Penbrook, the borough once called East Harrisburg, sits 2 miles northeast of downtown Harrisburg on 0.4 square miles, and we inspect, repair and replace the roofs over its attached homes and its detached ones.
Penbrook has about 0.4 square miles of land and roughly 3,266 people. It sits about 2 miles northeast of downtown Harrisburg-Carlisle. We cover ZIP codes 17103 and 17109.
No completed roof in Penbrook is logged in our job records yet.
Penbrook was founded in 1861, and 565 of its 1479 homes were built in 1939 or earlier. On a house of that age the roof often rests on board sheathing rather than plywood, and the rafters can be fuller in size than lumber sold today, so the state of the deck and the framing shapes a re-roof as much as the choice of shingle does. Houses built since 2000 are a smaller group: 171 went up in the 2000s and 102 in the 2010s.
Of those homes, 475 are single-family houses joined to a neighbor and 459 stand alone, with the rest in buildings of two units or more. Where houses share a wall they often share a roof line, and the flashing and shingle courses along that dividing line take careful work, because a leak there can show up in either house. On an attached house here, our first question is where your part of the roof ends, since new shingles have to finish tight against a roof you do not own. With 57% of occupied homes lived in by their owners, the house across the wall may be a rental, and the person to talk to about that shared edge may be its landlord.
The hail worth remembering here fell on June 3, 2023. Every report of hail an inch or larger within 5 miles of Penbrook from 2016 through 2025 came that day, and the largest, 1.75 inches, was reported about 2.1 miles southwest. A roof that was on the house that June and has not been looked at since may hold bruised shingles or dented vents. Winter snow piles on these roofs and feeds ice dams at the eaves, and humid summers leave algae streaks and moss wherever a slope stays shaded.
Its Little Valley Park was built on a reclaimed Depression-era landfill, and Penbrook Park connects to the Capital Area Greenbelt trail link.
Postwar houses in Penbrook 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.
Penbrook has 1,479 homes in the Census Bureau's count and a median year built of 1952. 565 of them (38%) went up before 1940 — 16th of 37 places on this site for pre-1940 share — and 273 (18%) 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.)
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. That puts 1,206 homes in Penbrook, the 82% built before 2000, past at least one full roof life; 1,019 homes, 69% of the total, predate 1970, old enough for two replacements already. First replacements are arriving on the 171 homes built in the 2000s, while the 102 built since 2010 are mostly still on the roof they were built with. At that age it pays to know whether the last roof was torn off or laid over the one before it, because a second layer hides the deck.
31% of homes in Penbrook are single-family detached houses (459) and 32% attached ones such as townhouses (475). 415 homes (28%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 130 (9%) in buildings of ten units or more, whose roofs are normally an owner's or a board's call rather than a resident's. 782 of 1,377 occupied homes (57%) are lived in by their owners. 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 | 565 | 38% | |
| 1940s | 133 | 9% | |
| 1950s | 188 | 13% | |
| 1960s | 133 | 9% | |
| 1970s | 129 | 9% | |
| 1980s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1990s | 58 | 4% | |
| 2000s | 171 | 12% | |
| 2010s | 102 | 7% | |
| 2020 or later | 0 | 0% |
Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 1,479 homes, 1,377 occupied. Survey estimates.
Between 2016 and 2025 there were 4 reports of 1-inch-plus hail within 5 miles of Penbrook’s center in the records of NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, all on the same day. 1 of them was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.75 inches, came on June 3, 2023, about 2.1 miles southwest of the center. Counts follow people as much as storms, since every report is a spotter’s or a resident’s.
| Latest reports | Size | From center |
|---|---|---|
| June 3, 2023 | 1 inch | 0.8 mi SW |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.75 inches | 2.1 mi SW |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.25 inches | 1.2 mi W |
| June 3, 2023 | 1.5 inches | 4.1 mi NE |
If one of those storms crossed your street and nobody has been on the roof since, a storm inspection photographs what it did.
Penbrook publishes no rule either way on a like-for-like re-roof, so we ask the building department before we start and pull whatever it wants.
Penbrook does not publish the code edition it currently enforces. We confirm the edition with the building department before we write the scope.
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.
Penbrook borders Harrisburg and Progress. Our pages for them:
Also in Dauphin County:
| City | Re-roof permit | Code | Median built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Penbrook | Not published | Not published | 1952 |
| Harrisburg | Yes | Not published | 1947 |
| Progress | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | 1960 |
| 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 |
Every Dauphin County city we cover, side by side →
Often, yes. In Penbrook, 210 of 1377 occupied homes heat with fuel oil and 865 with utility gas, so on many houses the chimney may still carry exhaust from a working furnace or boiler. The flashing where a chimney meets the roof is a frequent leak point on older houses, and a re-roof is the sensible time to replace it rather than lap new shingles against tired metal. Loose mortar at the roof line shows best with the old shingles off.
Heat from the rooms below warms the roof deck, snow on the upper roof melts, and the water refreezes at the colder eave, where it can back up under the shingles. Houses built in 1939 or earlier, as many in Penbrook were, often have thin attic insulation and little roof venting. Sealing and insulating the attic floor and venting the roof deal with the cause, and an ice barrier at the eaves limits leaks when a dam forms.
Penbrook publishes no rule on it. We ask the building department first and pull whatever it requires.
The Census Bureau's 2020–2024 estimates put the median year built at 1952: 38% of Penbrook's 1,479 homes predate 1940 and 18% were built in 2000 or later. At the usual 20-year roof life, the 82% built before 2000 are past at least one full roof life.
The last report near Penbrook of hail 1 inch or bigger came on June 3, 2023; NOAA's records hold 4 of them within 5 miles since 2016.
Not yet: no completed roof in Penbrook 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 · www2.census.gov · www.spc.noaa.gov. Rules and staff change; check with the jurisdiction.