETTE. The Indiana State Building Commissioner's own memo reproduces the provision as adopted: "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. West Lafayette has no drip-edge provision of its own and no power to add or remove one under IC 22-13-2-3(c). About drip edge

Not required — NOT REQUIRED BY THE TABLE HERE, AND THAT IS NOT THE END OF THE QUESTION. The Indiana Residential Code's Table R301.2(1) runs county by county, and the Tippecanoe row reads wind speed 115, seismic A, ground snow load 20, frost depth 30, winter design temperature 2 degrees, decay slight to moderate, termite moderate to heavy, weathering severe, ice shield underlayment required No, air freezing index 2000, mean annual temperature 50.9. WHAT THE STATE'S OWN MEMO SAYS THE No MEANS. It means only that Tippecanoe is not on the list of 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 a given assembly, that requirement governs the job regardless of the table. West Lafayette has no ordinance touching this: Chapter 6 contains no occurrence of ice, snow, seismic or wind speed at all. Read the shingle manufacturer's instructions for the assembly being installed before deciding the membrane is optional here. About ice & water barrier

Not required — NO ROOFING STAGE APPEARS IN THE CITY'S PUBLISHED INSPECTION LIST, WHICH IS ITEMISED RATHER THAN SILENT. The City's Inspections page names its typical inspections: footing and foundation, sewer tap, temporary pole, storm water drainage, slab, rough-in before drywall covering electrical, plumbing, framing and insulation, temporary to permanent service, conditional certificate of occupancy, landscaping, and the final certificate of occupancy. No roof, dry-in or underlayment stage is among them. The fee chapter points the same way: Chapter 12 was read in full, all fifteen sections, and contains zero occurrences of the word roof anywhere, including in its own required-inspections table. So there is no mid-roof hold point to schedule around; arrange with the Building Department if the deck should be seen before it is covered.

Not required — NOT REQUIRED, AND THE NEGATIVE IS COUNTED RATHER THAN ASSUMED. Chapter 6 was read in full and its single occurrence of the word "impact" is in the sentence "this over-occupancy adversely impacts the city's residential neighborhoods", which is a rental-housing provision. The terms "UL 2218", "Class 4" and "Class IV" do not appear anywhere in it. The state rule the City adopts, 675 IAC 14-4.4, makes no impact-resistance amendment to the roofing chapter, and IC 22-13-2-3(c) would bar the City from enacting one. Impact-resistant shingles are an insurance and warranty decision in West Lafayette, not a code requirement.

THE ORDINANCE AND THE CITY'S OWN FAQ DRAW THE LINE IN DIFFERENT PLACES, AND BOTH ARE REPORTED HERE RATHER THAN ONE BEING CHOSEN. The codified requirement carries no threshold at all. Section 6-50, headed Required, reads in full: "Construction, demolition, alteration and repair of any building or structure are prohibited unless made in conformity with a valid building permit obtained from the building commissioner prior to commencement of construction." Chapter 6 was read in full, all seventy-five sections, and it states no dollar figure, no square-footage floor and no minor-repair carve-out anywhere. THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT'S OWN FAQ NARROWS IT. Asked "Do I need a reroofing permit?", the City answers: "No, not unless any structural materials are being replaced." It answers the remodel question the same way - a permit is needed for structural work, and "Cosmetic work does not require a permit." So the practical test the department applies is whether structural materials are replaced, while the enacted text draws no such line. The FAQ is undated administrative guidance; section 6-50 is adopted, codified text. This record publishes the ordinance as the requirement and discloses the FAQ rather than averaging them. THE COST OF GUESSING WRONG IS SPECIFIC. Section 6-52(c) sets an investigation fee equal to double the ordinary permit fee for work begun without one, charged whether or not a permit is afterwards issued, and that is on top of the permit fee itself. Settle it with the Building Department on 765-775-5130 before the tear-off.

THE FIGURES ARE THE STATE'S COUNTY-INDEXED TABLE, NOT A WEST LAFAYETTE ENACTMENT. Table R301.2(1) of the Indiana Residential Code gives the Tippecanoe County row as wind speed 115 mph, seismic design category A, ground snow load 20 psf, frost depth 30 inches, winter design temperature 2 degrees Fahrenheit, decay slight to moderate, termite moderate to heavy, weathering severe, ice shield underlayment required No, air freezing index 2000 and mean annual temperature 50.9 degrees. The City publishes no design criteria of its own: Chapter 6 contains no occurrence of wind, snow, seismic, climatic or frost, and IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars it from varying these locally. NOTE THE FROST DEPTH IN PARTICULAR - 30 inches in Tippecanoe, where several neighbouring Indiana counties print 36 - because a footing detail carried across a county line will be wrong in one direction or the other.

NO CITY RULE AND NO STATE AMENDMENT, SO THE BASE CODE APPLIES UNMODIFIED. Chapter 6 of the West Lafayette Code was read in full - all seventy-five sections, some fifty-two thousand characters - and the terms that would carry a layer rule were counted rather than skimmed for: "layer" zero, "overlay" zero, "tear-off" zero. Its single occurrence of "recover" is in the phrase "an action to recover the fees and penalties", which is a collections provision and not a roofing one. The City's adoption at section 6-136(a) attaches no technical amendment. On the state side, 675 IAC 14-4.4 makes no amendment to the model reroofing section; its only edits 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. Nor could the City write its own: 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 on the same subject. So the answer on a West Lafayette job 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.

NO LOCAL SHEATHING RULE EXISTS, AND NONE COULD. Chapter 6 was read in full and contains zero occurrences of "sheathing" and zero of "deck". IC 22-13-2-3(c) bars the City from an ordinance more stringent or more detailed than the commission's rules, so it could not add one even if it wished. The deck side of an asphalt reroof is therefore governed by the state-adopted 2018 International Residential Code as incorporated by 675 IAC 14-4.4, whose roofing-chapter amendments are the four word and sentence deletions described in this record's adopted_code and layer fields - none of which reaches the sheathing provisions. The base provision's own text is not restated here because it was not opened for this record.

7.00% in West Lafayette, 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 Tippecanoe County nor the City levies anything on top of the state rate, and 7.00% is the full rate a roofing contractor pays on materials purchased here.