FAQ

In New Jersey four of them are checkable rather than a matter of impression. The registration number appears on both sides of the van in inch-high lettering and on every advertisement and document, under N.J.A.C. 13:45A-17.11. Any contract over $500 is in writing and signed by both parties, with the legal business name and a street address on it. And it carries a bold notice giving you three business days to cancel. A contractor who meets all four may still be wrong for the job, but one who fails them is not a judgment call.

Usually not, on a house. Replacing the roof COVERING on a detached one- or two-family dwelling is ordinary maintenance under N.J.A.C. 5:23-2.7 -- no permit, no notice, no inspection. Three or more units, an attached building, or anything structural underneath the covering is a different answer, and the office that decides is your own municipality's construction office, not the state's. West Orange is detached enough that no permit is the normal outcome here.

It is a Florida rule, and it does not apply in New Jersey. The 25% rule comes from the Florida Building Code Existing Building, where repairing or replacing more than a quarter of a roof within a year can require the whole thing to be brought up to current code. New Jersey has no equivalent provision. It appears in searches here because national content repeats it without saying which state it belongs to, and it is worth knowing that any contractor quoting it at you in this state is citing the wrong code book.

An architectural asphalt roof runs $9,500 to $26,000 in New Jersey, and most 2,000 square foot houses land at $12,000 to $18,000 installed. Per square foot that is $5.50 to $8.00 for architectural shingle against $4.50 to $6.50 for three-tab. Natural slate is a different market entirely at $22 to $35 a square foot, and synthetic slate sits between them at $9 to $16.

For a standard asphalt roof on an average house, yes -- that is well above the $12,000 to $18,000 most 2,000 square foot houses cost here. But it is an entirely normal figure for natural slate, for a large house, or for a steep and complicated roofline with towers and dormers, which this township has a good deal of. The number on its own does not answer the question. What the quote itemizes does.

Architectural asphalt typically gives 20 to 30 years here and three-tab 15 to 20, with freeze and thaw at the eaves doing more to shorten both than sunlight does. Natural slate outlasts the rest by a wide margin -- often a century or more -- which is why so many slate roofs in this area need their nails, valleys and flashings attended to rather than the stone replaced.

Labor, in most cases -- typically more than half the total, and the share rises with pitch and complexity because steep broken-up roofs take far longer per square foot than simple ones. The item that most often moves a final bill away from the quote is different: replacement decking, which nobody can measure until the old covering is off. That is why it belongs in the scope as a rate per sheet.

A 1,200 square foot roof in architectural shingle works out at roughly $6,600 to $9,600 on New Jersey rates, before anything the roof itself adds. Note that 1,200 square feet of FLOOR is not 1,200 square feet of roof: pitch, overhangs and dormers mean the roof area on a house that size is commonly a third larger again, which is a frequent source of quotes that look inexplicably far apart.