Lykens was laid out in 1848 in the valley of Wiconisco Creek and grew on anthracite coal mining around 1900. We repair and replace roofs across the borough, chimney flashing and eaves included.
Lykens has about 1.2 square miles of land and roughly 1,878 people. It sits about 23 miles northeast of downtown Harrisburg-Carlisle. We cover ZIP code 17048.
No completed roof in Lykens is logged in our job records yet.
The borough's houses wear their years. Of 970 homes, 541 were built in 1939 or earlier, 135 in the 1940s and 114 in the 1950s. On houses that old the roof often rests on board sheathing rather than plywood, over rafters sized by the habits of their builders, and now and then over an earlier roof left in place. And 198 of those 970 homes share a wall with the house next door, so on a twin or a row the new roof has to meet the neighbor's along the party wall without leaving a seam for water.
Coal and wood still heat part of Lykens. Of 828 occupied homes, fuel oil heats 349 and electricity 300, while coal heats 84 and wood 40, and in those houses the chimney carries smoke all winter. Each chimney is a hole through the roof with masonry on one side and shingles on the other. Old mortar cracks and lets the counterflashing work loose, a wide chimney with no cricket behind it holds water on its uphill side, and the crown takes heat from below and frost from above, season after season.
The borough sits at about 705 feet, with Short Mountain and Big Lick Mountain to the north and Berry Mountain to the south. Humid summers in the valley feed moss and algae on shaded slopes and mildew in attics with no airflow, and winters pile snow on the roofs and run freeze-thaw cycles through the joints. Building and zoning permits and questions in Lykens go to Light-Heigel, so when a roof job grows into new rafters, a rebuilt chimney or a changed roofline, that is where the question goes.
Houses of this age in Lykens were sheathed with solid board decking rather than plywood, and boards move. Plank gaps open up, nails back out, and a shingle fastened into a gap has nothing holding it. We also expect original step and counter-flashing at chimneys and walls — often the real leak while the shingles look fine — and more than one house on a street like this has two or three roofs stacked on it because someone went over rather than tore off. That matters: layers hide the decking, add weight, and void most manufacturer warranties. If there is original slate or tile anywhere on the property, it wants a different conversation than an asphalt tear-off.
Lykens has 970 homes in the Census Bureau's count and a median year built of 1939 or earlier, the oldest band the survey reports. 541 of them (56%) went up before 1940 — 7th of 37 places on this site for pre-1940 share — and 48 (5%) in 2000 or later. More of today's homes date from before 1940 than from any decade since. (Dauphin County as a whole: 19% 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 922 homes in Lykens, the 95% built before 2000, past at least one full roof life; 825 homes, 85% of the total, predate 1970, old enough for two replacements already. Homes from the 2000s (48 in Lykens) are reaching their first replacement. 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: 580 detached houses (60%), 198 attached (20%). 100 homes (10%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 54 (6%) in buildings of ten units or more, whose roofs are normally an owner's or a board's call rather than a resident's. Owners live in 61% of the 828 occupied homes. 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 | 541 | 56% | |
| 1940s | 135 | 14% | |
| 1950s | 114 | 12% | |
| 1960s | 35 | 4% | |
| 1970s | 85 | 9% | |
| 1980s | 7 | 1% | |
| 1990s | 5 | 1% | |
| 2000s | 48 | 5% | |
| 2010s | 0 | 0% | |
| 2020 or later | 0 | 0% |
Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 970 homes, 828 occupied. Survey estimates.
Between 2016 and 2025 there were 2 reports of 1-inch-plus hail within 5 miles of Lykens’ center in the records of NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, on 2 separate days. None was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.5 inches, came on June 3, 2023, about 4.6 miles south of the center. The most recent was 1 inch on June 26, 2023. These are reports, not a full record: they come from spotters and the public, so busier areas log more.
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.
Lykens publishes no rule either way on a like-for-like re-roof, so we ask Light-Heigel (800-257-2190) before we start and pull whatever it wants.
Lykens does not publish the code edition it currently enforces. We confirm the edition with the building department before we write the scope.
We reach the permit desk at 800-257-2190.
What goes into a new roof, layer by layerThe design wind speed a roof in Lykens is built to depends on where the house stands: 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 can confirm the figure, and the code guide explains what it governs.
| City | Re-roof permit | Code | Median built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lykens | Not published | Not published | 1939 or earlier |
| Colonial Park | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1969 |
| 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 |
| Hershey | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1970 |
Every Dauphin County city we cover, side by side →
Snow on the upper roof melts where heat from the rooms below warms the deck, and the water runs down to the cold eaves and freezes there. Houses built in 1939 or earlier make up 56% of the borough's homes, and many went up before attic insulation and roof vents were planned as one system. The ice backs water up under the shingles at the eaves, so the fix starts in the attic as much as on the roof.
The Storm Prediction Center logged two reports of hail 1.0 inch or larger within 5.0 miles of the borough from 2016 through 2025, both in June 2023. Stones of 1.5 inches were reported 4.6 miles south on June 3, and stones of 1.0 inch 3.4 miles north on June 26. A report a few miles off does not mean every roof in town was struck, so dented gutters, dinged vents and bruised shingles are the signs to check for.
Nothing published settles it for Lykens, so Light-Heigel gets the question before work starts and any permit it wants is pulled by us.
By the Census Bureau's estimates, 95% of Lykens' homes were built before 2000 and 85% before 1970, with a median year built of 1939 or earlier (2020–2024 estimates). A roof usually lasts about 20 years, so the deck and the layers get checked before any quote.
The last report near Lykens of hail 1 inch or bigger came on June 26, 2023; NOAA's records hold 2 of them within 5 miles since 2016.
Not yet: no completed roof in Lykens 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.lykenspa.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.