Trueline Roofers inspects and replaces roofs in Unincorporated Dauphin County, home to communities such as Hershey, Linglestown and Palmdale that have no borough of their own.
We cover the parts of Dauphin County outside any city here. The Census publishes no separate population or housing count for that remainder; the county-wide figures further down include every municipality as well.
No completed roof in Unincorporated Dauphin County is logged in our job records yet.
Unincorporated Dauphin County is not one neighborhood, and its houses show it. The median home in Enhaut was built in 1950 and in Progress in 1960. Linglestown and Colonial Park come in at 1969, Hershey at 1970, Paxtonia at 1975, and Lawnton and Palmdale at 1976. Across the whole county the median year built is 1972, yet 24398 homes date to 1939 or earlier. An older Enhaut roof may sit on boards and framing that have carried several layers of shingles, while a 1970s house is more likely to be on one or two.
Winter does most of the damage here. Snow piles on roofs, melts where heat escapes through the attic floor, and refreezes at the eave as an ice dam. Fuel matters too: 18797 occupied homes in the county heat with fuel oil, 1505 with wood and 927 with coal, and each of those flues needs flashing that holds through freeze and thaw.
Summers are humid, and the mildew shows on roofs as moss and dark algae streaks. Slate roofs are part of the mix and need different handling than asphalt shingles. Of the county's 127828 housing units, 63327 are detached single-family houses and 3368 are mobile homes, so pitch and eave height vary a great deal. In Dauphin County, 36.9% (about 37%) of occupied homes are renter-occupied, so the decision on a roof often belongs to a landlord.
A Hershey house is not an Enhaut house, so we read each address on its own, and the visit costs you nothing. Start with the attic side of the roof, where freezing nights leave their marks first.
For Dauphin County as a whole — every city in it as well as the unincorporated land — the Census Bureau counts 127,828 homes, with a median year built of 1972. 24,398 of them (19%) went up before 1940 and 21,772 (17%) in 2000 or later. More of today's homes date from before 1940 than from any decade since.
About 20 years is the service life that HUD's Residential Rehabilitation Inspection Guide gives for a roof's first layer. On that yardstick the 106,056 homes in Dauphin County built before 2000 (83%) have outlived at least one roof, and 48% (61,222 homes) go back before 1970, two roof lives and more. The 12,176 homes from the 2000s are where first replacements come up now, while the 9,596 built since 2010 are mostly still on the roof they were built with. Older houses are where a second layer laid over the first turns up, and that layer is what hides soft decking.
50% of homes in Dauphin County are single-family detached houses (63,327) and 22% attached ones such as townhouses (28,682). 17,311 homes (14%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 15,116 (12%) in buildings of ten units or more, whose roofs are normally an owner's or a board's call rather than a resident's. The count also takes in 3,368 mobile homes, which are a different kind of roof job. 63% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, 37% rented. When we look at houses like these, our work 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 | 24,398 | 19% | |
| 1940s | 7,361 | 6% | |
| 1950s | 17,726 | 14% | |
| 1960s | 11,737 | 9% | |
| 1970s | 17,659 | 14% | |
| 1980s | 13,015 | 10% | |
| 1990s | 14,160 | 11% | |
| 2000s | 12,176 | 10% | |
| 2010s | 8,057 | 6% | |
| 2020 or later | 1,539 | 1% |
Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 127,828 homes, 121,358 occupied. Survey estimates.
NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center logged 13 reports of hail 1 inch or larger in Dauphin County as a whole from 2016 through 2025, on 7 different days. 1 of them was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.75 inches, came on June 3, 2023. The most recent was 1 inch on June 26, 2023. Counts follow people as much as storms, since every report is a spotter’s or a resident’s.
A bruised shingle can look fine for a season or two, which is why a storm inspection after a date like these is worth having.
Permits and inspections for Unincorporated Dauphin County 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 Unincorporated Dauphin County 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 changes with location 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. See the roofing code guide for what it governs.
| City | Re-roof permit | Code | Median built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unincorporated Dauphin County | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | — |
| Colonial Park | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1969 |
| Elizabethville | Not published | Not published | 1951 |
| Enhaut | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1950 |
| Harrisburg | Yes | Not published | 1947 |
| Hershey | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1970 |
| Highspire | Not published | Not published | 1964 |
Every Dauphin County city we cover, side by side →
HUD's inspection guide uses 20 years for roofs in Pennsylvania, a planning number rather than a promise. Dauphin County's freezing winters and its humid summers work on shingles from both ends, so attic ventilation and the condition of the decking can move a roof's real life either way.
Snow piles on the roof, and heat leaking through the attic floor melts it from underneath. The water runs to the cold eave and refreezes into a dam. The cycle repeats all winter whenever snow sits on a roof with a warm attic below. Better insulation and ventilation in the attic is the lasting fix.
Permits and inspections for Unincorporated Dauphin County 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.
Not yet: no completed roof in Unincorporated Dauphin County 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 · www.spc.noaa.gov. Rules and staff change; check with the jurisdiction.