In Colonial Park, the densely built southwestern part of Lower Paxton Township along Jonestown Road, we repair and replace roofs on a housing stock where the 1950s left more homes standing than any other decade.
Colonial Park has about 5.0 square miles of land and roughly 18,032 people. It sits about 5 miles northeast of downtown Harrisburg-Carlisle. We cover ZIP codes 17109 and 17112.
No completed roof in Colonial Park is logged in our job records yet.
Colonial Park fits 7439 housing units into 5.0 square miles, with Interstate 83 along its western edge and Paxtonia and Progress on its borders. The 1950s account for 1941 of those homes and the 1970s for 1670, against 654 built in 1939 or earlier. Just 45% are single-family detached houses; 1275 sit in buildings of 10 to 19 units and 1192 in buildings of 5 to 9. Homes built in 2000 or later make up only 10%, so most roofs here sit on framing that has carried decades of winters.
The National Weather Service's annual climate summary for Harrisburg, built on 1991–2020 normals, gives a normal of 101.1 days a year with a low at or below 32°F and 18.7 days a year with a high at or below 32°F. Colonial Park sits about 5 miles northeast of downtown Harrisburg at about 500 feet, and snow piling on its roofs can melt over a warm attic and refreeze at the colder eaves, which is how ice dams build. Humid summers then feed moss and dark algae streaks on slopes that stay shaded.
From 2016 through 2025, the Storm Prediction Center logged 6 reports of hail 1 inch or larger within 5 miles of Colonial Park, on 2 days. June 3, 2023 brought 5 of them, the largest measuring 1.75 inches. Stones that size can bruise shingles without a leak showing right away, so after a storm like that we go up, photograph each slope, and leave the pictures with you.
Utility gas heats 3759 Colonial Park homes and fuel oil heats 1162. Where a furnace chimney or flue pipe rises through a roof, it is a seam the new shingles have to be flashed around, and its condition belongs in the plan before tear-off begins.
Route 22) as the main route through it.
Postwar houses in Colonial Park 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.
By the Census Bureau's estimate there are 7,439 homes in Colonial Park, with a median year built of 1969. 654 of them (9%) went up before 1940 — one of the five lowest pre-1940 shares of the 37 places on this site — and 722 (10%) in 2000 or later. The 1950s were the busiest decade, adding 1,941 of today's homes (26%). Across Dauphin County the pre-1940 share is 19%, so Colonial Park sits below it.
About 20 years is the service life that HUD's Residential Rehabilitation Inspection Guide gives for a roof's first layer. That puts 6,717 homes in Colonial Park, the 90% built before 2000, past at least one full roof life; 3,802 homes, 51% of the total, predate 1970, old enough for two replacements already. The 529 homes from the 2000s are where first replacements come up now, while the 193 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.
Detached single-family houses make up 45% (3,365); attached houses and townhouses 4% (314). 1,960 homes (26%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 1,800 (24%) in buildings of ten units or more, where the roof is usually a landlord's or an association's decision. 47% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, 53% rented. When we look at houses like these, our work can include full tear-offs on houses past two roof lives and flat and low-slope sections, which turn up more on attached and multi-unit buildings.
| Built | Homes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1940 | 654 | 9% | |
| 1940s | 250 | 3% | |
| 1950s | 1,941 | 26% | |
| 1960s | 957 | 13% | |
| 1970s | 1,670 | 22% | |
| 1980s | 541 | 7% | |
| 1990s | 704 | 9% | |
| 2000s | 529 | 7% | |
| 2010s | 177 | 2% | |
| 2020 or later | 16 | 0% |
Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 7,439 homes, 7,068 occupied. Survey estimates.
NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center logged 6 reports of hail 1 inch or larger within 5 miles of Colonial Park’s center from 2016 through 2025, on 2 different days. 1 of them was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.75 inches, came on June 3, 2023, about 4.7 miles southwest of the center. These are reports, not a full record: they come from spotters and the public, so busier areas log more.
| Latest reports | Size | From center |
|---|---|---|
| June 3, 2023 | 1 inch | 3.4 mi SW |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.75 inches | 4.7 mi SW |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.25 inches | 3.6 mi W |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.5 inches | 2.2 mi N |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.5 inches | 3 mi N |
If one of those storms crossed your street and nobody has been on the roof since, a storm inspection photographs what it did.
Permits and inspections for Colonial Park run through the municipality that enforces Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code there, or through a third-party agency or the Department of Labor and Industry where it does not. Before a re-roof we ask the office that covers the address whether a permit is needed, and where one is, we pull it.
The code that applies in Colonial Park is Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code, which adopts the 2021 International Residential Code for the whole state (34 Pa. Code 403.21). We build to it and to the manufacturer's instructions.
What goes into a new roof, layer by layerWind design is looked up by address 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, and the building department can say which figure applies to a given address. See the roofing code guide for what it governs.
Colonial Park borders Paxtonia and Progress. Our pages for them:
Also in Dauphin County:
| City | Re-roof permit | Code | Median built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colonial Park | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1969 |
| Paxtonia | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1975 |
| Progress | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1960 |
| Unincorporated Dauphin County | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | — |
| Elizabethville | Not published | Not published | 1951 |
| Enhaut | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1950 |
| Harrisburg | Yes | Not published | 1947 |
Every Dauphin County city we cover, side by side →
The Storm Prediction Center logged 5 reports of hail 1 inch or larger within 5 miles of Colonial Park that day. The nearest, 1.5 inches, was 2.2 miles north, and another 1.5-inch report came 3.0 miles north. The largest, 1.75 inches, fell 4.7 miles southwest. If nobody has been on your roof since that storm, a look at the shingles and gutters is a sensible next step.
The 1950s account for 1941 of Colonial Park's homes, more than any other decade. A house that age may have boards rather than plywood under its shingles, and it may have been re-roofed more than once, sometimes with a newer layer laid over an older one. Boards show from the attic, and extra layers show at a lifted shingle edge, so both can be known before a re-roof is planned.
Permits and inspections for Colonial Park run through the municipality that enforces Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code there, or through a third-party agency or the Department of Labor and Industry where it does not. Before a re-roof we ask the office that covers the address whether a permit is needed, and where one is, we pull it.
The Census Bureau's 2020–2024 estimates put the median year built at 1969: 9% of Colonial Park's 7,439 homes predate 1940 and 10% were built in 2000 or later. At the usual 20-year roof life, the 90% built before 2000 are past at least one full roof life.
The last report near Colonial Park of hail 1 inch or bigger came on June 3, 2023; NOAA's records hold 6 of them within 5 miles since 2016.
Not yet: no completed roof in Colonial Park 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: 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.