Trueline Roofers inspects and replaces roofs in Unincorporated Perry County, the part of the county outside its boroughs, where the county's Census count shows 4305 of 20049 homes built in 1939 or earlier.
We cover the parts of Perry 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 Perry County is logged in our job records yet.
Across Perry County as a whole, the Census counts 20049 housing units and a median build year of 1976. That median hides a wide spread. 4305 homes date to 1939 or earlier, while 3327 went up in the 1970s and 2913 in the 1980s. The boroughs inside the county skew old: Duncannon and Newport each have a median year built of 1938, Bloomfield 1943 and Marysville 1955. A roof in Unincorporated Perry County can therefore sit on hand-cut rafters and board decking, or on trusses and sheet decking, and the two come apart differently at tear-off.
Housing type matters as much as age. In Perry County, 80.6% (about 81%) of housing units are single-family detached, and 1613 units are mobile homes, whose roofs are a different job from a house roof. Owners live in 81.8% (about 82%) of occupied homes in the county, so the person deciding on the roof is usually the one living under it.
Winter brings snow piling on roofs and ice dams at the eaves, then freeze-thaw cycles that work water in under shingles. Summer brings humid air, mildew, and moss or algae on shaded slopes, and where slate roofs survive they need a careful hand. Heat matters too. The county's Census row counts 2317 homes heated by wood and 767 by coal, and each of those vents through a chimney crossing the roof. We photograph that flashing for you, because it is a common place for a slow leak to start. Water leaving the roof also ends up at the foundation, and dry basements are a worry here, so gutters and downspouts belong in the same conversation.
For Perry County as a whole — every city in it as well as the unincorporated land — the Census Bureau counts 20,049 homes, with a median year built of 1976. 4,305 of them (21%) went up before 1940 and 3,419 (17%) in 2000 or later. More of today's homes date from before 1940 than from any decade since.
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 16,630 homes in Perry County built before 2000 (83%) have outlived at least one roof, and the 7,894 built before 1970 (39%) are usually on a third covering or later. The 1,869 homes from the 2000s are where first replacements come up now, while the 1,550 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.
Detached single-family houses make up 81% (16,166); attached houses and townhouses 4% (799). 1,093 homes (5%) sit in two- to nine-unit buildings and 366 (2%) in buildings of ten units or more, where the roof is usually a landlord's or an association's decision. The count also takes in 1,613 mobile homes, which are a different kind of roof job. 14,974 of 18,299 occupied homes (82%) are lived in by their owners. When we look at houses like these, our work can include deck and flashing checks on pre-war board sheathing.
| Built | Homes | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1940 | 4,305 | 21% | |
| 1940s | 1,016 | 5% | |
| 1950s | 1,278 | 6% | |
| 1960s | 1,295 | 6% | |
| 1970s | 3,327 | 17% | |
| 1980s | 2,913 | 15% | |
| 1990s | 2,496 | 12% | |
| 2000s | 1,869 | 9% | |
| 2010s | 1,310 | 7% | |
| 2020 or later | 240 | 1% |
Census ACS 2020–2024, tables B25034, B25035, B25024 and B25003: 20,049 homes, 18,299 occupied. Survey estimates.
NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center logged 5 reports of hail 1 inch or larger in Perry County as a whole from 2016 through 2025, on 5 different days. None was 1.75 inches or larger. The largest, 1.25 inches, came on July 17, 2021. The most recent was 1 inch on May 16, 2025. These are reports, not a full record: they come from spotters and the public, so busier areas log more.
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 Unincorporated Perry 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 Perry 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 layerThe design wind speed a roof in Unincorporated Perry County 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 code guide explains what it governs.
| City | Re-roof permit | Code | Median built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unincorporated Perry County | Not published | UCC (2021 IRC) | — |
| Bloomfield | Not published | Not published | 1943 |
| Duncannon | Not published | Not published | 1939 or earlier |
| Marysville | Not published | Not published | 1955 |
| Newport | Not published | Not published | 1939 or earlier |
Every Perry County city we cover, side by side →
Perry County's median home was built in 1976, but 4305 of its 20049 homes date to 1939 or earlier. The older ones often have board decking and hand-cut framing, so the decking is worth checking once the old shingles are off.
Snow piles on the roof, heat leaking from the house melts the underside of it, and the meltwater refreezes at the cold eave. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles then push water under the shingles.
Permits and inspections for Unincorporated Perry 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 Perry 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.