Pennsylvania

Supplements written for Pennsylvania roofs, city block and lakeshore

One construction code covers this whole Commonwealth, and yet the question of who inspects your roof has a different answer in one borough than it does in the township next to it. Layer that over a housing stock of shared walls, board decking, and slate, and you get claims where the assembly and the paperwork both have to be argued.

By Kyle Hamrick, Founder

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The Estimate Company is run by a licensed independent insurance adjuster. Adjuster licensure is held in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Alabama. From that desk, Xactimate estimates and supplements go out to roofing contractors in every part of the country.

The job on a file from this market is the estimate and nothing wider than that. We hold no adjuster appointment here, the claim is not ours to adjust, and the homeowner is not ours to represent. What we do is draft the scope, source the code basis, assemble the documentation, and keep pushing the file with your office until an answer comes back.

The Estimate Company is run by a licensed independent insurance adjuster, with claims experience across many states, writing for contractors nationwide. What we bring to a Pennsylvania file is code mechanism, carrier behavior, and claim pattern, confirmed for the address rather than assumed from a statewide rule. More about Kyle.

What actually damages roofs in Pennsylvania, and what it does to the estimate

The southeast: nor'easters, tropical remnants, and dense attached housing

Philadelphia and the collar counties take coastal storms that have already turned the corner up the Atlantic, which arrive as long duration wind with rain driven sideways rather than as a single violent hour. Wind that steady finds the seams a gust never would: a lifted edge on a parapet cap, an open lap in a rear addition membrane, a chimney counterflashing that lost its grip in the mortar. Tropical remnants add the other half of it, and Ida is the example everybody in the region remembers, because it put water into houses whose coverings looked untouched from the sidewalk.

The housing itself is the complication. Rows, twins, and porch fronts run wall to wall for blocks, so the covering terminates into shared masonry instead of ending at a rake, and behind most main roofs sits a nearly flat back building on an entirely different membrane. Philadelphia administers construction code through its own municipal apparatus under Title 4 of the city code, which means the permit path and the inspection record on a city address do not look like the ones from a suburban township, and an adjuster who has both on his desk will notice.

Hail reaches this end of the state too, usually as the tail of a summer complex rather than as a dedicated hail season. It reads the same way it reads everywhere: clearest on soft metals, gutter aprons, vents, and screens, ambiguous on a weathered field. The roof claim inspection checklist is the on site order of operations that puts that proof on paper before anybody arrives to argue about it, and none of it can be reconstructed once the covering is in the dumpster.

The lakeshore and the northern tier: lake effect and the damming that follows

Erie sits at the downwind end of a long lake, which is the geometry that manufactures snow. Cold air runs the length of open water, loads up, and unloads on the shoreline counties in bands that can bury one neighborhood and skip the next one over. That snow does not melt off between events. It accumulates, it sits, and it sits specifically on the part of the roof that is warmest underneath.

What follows is damming, and damming is a loss that happens in the wrong place for a fast inspection. Meltwater runs down a warm field, hits an overhang with no heated space beneath it, freezes into a ridge of ice, and then backs up behind that ridge and travels under the covering by capillary action. The damage lands in the soffit, the fascia, the top of the wall, and the knee wall on the floor above, while the shingles out in the field look serviceable. Scranton, the Poconos, and the northern tier run the same pattern on top of an older housing stock with shallow overhangs and thin insulation, which makes the ice worse rather than better.

The middle of the state: severe thunderstorm, hail, and the ridges

Through the Susquehanna Valley and the Lehigh Valley, the warm season peril is the organized thunderstorm complex: large hail on a narrow track, straight line wind on a wide one, and an occasional tornado in the farm country. Reading, Allentown, Lancaster, York, and the capital region all sit in the corridor those systems take as they run east off the Appalachian ridges.

The ridge and valley terrain does something specific to wind that matters on a claim. Air funneled through a gap accelerates, so two houses a few miles apart on the same storm can show entirely different damage, and the adjuster who worked the sheltered side first arrives at the exposed side already skeptical. The answer is not argument, it is a documented case: creased mats, released adhesive strips, cap unseated along the ridge, and a photograph set that makes the pattern obvious to somebody reading it at a desk two states away.

Three code arguments that move Pennsylvania files

One code, many enforcers, and the difference is the whole argument

The Uniform Construction Code is adopted for the entire Commonwealth and carried in the state administrative code at 34 Pa. Code Chapter 403, which brings in the International Residential Code and the International Existing Building Code by reference. But municipalities were allowed to decide whether to administer it themselves, and the ones that declined pushed commercial enforcement to the state Department of Labor and Industry while residential inspections go to certified third party agencies engaged directly by the owner or the contractor. The technical obligation on the roof never changes. The permit record and the inspector do. Verify with local building dept Establish which body administers code at that address before a citation goes into writing.

The eave membrane is a covering requirement, not a homeowner upgrade

The residential provisions require an ice barrier along the eave where the jurisdiction has a history of ice forming at that edge, and across most of this state that history is not in dispute. What the requirement does on a claim is move the membrane out of the discretionary column and into the definition of a compliant roof, which is a different conversation than asking a carrier to be generous. Pair it with the interior repair behind the dam and the two arguments reinforce each other instead of competing. Verify with local building dept Confirm the adopted edition and any local amendment for the address.

Attached houses put a code detail where the carrier is not looking

A row, a twin, or a duplex terminates its covering into shared masonry, and the existing building provisions do not let that junction be handled by tucking shingles against a wall and hoping. Counterflashing has to be set into the masonry, the parapet and coping have to be made watertight, and on a rear addition the low slope membrane has to be tied into all of it. This is the single most underscoped assembly in the state, and it is underscoped because a squares based estimate has no field for it. Name the detail, price the metal and the masonry work, and the omission becomes obvious on its face.

The carriers writing Pennsylvania, and what a home field desk expects to see

Erie Insurance is headquartered in this state and writes a large share of the residential book in it. State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide, Travelers, and Liberty Mutual carry most of the rest, Penn National Insurance operates out of the capital region, Donegal writes heavily through the Lancaster County independent agency channel, and the Philadelphia Contributionship has been insuring buildings in that city since the colonial era. Chubb concentrates on the high value stock in the Philadelphia collar counties, where slate, copper, and standing seam are ordinary rather than exotic.

The practical consequence of a home field carrier is that generic packages fail faster here than they do in a market being worked from out of state. Those desks have seen every version of the template and they reject on sight. What they do respond to is specificity: the enforcing body named, the assembly described the way the crew will actually build it, and the photographs sequenced so the reasoning is visible without a phone call. Every one of those desks pays a familiar handful of items on request and then demands proof for anything past it, and knowing where that line falls is what lets a supplement be aimed instead of sprayed.

Where the standard market declines a property, it goes to the Insurance Placement Facility of Pennsylvania, the state FAIR plan created by statute in the late nineteen sixties. Those files move on their own schedule through their own reviewer pool, and the scope written on them tends to be the leanest on the block. That is not a reason to expect less. It is a reason to submit a complete file the first time, because the second submission is slower there than anywhere else.

Volume changes behavior too. After a wide ice event or a fast moving wind complex, the work goes to catastrophe staff carrying a daily inspection quota, and throughput is the number they answer to. That is a workload fact rather than a character question, and it lands hardest on damming and wind, the two loss types that need the most careful evidence. The reinspection supplement is built for the files that will not move until somebody is back on that roof with the documentation already assembled. Where an aging adjustment or a roof payment schedule cut the settlement, depreciation recovery is a separate piece of work with its own argument.

What gets recovered on a Pennsylvania roof file

Ordered by how often the item is missing when a file reaches our desk.

Status key: In scope. Usually omitted. Code driven. Verify with the authority having jurisdiction. Every status is spelled out in words beside the item, so nothing depends on color.

  • Ice barrier membrane at eaves, valleys, and low slope transitions

    Code driven

    Where the residential provisions treat a jurisdiction as having a damming history, the membrane stops being optional and becomes part of a compliant covering. It is also the item a first estimate skips most reliably, because the old roof did not have one and nobody prices what they cannot see.

  • Drip edge at eaves and rakes

    Code driven

    Most of the housing stock in this Commonwealth predates the requirement by decades, so the tear off exposes a bare rake board and a shingle edge hanging over open fascia. The metal is required on the new covering regardless of what the old one lacked.

  • Full replacement under the existing building repair provisions

    Verify with local building dept

    Patch enough of one covering inside the counted period and the repair allowance runs out, at which point the whole roof has to meet the edition in force. Where it lands, it is the largest number in the file. Ask the body enforcing code at that address, because who answers the question is not the same everywhere here.

  • Party wall, parapet, and coping flashing on attached houses

    Usually omitted

    A row or a twin ends at a shared masonry wall, and the covering has to be terminated into it with counterflashing and a reglet cut rather than run to an edge. That is metal work, masonry work, and sealant, and none of it lives inside a shingle line item.

  • Low slope membrane over rear additions and back buildings

    In scope

    The back half of a city house is frequently a nearly flat deck behind the main pitch, carrying a modified bitumen or single ply covering that is a different trade, a different material, and a different price list section from the shingles out front.

  • Slate, tile, and standing seam replaced in like kind and quality

    In scope

    The Lehigh Valley quarried the slate that covers a large share of the older roofs in the eastern counties, and swapping any of it for architectural asphalt is a substitution the policy did not buy. Matching the existing material means pricing the existing material.

  • Plank decking replacement and renailing to the adopted schedule

    Verify with local building dept

    Pre war stock across the state sits on board sheathing with gaps between the planks, and a fastening pattern written for continuous panel has nothing to grip over those gaps. It is discovered with the old covering off, which is exactly why it arrives as a supplement.

  • Steep charges and high charges on hillside and three story elevations

    Usually omitted

    Pittsburgh builds into slopes and the older city neighborhoods run three full stories to the eave, so the crew is staging off a hillside and working at a height the default labor rate never contemplated. Both charges are separate lines and both go missing together.

  • Chimney and dormer flashing on brick and stone

    Usually omitted

    Masonry chimneys and framed dormers are everywhere in this housing stock, and the freeze cycling here opens the mortar joint that holds the counterflashing. Reflashing means cutting the joint, setting new metal, and repointing behind it, which is three operations and zero of them are shingles.

  • Ridge cut, ventilation strip, and cap course over it

    Usually omitted

    A ridge line has to be sawn open, then vented, then capped, and each of those carries its own labor and its own material. Fund one of the three and two thirds of that ridge is still sitting unpaid on the invoice.

  • Interior damage behind an ice dam at soffit, fascia, and knee wall

    Usually omitted

    Damming does its worst work at the overhang and inside the wall cavity behind it, which is nowhere near the field slope an adjuster photographs first. It is documentable and it is real, and it is left out of the opening estimate nearly every time.

  • Overhead and profit on multi trade files

    In scope

    One storm that puts covering, gutter, soffit, siding, and interior drywall on the same claim needs somebody sequencing four or five crews and answering for the result. What triggers the entitlement is the number of trades, and never the size of the bottom line.

None of it goes in as a request. Every one of those becomes a priced Xactimate line with the reasoning sitting next to it. Which wrapper it ships in depends on the claim, arriving as a roofing supplement, an Xactimate supplement package, a supplemental estimate, or a full claim estimate written from scratch.

What happens to your file after you send it

  1. 01

    The carrier estimate gets read line by line against the roof

    Not skimmed. We pull the estimate apart against your measurements and photos, marking every line where the assembly written does not match what that roof needs in that jurisdiction.

  2. 02

    Code and manufacturer requirements get sourced before they get argued

    The first question on a file here is which body is actually administering code at that address, because the answer determines whose permit record and whose inspection the carrier will accept. Eave membrane, edge metal, fastening, and the repair trigger get confirmed against that body rather than asserted.

  3. 03

    The supplement is written in Xactimate and delivered as a PDF

    Real file, real price list, real sketch. You get the PDF as the deliverable, and the ESX free any time you ask for it. Retail estimate work with no supplement attached delivers the ESX. Written same day or next day, submitted next day. One to three extra days on large commercial and multi structure work.

  4. 04

    We stay on the file until the carrier answers

    Follow up, desk adjuster calls, and reinspection support when the carrier sends someone back out. Response runs about three weeks as a general expectation, and the file does not close on our side because it went quiet on theirs.

Two promises, stated separately

Promise one: the fee

The standard fee is 15 percent of supplemental recovery. If a file produces no additional approved recovery, you pay nothing on that claim. That is the whole fee structure, and it applies claim by claim.

Promise two: the guarantee

Send us an average of 2 claims per week for 12 months. If that volume does not produce a minimum of six figures in additional margin for your company, we write you a $5,000 check at the end of the 12 months. The volume, the 12 month term, the six figure threshold, and the $5,000 figure are one set of terms and they always travel together.

Two different promises, no overlap. The fee describes what a single claim costs you. The guarantee describes what a year of steady volume is worth. Nothing in the fee structure is a guarantee, and the guarantee does not change the fee.

Pennsylvania questions we get from contractors

Which building code decides a Pennsylvania roof supplement?

The Uniform Construction Code, adopted by the Commonwealth and carried in the state administrative code at 34 Pa. Code Chapter 403, which pulls in the International Residential Code and the International Existing Building Code by reference. The technical requirement is set once for the whole Commonwealth. What is not set once is who enforces it, and that distinction is the first thing to establish on any file.

What does it mean that a municipality opted out of UCC enforcement?

Municipalities were given a choice about administering the code locally, and most took it. In the ones that declined, commercial enforcement falls to the state Department of Labor and Industry, and residential work is inspected by certified third party agencies that the property owner or the contractor engages directly. The obligation on the roof is the same either way. The permit trail, the inspector, and the paperwork the adjuster is going to ask for are not, so the file names the enforcing body for that address instead of gesturing at a statewide rule.

Why are row house and twin roofs harder to get paid correctly?

Because the roof does not end at the property line, it ends at a shared wall. On Philadelphia rows and Pittsburgh twins the covering runs into a party wall, a parapet, or a coping, and the through wall flashing at that junction is the single most common leak path and the single most common omission. A carrier estimate written as a squares number treats the wall as somebody else's problem. The crew doing the work has to flash it, terminate it, and warrant it, and that labor and metal belong in the scope.

Is ice damming a real supplement argument or a nuisance item?

It is the largest cold weather argument in the Commonwealth and it is routinely undervalued. Snow melts over a heated field, refreezes at a cold overhang, and the backed up water travels uphill under the covering into the soffit, the fascia, and the knee wall behind the eave. None of that is visible from the driveway. The membrane at the eave is the code driven half of the answer and the interior repair is the documented half, and a file that only argues one of them leaves the other on the table.

How much does a supplement usually recover?

On claims where the roof is already approved for full replacement, our own closed files show a median recovery of about $4,000, with half landing between roughly $1,800 and $9,500. Claims that start denied or repair-only run far higher, and no honest range covers both groups at once, which is why the qualifier stays attached to the figure. The variable that moves it most is not the size of the roof, it is how much of the assembly the first estimate skipped.

How fast is turnaround, and what does it cost?

Estimates are written same day or next day and submitted next day. Larger commercial and multi structure files take one to three extra days, said up front. Carrier response runs about three weeks as a general expectation. The standard fee is 15 percent of supplemental recovery, and a file with no additional approved recovery owes nothing on that claim.

Pennsylvania markets

Southeast and the valleys

Western Pennsylvania and the northern tier

Files also come in from Bethlehem, Easton, Lancaster, York, Wilkes-Barre, Altoona, Johnstown, Chester, Norristown, State College, Williamsport, Hazleton, Stroudsburg, Butler, and Washington.

Hand over one file and find out what the first pass skipped

Three things start it: the carrier document, the measurements you already pulled, and the declarations. What we send back names the body enforcing code at that address, prices the assembly your crew has to build, and puts the eave and the shared wall in writing instead of leaving them for the invoice.

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