Nassau Countyis where most of our work is
From the marsh and oceanfront on Amelia Island to the pine country around Hilliard, Nassau County covers about 649 square miles of land and five very different places to own a roof. We keep an office in Fernandina Beach because this is the end of the map we are on most.
One countyfour building departments
Nassau County contains exactly three municipalities (Fernandina Beach, Callahan and Hilliard) and every one of them runs its own building department. The Nassau County Building Department, at 96161 Nassau Place in Yulee, permits everything else: Yulee, Bryceville, American Beach, Amelia City and the southern portion of Amelia Island. Four counters, one county.
That is not trivia. It decides which application form your re-roof goes on, which fee schedule applies and who inspects the dry-in. Nassau County publishes a dedicated re-roofing permit application and takes submissions by email rather than through an online portal, while Fernandina Beach runs everything through a web portal. Callahan has its own re-roof form. Hilliard does not, roofing there goes through the general building permit application plus a roofing contractor inspection affidavit.
We work with all four, and the 8th Edition (2023) Florida Building Code is what every one of them is enforcing. We will never perform unpermitted work on your property.
Growing fastand re-roofing right behind it
The Census Bureau put Nassau County at 106,879 people as of July 2025, an 18.3 percent increase since the 2020 census, second only to St. Johns among the four counties we serve. The county holds 45,058 housing units, 82.7 percent of them owner-occupied, which is the highest owner-occupancy rate in our service area.
The median Nassau County home was built in 2000 and just under half the county’s housing has gone up since then. That is the whole story of roofing here in one number: a very large cohort of builder-grade shingle roofs installed in the same handful of years, now all arriving at the end of their service life together, while 19.6 percent of the county’s homes predate 1980 and have been through this already.
Where in Nassauwe work, town by town
These five pages are not the same page with a name swapped. The permit authority, the salt exposure, the tree canopy and the age of the houses are genuinely different in each one, and each page is written around what is actually true there.
Three stormsthat actually did damage here
Helene, September 2024. The strongest inland winds of the decade. The Yulee weather station recorded a 61 mph gust and Hilliard 50 mph, more than 31,000 Nassau customers lost power, about 58 percent of the county, and the National Weather Service recorded trees falling on homes and cars causing extensive damage in Fernandina Beach, Yulee and Callahan.
Matthew, October 2016. The centre never made landfall in Florida, but the western eyewall paralleled the coast. The Weather Service logged widespread tree, powerline and structural damage, most of it coastal, with trees down on structures. The Fernandina Beach tide gauge hit 6.91 feet NAVD88: the third highest reading in the gauge’s history, behind only the 1898 and 1944 hurricanes.
Irma, September 2017. Two EF-0 tornadoes touched down in the county in the small hours of 11 September, one on northern Amelia Island and one just south of Fernandina Beach. Trees came down onto homes near Fernandina Beach, and Nassau homeowners received federal individual assistance.
Nassau County has not taken a direct hurricane landfall in a very long time. That is not the same as being safe. It gets brushed regularly, and the brushing does real roof damage.
Tree coveror salt air. Pick your problem
Nassau County splits cleanly. Inland, the state’s 2023 urban tree canopy assessment measured 47 to 55 percent cover across the county’s towns, and the roof problems are debris, organic staining and limb fall. On the coast the canopy drops away and the problems become salt corrosion on fasteners and flashing, wind-driven rain and full UV exposure. Nassau also carries 7.7 miles of critically eroded beach in the state’s 2025 coastal inventory.
Hilliard: 55%
The highest canopy cover of any community in our service area, and the furthest inland. Debris load, not salt, is what shortens a roof here.
Yulee: 54%
Heavily wooded despite being the county's newest housing. New subdivisions cut into mature pine and hardwood, so young roofs still take a full leaf and limb load.
Callahan: 47%
Rural inland canopy, and the steepest decline of any Northeast Florida community in that assessment between 2013 and 2021, which changes what falls on a roof and what does not.
Fernandina Beach: 41%
The lowest in the county. Less shade, more sun and salt: the trade the coast always makes.
Rainfall is the constant underneath both. The Fernandina Beach weather station averages about 48.8 inches of rain a year across roughly 109 days, on NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals: fewer rain days than people assume, and far more rain per day than they assume. Short, heavy summer storms are what find a lifted shingle or a tired pipe boot.
That is why gutters, roof maintenance and siding are not side jobs to us. Water leaving the roof properly is half of whether the roof lasts.
Nassau Countyquestions we get asked
It depends on whether your address is inside a city, and in Nassau County that is a real fork in the road. Nassau contains exactly three municipalities (Fernandina Beach, Callahan and Hilliard) and each of them runs its own building department and issues its own permits. Everything else in the county is unincorporated and permitted by the Nassau County Building Department, which works out of 96161 Nassau Place in Yulee and takes permit applications by email rather than through an online portal. That includes Yulee, Bryceville, American Beach, Amelia City and the southern part of Amelia Island.
Nassau County does not publish a single wind speed number of its own. It adopted the state's Florida Building Code 2023 wind map as-is, and that map shows the 120 mph contour running north to south through the western part of the county, the Callahan and Hilliard corridor, with the 130 mph contour drawn offshore in the Atlantic. In practice that puts standard homes across the county in the 120 to 130 mph ultimate design wind speed band, rising as you move east toward Amelia Island. For a specific address the definitive answers come from the building department with jurisdiction or the ASCE 7 Hazard Tool.
That turns on whether your address falls inside the wind-borne debris region, and that determination belongs to your building department, not to a contractor's website. The region is defined as land within one mile of the mean high-water line where the ultimate design wind speed reaches 130 mph or more, which makes it a narrow coastal question rather than a county-wide one. If opening protection matters to your project, ask the building department with jurisdiction over your parcel or run the address through the ASCE 7 Hazard Tool before anyone quotes you glazing.
Three in the last decade. Hurricane Helene in September 2024 gusted to 61 mph at the Yulee weather station and 50 mph at Hilliard, knocked out power to more than 31,000 Nassau customers, roughly 58 percent of the county, and the National Weather Service logged trees falling on homes and cars causing extensive damage in Fernandina Beach, Yulee and Callahan. Hurricane Matthew in October 2016 brought widespread tree, powerline and structural damage concentrated on the coast, and pushed the Fernandina Beach tide gauge to 6.91 feet NAVD88, the third highest reading ever recorded there. Hurricane Irma in 2017 dropped two EF-0 tornadoes on northern Amelia Island and just south of Fernandina Beach, and brought federal individual assistance to Nassau homeowners.
Younger than most of Northeast Florida, but that is changing fast. The median Nassau County home was built in 2000, and just under half the county's 45,058 housing units have gone up since then, according to the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 American Community Survey. That matters because a builder-grade shingle roof from the 2000–2005 building wave is now twenty-plus years old and reaching the end of its service life all at once. About 19.6 percent of the county's homes predate 1980 and are on their second or third roof already.
Yes. Our Nassau County office is at 910 S 8th St Suite 309, Fernandina Beach, FL 32034, alongside our main office in Jacksonville. Nassau is where the largest share of our work is, which is why we keep a base here rather than running the county from across the river. Call or text (904) 707-6546 and you will get someone who already knows which building department your parcel answers to.
We're right hereFernandina Beach office, county-wide crews
Call or text us with your address and what you're seeing. Free estimate, photos of whatever we find, no minimum trip fee, and we already know which building department your parcel answers to.
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