Roofing in Fishers, Indiana

Required

STATE-SET, NOT CITY-SET, AND THERE IS NO FISHERS EDITION YEAR TO LOOK UP. One and two family dwellings in Fishers are built to the 2020 Indiana Residential Code, 675 IAC 14-4.4, which incorporates by reference "that certain document being titled the 2018 International Residential Code for One and Two Family Dwellings, first printing August 2017, published by the International Code Council ... save and except those revisions made in this rule", and which "shall be known as the 2020 Indiana Residential Code" (675 IAC 14-4.4-1). The rule was filed November 26, 2019 and formally readopted November 18, 2025, and it is the newest rule in Article 14 of Title 675; there is no later Indiana residential rule and no 2024 International Residential Code adoption in either the 2026 or the 2027 edition of the Indiana Administrative Code. No Indiana city may put itself on a different residential code: IC 22-13-2-3(a)(2) gives the state commission's rules precedence over any local ordinance covering the same subject matter, and (c) provides that "A city, town, or county may not adopt an ordinance that conflicts with or includes more stringent or detailed requirements than the commission's rules." One Indiana-specific point worth knowing if you ever do read a local ordinance that cites the code: under IC 22-13-2-3(b) a local reference to the Indiana Administrative Code "shall be construed to include all amendments as of the date that the reference is written and any later amendments to that provision, unless accompanied by a reference to a specific edition or supplement", so an Indiana ordinance citing 675 IAC 14-4.4 tracks the current rule rather than freezing at its adoption date. Whether the City of Fishers has its own building-code ordinance, and what it says, could not be established, because the City's website refuses automated requests. That does not change the edition, which the state sets.

READ THIS ONE FIRST, BECAUSE WHAT IS MISSING FROM THIS RECORD IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT IS IN IT. The City of Fishers runs its own building and planning office. Hamilton County publishes a map dividing the county into nine planning jurisdictions and a sheet for each one naming the office that serves it, and the sheet for the City of Fishers area names the Fishers Community Development Department, 1 Municipal Drive, Fishers, Indiana 46038, telephone (317) 595-3155. The City's own development ordinance names a Building Commissioner among the officials designated to enforce it. So the County Plan Commission is not your permitting authority on a Fishers job, and neither is the State. Work out which of the nine jurisdictions an address falls in before filing anything: the areas are drawn on township lines rather than corporate limits, so being outside a town is not the same as being in the County's area, and the City's own ordinance says the development ordinance "applies to all land, buildings, structures and uses located within corporate limits and the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the City of Fishers, Indiana, and any land within Townships that have entered joinder agreements with the City for the purposes of planning and zoning", naming Delaware and Fall Creek Townships elsewhere in the same section. WHAT THE CITY'S OWN CODE OF ORDINANCES ESTABLISHES. Fishers' Code of Ordinances is published by American Legal Publishing; Chapter 154, "Building Code," runs twenty sections, and its own cross-reference line points to Chapter 115 of Title XI (Business Regulations) for the "Registration of building contractors". WHAT THE BUILDING CODE CHAPTER AND CHAPTER 115 SAY. Section 154.15(A) requires a permit "before beginning construction, alteration, repair, or demolition of any building or structure", with application fees set in Chapter 35, and no section of Chapter 154 that was read carries a repair or re-roof exemption or a dollar threshold. Section 154.19 requires the inspections "as are necessary to insure full compliance" with the chapter and the permit, with reinspection fees under Chapter 35; it names no inspection stages, so no roof-specific stage is stated here. Section 154.20 requires permitted work to begin within one year of issue and to be completed within 24 months. Chapter 115 requires a contractor "seeking to perform work on residences and businesses" in the City to register: an application, a general liability insurance certificate, a one-year term and a $100 fee; only a homeowner doing all of the work themselves, and change-of-use applicants, are excepted. The Community Development Department is on (317) 595-3155. Indiana issues no state roofing, general contractor or home improvement credential - the Professional Licensing Agency's published list of the professions it regulates names none of them - so the registration requirement a roofer meets in Fishers is purely local. WHAT THE CITY'S DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE DOES SAY ABOUT ROOFS, WHICH IS MORE THAN MOST. The Fishers Unified Development Ordinance was adopted July 19, 2018, took effect July 20, 2018 by Ordinance No. 071618F and carries amendments through ordinances dated April 20, 2026. It was read in full. Three provisions in it bear on roofing work. First, its defined term "Structural Alteration" means "Any change in the supporting members of a building or structure such as bearing walls, partitions, columns, beams or girders, or any change in the footprint or increase in the size of living space. Also, substantial roofing and siding work when repairs are made to the structure beneath." So in this city's own vocabulary a re-roof that includes repairs to the structure beneath is a structural alteration. Second, Section 6.1.2 subjects structural alterations made after the UDO took effect to the development standards of their zoning district. Third, the residential design standards in Section 6.3.4 include Roof Standards that are marked required for both single-family and multi-family development, among them that "Quality roof materials such as tile, slate, cedar shake with fire protection, 30-year asphalt shingles, dimensional asphalt or fiberglass shingles, high-quality standing seem metal roofing, or high-quality metal shingle roofing shall be used on all structures. All metal roofing shall be low-gloss and a base color", and that "Sloped roofs shall have a significant pitch, primary roof planes to be no less than 5/12." The word "seem" in that passage is the ordinance's own typo for seam and is quoted as printed. Whether the City applies those standards to a like-for-like re-roof, or only to work reviewed as a structural alteration, is for the Community Development Department; this record does not decide it. What a roofer should take from it is concrete: a 30-year or dimensional asphalt shingle is inside the City's stated material list, a builder-grade three-tab may not be, and a shiny or bright-coloured metal roof is outside it. One more definition, not to be over-read: the ordinance excludes from "Development" the maintenance of existing structures, naming reroofing among its examples. That keeps a plain re-roof out of the City's development-approval track; it is not a building permit exemption and must not be quoted as one.