Camp Hill was settled in 1735, cut from East Pennsboro Township as a borough in 1885, and saw the northernmost engagement of the Gettysburg campaign in June 1863. Our crew inspects, repairs and replaces the roofs on its houses.
Camp Hill has about 2.1 square miles of land and roughly 8,169 people. It sits about 3 miles southwest of downtown Harrisburg-Carlisle. We cover ZIP code 17011.
No completed roof in Camp Hill is logged in our job records yet.
Of Camp Hill's 3602 homes, 962 were built in 1939 or earlier, and the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s added 597, 789 and 859 more; only 3% date to 2000 or later. A house from 1939 or earlier often sits on board sheathing rather than plywood, and a 1950s or 1960s house may hide an older layer of shingles under the one you see. Fuel oil heats 526 occupied homes here, which often means a chimney through the roof and flashing that has to be tied into the new one. If one of those older houses still wears slate, we look at whether the slates can stay before anything is torn off.
Winters here swing between freeze and thaw, with January averages near 30 degrees. The National Weather Service's annual climate report for Harrisburg gives 1991–2020 normals of 101.1 days a year with a minimum at or below 32°F and 18.7 days with a maximum at or below 32°F; those figures come from the official Harrisburg (MDT) station, not from a station in Camp Hill. Snow over a warm attic melts from below and refreezes at the cold eave, and that ridge of ice backs water under the shingles. Meltwater that overflows an iced gutter lands against the foundation, so a damp basement after a thaw can trace back to the roof edge.
The borough, bordered by Lemoyne and Lower Allen, keeps its own permit office, Camp Hill Borough Codes Enforcement & Zoning. When a job needs a building permit, a third-party inspection agency does the plan review, which takes between 14 and 30 days, and that agency's review and inspection fees are separate and due when the permit is picked up. The application asks for the Cumberland County tax parcel number, inspections need 24 hours' notice, and the borough says working without a permit is a citable offense.
Postwar houses in Camp Hill are plain to roof, which is exactly why so many get roofed carelessly. Expect 1x6 board decking or early plywood: usually sound, but it should be walked, not assumed. The weak spots are the shallow pitches — a porch roof, the join to a carport, the flat section over an addition — where shingles went on below their rated slope and have leaked slowly for years. Attics from this era rarely have the ventilation today's shingle warranties ask for, and a hot, under-vented attic ages a roof from below, so intake and exhaust get measured before the quote.
The Census Bureau counts 3,602 homes in Camp Hill, with a median year built of 1953. 962 of them (27%) went up before 1940 — 20th of 37 places on this site for pre-1940 share — and 109 (3%) in 2000 or later. More of today's homes date from before 1940 than from any decade since. (Cumberland County as a whole: 15% before 1940.)
About 20 years is the service life that HUD's Residential Rehabilitation Inspection Guide gives for a roof's first layer. That puts 3,493 homes in Camp Hill, the 97% built before 2000, past at least one full roof life, and the 3,207 built before 1970 (89%) are usually on a third covering or later. First replacements are arriving on the 77 homes built in the 2000s, while the 32 built since 2010 are mostly still on the roof they were built with. On houses that old, the question worth asking is how many layers are up there: a roof laid over an old one hides the deck.
By building type: 2,734 detached houses (76%), 122 attached (3%). 646 homes (18%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 100 (3%) in buildings of ten units or more, whose roofs are normally an owner's or a board's call rather than a resident's. 78% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, 22% rented. With houses like these, the jobs can include full tear-offs on houses past two roof lives, deck and flashing checks on pre-war board sheathing and flat and low-slope sections, which turn up more on attached and multi-unit buildings.
| Built | Homes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1940 | 962 | 27% | |
| 1940s | 597 | 17% | |
| 1950s | 789 | 22% | |
| 1960s | 859 | 24% | |
| 1970s | 141 | 4% | |
| 1980s | 67 | 2% | |
| 1990s | 78 | 2% | |
| 2000s | 77 | 2% | |
| 2010s | 32 | 1% | |
| 2020 or later | 0 | 0% |
Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 3,602 homes, 3,330 occupied. Survey estimates.
From 2016 through 2025, NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center recorded 4 reports of hail of 1 inch or more within 5 miles of Camp Hill’s center, spread over 2 storm days. 1 of them was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.75 inches, came on June 3, 2023, about 2.8 miles northeast of the center. A report needs someone to see the hail and send it in, so the count is a floor, not a full tally.
| Latest reports | Size | From center |
|---|---|---|
| June 3, 2023 | 1 inch | 4 mi NE |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.75 inches | 2.8 mi NE |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.25 inches | 4 mi NE |
| May 15, 2018 | 1 inch | 4.9 mi SW |
If one of those storms crossed your street and nobody has been on the roof since, a storm inspection photographs what it did.
Nothing Camp Hill publishes says whether a like-for-like re-roof needs a permit. We call Camp Hill Borough Codes Enforcement & Zoning before the job and pull whatever is required.
Camp Hill does not publish the code edition it currently enforces. We confirm the edition with the building department before we write the scope.
The building official is Colton Weichman, Codes Enforcement / Zoning Officer / Building Code Official. We check the department’s own page for its current permit rules before a job.
Design wind here is set by location, not one figure for the whole area: across the Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pennsylvania metro, we build to the design wind speed set for the address; Township of Upper Allen’s published table gives 90 mph. The building department for Camp Hill can tell you which figure applies. What it does to a roof is in the roofing code guide.
Camp Hill borders Lemoyne and Lower Allen. Our pages for them:
Also in Cumberland County:
| City | Re-roof permit | Code | Median built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camp Hill | Not published | Not published | 1953 |
| Lemoyne | Not published | Not published | 1949 |
| Lower Allen | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1968 |
| Boiling Springs | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1986 |
| Carlisle | Not published | Not published | 1953 |
| Unincorporated Cumberland County | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | — |
| Enola | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1969 |
Every Cumberland County city we cover, side by side →
Close enough to check. Storm Prediction Center reports for that day put hail of 1.75 inches about 2.8 miles northeast of the borough, with 1.0-inch and 1.25-inch hail about 4.0 miles northeast. Hail that size can bruise asphalt shingles and knock granules loose without leaving an obvious hole, so a roof that looks fine from the yard may still have taken hits.
Camp Hill has a hot-summer humid continental climate, with July averages near 75 degrees, so a slope that gets little sun can stay damp long after rain, and moss and algae take hold there. Algae mostly leaves dark streaks. Moss holds water against the shingles, and when that water freezes it can lift their edges. Scraping moss off pulls granules with it, and shingles it has already lifted need repair, not just a wash.
Nothing published settles it for Camp Hill, so Camp Hill Borough Codes Enforcement & Zoning gets the question before work starts and any permit it wants is pulled by us.
By the Census Bureau's estimates, 97% of Camp Hill's homes were built before 2000 and 89% before 1970, with a median year built of 1953 (2020–2024 estimates). A roof usually lasts about 20 years, so the deck and the layers get checked before any quote.
Yes. The most recent report of hail 1 inch or larger within 5 miles of Camp Hill's center was 1 inch on June 3, 2023, one of 4 such reports from 2016 through 2025.
The building official is Colton Weichman, Codes Enforcement / Zoning Officer / Building Code Official.
Not yet: no completed roof in Camp Hill is in our job records, so this page shows no job count.
Researched 2026-11-09; housing, Census ACS 2020–2024; hail, NOAA SPC. Sources: www.camphillborough.com · www.camphillborough.com · www.camphillborough.com · data.census.gov · data.census.gov · data.census.gov · www2.census.gov · www2.census.gov · data.census.gov · data.census.gov · en.wikipedia.org · www.spc.noaa.gov. Rules and staff change; check with the jurisdiction.