Roofing in Columbus, Ohio

Required

Required

SET BY STATE RULE. Ohio regulates one-, two-, and three-family dwelling construction through a single statewide code, the Residential Code of Ohio (RCO), adopted by the state Board of Building Standards (BBS) and codified at Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4101:8. Ohio Revised Code 3781.11 requires the board's rules to, for residential buildings, "provide standards and requirements that are uniform throughout the state" (the same section requires only category-level uniformity for nonresidential buildings, so the statute draws the distinction expressly). ORC 3781.01 permits a local governing authority to adopt only "additional regulations governing residential structures that do not conflict with the state residential building code," and only if the division (C) procedure is followed: the locality must notify the BBS, which then has sixty days to decide whether the regulation conflicts; where it conflicts and is not necessary to protect health or safety, the local regulation becomes unenforceable. Columbus therefore cannot adopt a looser or stricter residential building code of its own; its own Columbus City Code Chapter 4127 (Section 4127.01) simply incorporates the RCO "as adopted, and/or as republished from time to time" by the BBS, "as if set out fully at length herein," and supplements it only on the Electrical and Plumbing parts (Sections 4127.09 and 4127.11) -- there is no Columbus-specific roofing chapter. CURRENT EDITION: the "2019 Residential Code of Ohio," based on the 2018 International Residential Code. A Board of Building Standards coversheet confirms: "At its meeting on December 14, 2018, the Ohio Board of Building Standards adopted the rule changes identified as Amendments Group 97. These rule amendments were adopted with an effective date of July 1, 2019," to "reflect the 2018 edition of the 'International Residential Code' with Ohio amendments." The RCO has since been amended by the BBS in later rule-amendment cycles; EDITION NOTE: Ohio's commercial codes (Ohio Building, Mechanical, Plumbing and Existing Building Codes) have separately moved to the 2021 I-Codes, but the residential code was not rebased -- the RCO remains 2018-IRC-based. Several roofing-contractor guides for Columbus incorrectly describe the residential code as based on the 2021 IRC; the BBS's own residential amendment documents continue to title the code the 2019 RCO.

CITY-SPECIFIC -- permit administration is a roofing lever Columbus sets for itself without needing to run the ORC 3781.01(C) notice-and-determination procedure that would apply to a change in residential code CONTENT. Columbus requires a building permit to replace a residential roof and maintains a dedicated combined application for it, the "Roof, Siding, Windows, Doors Application" (form RSWD), covering existing 1-, 2- or 3-family homes as well as 4-or-more-family and commercial structures. Roof, siding, window and door permits for those dwellings are applied and paid for by registered and licensed contractors, and the same RSWD form is used whether the entire roof is being replaced or only part of it (e.g. a porch roof) -- Columbus draws no separate square-footage or percentage line between "repair" and "replacement" for permit purposes. NOTABLE INTRA-OHIO CONTRAST: because this is a local rather than a state lever, practice differs sharply between Ohio's big three cities -- Cincinnati lists roof coverings on 1-, 2- and 3-family detached dwellings with no more than two layers of roofing material among work that does NOT require a permit (see the Cincinnati, OH record), whereas Columbus requires a permit for residential roof replacement. Do not generalize one Ohio city's permit-exemption practice to another.