Do you need a permit to reroof in Chico, Paradise or Butte County?
Yes, everywhere in the county. A reroof is a building permit in every jurisdiction here, and the inspection is the one point in the job where someone who is not the roofer looks at the deck and the nailing before they are covered up. Here is who issues it, what they check, and what it means when a bid leaves it out.
Who issues the permit
It depends on the address, not the town name on your mail.
- City of Chico: the Building Division, which treats reroofs as over-the-counter permits and takes them online through its eTRAKiT system. The city requires dry rot to be replaced and the new roof to be at least Class A, B or a 25-year product.
- Town of Paradise: the Building Resiliency Center at 6295 Skyway, online through the town's permit portal. Every roof in Paradise has to be Class A.
- City of Oroville: the city's building division.
- Unincorporated Butte County, which includes Magalia, Durham, Forest Ranch, Cohasset, Butte Valley, Yankee Hill, Concow, Berry Creek, Stirling City and the rest: Butte County Development Services at the Permit Center in Oroville, which publishes a reroof packet. The county's fee sheet lists a flat reroof fee.
- Glenn, Tehama and Plumas County addresses (Orland, Willows, Corning, Red Bluff, Chester and Lake Almanor) go through those counties or their cities.
What the inspector looks at
A reroof gets at least one inspection, usually two. The first is after tear-off, with the deck exposed: rotted or delaminated sheathing replaced, the nailing pattern on new sheathing, and the underlayment and flashing before the covering goes on. The final is the finished roof: the covering, the flashing, the vents, the fire rating, and in Chico and the county the cool roof paperwork when it applies.
When a bid leaves the permit out
A roofer who skips the permit saves the fee and the inspection and keeps that money or passes a little of it to you. What you lose is the only independent check on the work, the record that the roof was done to code (which the buyer's inspector and your insurer will ask for), and the protection from a stop-work order and a penalty if the city finds out, which in Chico can be up to triple the fee. Our bids include the permit as a line item so you can see it.
Common questions
Small repairs, a few shingles or a pipe boot, do not. Replacing a large section, or anything over the 50 percent line in a fire zone, does. If a repair exposes the deck over a meaningful area we pull one.
A few hundred dollars in most of the county, more in the cities, set by the jurisdiction's fee schedule and usually tied to the job value. It is on the bid as its own line.
The licensed contractor should. If a roofer asks you to pull an owner-builder permit for work they are doing, that is a sign they are not licensed for it or do not want their name on the record.
Have a question about your own roof?
Say what the roof is doing, what kind of roof it is if you know, and which town you are in. We call back to talk it through and set a time to look at it. If water is coming in right now, skip the form and call.