Jacksonvilleis where we're based
Our main office is on East Union Street, just across downtown from the Ed Ball Building where the city's permits are issued. This is the city we work in every week, including the fact that it sets two different design wind speeds depending on which side of the river you live on.
Our home cityand our busiest one after Nassau
Built by Advocate works out of 700 E Union St Suite 165, Jacksonville, FL 32206. Duval County covers about 763 square miles of land and Jacksonville’s consolidated government reaches across almost all of it: about 430,000 housing units sit inside the city itself, at a median year of construction of 1987.
Most of it is not the beach. Downtown Jacksonville sits about 23 river miles up the St. Johns from the Atlantic, and the great majority of the city’s residential neighbourhoods (the Westside, Arlington, Mandarin, Riverside, San Marco, Ortega) are inland or riverine. That changes what fails on a roof here. Inland Jacksonville roofs die of debris, shade, organic growth and limb impact far more often than they die of salt.
We hold a Certified Roofing Contractor licence (CCC1335155) and a Certified Building Contractor licence (CBC1270530), so if a leak turns out to have taken the decking or the framing with it, the same company finishes the job.
125 mph west of the river130 mph east of it
Most Florida cities take whatever the state wind map gives them. Jacksonville draws its own line. Section 320.103 of the Ordinance Code, headed “Wind zones,” splits the city into two design wind speeds: 125 mph west of a demarcation line, and 130 mph east of it.
The line itself is defined precisely. It begins in the middle of the St. Johns River at the southern Duval County line, runs north up the centre of the river to I-95 at the Fuller Warren Bridge, then follows I-95 north to the northern county line. Live east of that and your roof assembly is designed to hold 130 mph. Live west of it and the number is 125. The ordinance also permits an engineer or architect to substitute a calculation taken from the actual wind map for your address.
That sits exactly where the state puts it. The Florida Building Code’s own 2023 wind speed map places the whole of Duval County between the 120 and 130 mph contours, rising toward the coast. So when you see a roofing page claiming Northeast Florida requires 150 or 180 mph design wind speeds, you are reading marketing, not code.
Half the cityis under a tree
An urban tree canopy assessment prepared for the City of Jacksonville in 2017 found canopy covering 48% of the city’s 325,400 land acres, with low-density residential land, ordinary neighbourhoods of detached houses, averaging 49% cover and holding 42% of all the canopy in the city.
It stays that way partly by law. City Charter Article 25, adopted by referendum in 2000, requires anyone removing a live oak to replace the full diameter inches lost, against only a third for other protected species. Removing a mature live oak in Jacksonville is expensive and legally discouraged, so homeowners live with the overhang, and the roof lives with the debris.
What that does to a roof is specific: leaf and needle load packing valleys and gutters, organic staining and moss on the shaded slopes, granule wear where limbs rub, and impact damage when a limb comes down in a summer storm. It is a completely different wear pattern from the salt corrosion and uplift that eats roofs out at the beaches, and it is why our Jacksonville estimates spend as much time on gutters and ventilation as on the shingles themselves.
The rainis not what you were told
NOAA’s 1991–2020 climate normals for Jacksonville International give about 114 days a year with measurable precipitation and 52.39 inches of rain, far fewer wet days than local roofing copy tends to claim.
The useful part is the shape of it. Nearly 40% of the year’s rain falls in June, July and August, across roughly 43 days: short, heavy, repeated loading, which is precisely what exposes a valley that was never detailed properly.
The stormsthat took roofs off
Helene, September 2024: a 74 mph gust at NAS Jacksonville and 72 mph at Jacksonville International, the strongest inland winds of the decade here. The National Weather Service recorded total destruction to roofs in Arlington Hills and shingles blown off multiple homes along Pecan Park Road, with 224,000-plus JEA customers out.
Before that, Irma gusted to 86 mph at the airport in 2017, and Matthew to 82 mph at Fort Caroline in 2016. Rarely hit head-on, brushed regularly, and the brushing is what we get called about.
Permitsgo through JaxEPICS
Roofing permits inside the City of Jacksonville are issued by the Building Inspection Division, which now sits under the Department of Public Works at the Ed Ball Building, 214 N. Hogan Street. Online submission through the JaxEPICS portal is required for all permit types. We file them; you do not.
One boundary worth knowing before you call anyone: that division only covers the City of Jacksonville. Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach and the Town of Baldwin each run their own building department, with their own forms and their own review queues.
More than the roofon a Jacksonville house
On most houses the roof is not the only thing that needs doing. We hold a Certified Building Contractor licence as well as a roofing one, so the same company can handle the siding, the soffit and fascia, the gutters, the windows and doors, the pavers, the screened enclosure and the deck: on one schedule, with one point of contact.
In Jacksonville that matters more than it sounds. On a house built in the 1980s under heavy canopy, water that has been getting past a roof detail for a couple of seasons has usually reached the fascia, the soffit or the siding behind it. Sending a roofer who can only fix the roof means you get a second contractor, a second schedule and a second deposit.
We are reachable on (904) 707-6546 for calls or texts, and there are in-house payment plans available for qualified projects. You can apply for financing directly inside your estimate rather than filling in a separate application.
What we doon Jacksonville homes
Jacksonvillequestions we get asked
Jacksonville is unusual in drawing its own line. Section 320.103 of the Ordinance Code sets two wind zones: 125 mph west of a demarcation line and 130 mph east of it. The line runs along the middle of the St. Johns River from the south county line north to I-95 at the Fuller Warren Bridge, then follows I-95 north to the county line. If you are east of the river and I-95, your roof system is designed for 130 mph; west of it, 125 mph. The ordinance also lets an engineer or architect substitute a calculation from the actual wind map for a specific address.
The City of Jacksonville's Building Inspection Division, which sits under the Department of Public Works at the Ed Ball Building on North Hogan Street. Online submission through the JaxEPICS portal is required for all permit types. Worth knowing: the division moved out from under Planning and Development, so older web pages and older contractors still name the wrong department. And its authority stops at the city line: if your address is in Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach or Baldwin, a different building department handles it.
Yes, within limits. The City allows a homeowner to permit construction or renovation of their primary residence, provided the property is not for sale or rent and their name is on the deed. But the City also states that licensed or registered contractors hired by the owner for subcontracted work requiring a permit, roofing included, must obtain their own permits. In practice that means an owner-builder permit does not cover the roofer you hire. We pull our own, every time, and we do not perform unpermitted work.
More than most homeowners expect. A 2017 urban tree canopy assessment prepared for the City found canopy covering 48% of Jacksonville's 325,400 land acres, with low-density residential land averaging 49% cover, so roughly half of the city's residential land sits under trees. City Charter Article 25 requires full inch-for-inch replacement for live oaks removed, three times the requirement for other protected species, which is a large part of why mature oaks still overhang so many Jacksonville roofs. The practical result is leaf and needle load in valleys and gutters, organic staining on shingles, and limb-fall impact damage. It is a different failure pattern from the salt and uplift you get at the beaches.
About 52.39 inches of it, spread across roughly 114 days with measurable rain. Those are NOAA's 1991–2020 climate normals for Jacksonville International Airport. That is far fewer wet days than the figures that circulate in local roofing copy, some of which overstate the rain-day count by close to double. What matters more than the total is the concentration: nearly 40% of the year's rainfall arrives in June, July and August alone, across about 43 days. Short, intense summer storms are exactly the load pattern that finds a weak roof.
Hurricane Dora, on 10 September 1964, is the last hurricane whose centre made landfall in Northeast Florida, coming ashore near St. Augustine. NOAA's HURDAT-based landfall database rates its Northeast Florida impact as Category 2, with a 966 mb central pressure and 95 kt maximum sustained winds. That does not mean Jacksonville has been left alone since, Matthew produced hurricane-force gusts over land here in 2016 without a landfall, and Helene did serious roof damage in 2024. The honest framing is that this city is rarely hit head-on but brushed regularly, and the brushing is what takes roofs off.
Jacksonville homeowner?We'll come look at it
Call or text and we'll get out to you, photograph whatever we find, and put a written estimate in your hands. Free, no trip fee, and no pressure to book the work.
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