Roofing in Hershey, Pennsylvania

Hershey at a glance

Hershey has about 14.3 square miles of land and roughly 14,242 people. It sits about 13 miles east of downtown Harrisburg-Carlisle. We cover ZIP codes 17033, 17036 and 17078.

No completed roof in Hershey is logged in our job records yet.

What Hershey's company-town start means for its roofs

Hershey grew up around a chocolate factory, and its first homes were built for the company's workers with modern amenities such as electricity, indoor plumbing and central heating. Many of the town's larger buildings date from a building campaign during the Great Depression of the 1930s, yet most of its houses came later. Of its 5982 homes, 606 date to 1939 or earlier, while 1125 were built in the 1960s and 1044 in the 1970s, its two biggest building decades. Of all those homes, 893 are single-family houses that share a wall, where one roof meets the next and the joint between them needs flashing that holds.

Hershey sits at about 411 feet, with Palmdale on its border, and it is an unincorporated community served by Derry Township. Its humid continental weather brings hot summers and winter lows below 20 degrees, so roofs here freeze and thaw through the cold months, which works at loose flashing and old sealant. Humid summers let moss and algae take hold on slopes that stay damp. Fuel oil heats 1154 Hershey homes, and an oil burner usually vents up a chimney, so those roofs carry chimney flashing that has to stay tight. Gutters that empty against the foundation send roof water toward the basement.

Hail reaches the town as well. The Storm Prediction Center logged 1.25-inch hail 0.3 miles west of Hershey on July 6, 2021, and 1-inch hail 2.1 miles south and 4.0 miles east on June 26, 2023. Stones that size can bruise shingles and knock granules loose without leaving a hole you can see from the yard. After a storm like those, our crew checks the gutters and vent caps along with the shingles, since dents in that thin metal show how big the stones were.

The housing stock in Hershey

The town was built for the chocolate company's workers, and their homes had modern amenities such as electricity, indoor plumbing and central heating.

What we usually find on a postwar roof

The postwar housing in Hershey is mostly simple to roof, which is why it gets done badly so often. Decking is usually 1x6 boards or early plywood, still sound but worth walking rather than assuming. The recurring problems are the low-slope sections — porch roofs, carport tie-ins, the flat bit over an addition — where a shingle was installed below its rated pitch and has been failing quietly ever since. Attic ventilation on houses of this era is also routinely short of what current shingle warranties require, and under-venting cooks a roof from underneath. We measure intake against exhaust before we quote rather than just nailing on a ridge vent and calling it solved.

The houses we roof in Hershey

By the Census Bureau's estimate there are 5,982 homes in Hershey, with a median year built of 1970. 606 of them (10%) went up before 1940 — 31st of 37 places on this site for pre-1940 share — and 486 (8%) in 2000 or later. The 1960s were the busiest decade, adding 1,125 of today's homes (19%). Across Dauphin County the pre-1940 share is 19%, so Hershey sits below it.

The Residential Rehabilitation Inspection Guide from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development puts the service life of a roof's first layer at about 20 years. On that yardstick the 5,496 homes in Hershey built before 2000 (92%) have outlived at least one roof, and the 2,939 built before 1970 (49%) are usually on a third covering or later. First replacements are arriving on the 339 homes built in the 2000s, while the 147 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 48% (2,889); attached houses and townhouses 15% (893). 1,040 homes (17%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 1,147 (19%) in buildings of ten units or more, whose roofs are normally an owner's or a board's call rather than a resident's. 3,109 of 5,791 occupied homes (54%) are lived in by their owners. With houses like these, the jobs 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.

Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 5,982 homes, 5,791 occupied. Survey estimates.

Hail reports near Hershey

Between 2016 and 2025 there were 6 reports of 1-inch-plus hail within 5 miles of Hershey’s center in the records of NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, on 4 separate days. None was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.25 inches, came on July 6, 2021, about 0.3 miles west of the center. The most recent was 1 inch on June 26, 2023. A report needs someone to see the hail and send it in, so the count is a floor, not a full tally.

If one of those storms crossed your street and nobody has been on the roof since, a storm inspection photographs what it did.

Do you need a permit here?

Permits and inspections for Hershey 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.

Which code applies in Hershey

The code that applies in Hershey 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 layer

The design figures behind the spec

Wind 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.

Nearby

Hershey borders Palmdale. Our pages for them:

Also in Dauphin County:

How Hershey compares with its neighbors

Every Dauphin County city we cover, side by side →

Common questions about roofing in Hershey

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.