Roofing in Brevard County, FL

What is on the roofs in Brevard County

Brevard's largest city grew out of one land company. In 1959, General Development Corporation bought and platted large tracts for Port Malabar, and Palm Bay incorporated in January 1960. GDC laid out many of the streets and sold and built many of the homes, until the company went bankrupt in 1991. The rest of the county stretches along the barrier islands and the Indian River Lagoon, from Titusville, the official county seat, to the secondary government center built in 1989 at Viera.^6,7

Rules, history and conditions that affect roofs here

• Brevard County's Building Permits office covers only unincorporated areas. Online permitting is open only to licensed contractors. If you are pulling an owner-builder permit, you must file in person, so call (321) 633-2187 to schedule an appointment.¹
• After a declared emergency, Brevard County expedites permits that need no technical review, including roof repairs and reroofing, and expects to process them within 3 business days, as Florida Statute 553.7922 requires. Under county policy BCC-50, the County Manager can also waive storm-repair permit fees when an owner shows financial hardship and has no insurance or other help.¹
• The state wind map puts every area with a design speed of 140 mph or more in the wind-borne debris region. Nearly all of Brevard is at or above 140 mph, so virtually the whole county is inside it. There, Section 1609.1.2 of the code requires glazed openings, such as windows and glass doors, to be impact-resistant or covered by an approved impact-resistant protection. Opening protection is also one of the items recorded on the state wind-mitigation inspection form (OIR-B1-1802).^2,8,9,10
• Palm Bay's Building Department moved all permit applications to its ePermitHub Digital Plan Room on March 3, 2025. Applications filed on or after Dec. 31, 2023 must meet the 2023 Florida Building Code, 8th Edition. If your lot backs onto a Melbourne-Tillman canal, the city will not issue a permit that needs temporary access to the canal right-of-way until you have a permit from the Melbourne-Tillman Water Control District.¹¹
• Melbourne and Titusville also permit their own roofs. Melbourne's Building Section uses the city's EnerGov self-service portal, and Titusville's building department keeps a separate roofing permit application.^12,13

Storms that shaped these roofs

• Frances and Jeanne (2004). Frances and Jeanne both landed on Hutchinson Island in September 2004, three weeks apart, south of Brevard. The NWS estimated Frances's storm surge at about 6 feet around Cocoa Beach. During Jeanne, the Melbourne NWS office measured sustained winds of 91 mph, and the eyewall dropped 11 to 13 inches of rain over Brevard.^14,15
• Irma (2017). Irma damaged more than 7,000 homes in Brevard in September 2017, and 450 of them were destroyed or suffered major damage. An EF-2 tornado in Mims caused severe roof damage to numerous homes, and an EF-1 tornado damaged homes and a church on Merritt Island.¹⁶
• Milton (2024). Milton's center moved back over the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral early on Oct. 10, 2024. The Cape Canaveral Skid Strip recorded a 74-mph gust.¹⁷

Klear Sky Roofing is based in Miami-Dade and takes roofing work in Brevard County. We add a city page once we have done work there and have local photos to show. Call to check scheduling for your address.

What this means for a re-roof in Brevard County

How old the houses are. The median home in Brevard County was built in 1988; 70.4% of its 299,305 homes predate 2000 and 10.9% were built in 2010 or later. So most houses here went up before Florida’s first statewide building code took effect on March 1, 2002.^5,18,19,20

Pre-2002 wood-deck houses. When the old covering comes off, the deck gets re-nailed to current code and a secondary water barrier goes on; in the wind-borne debris region, insured homes of $300,000+ may also need roof-to-wall connections (capped at 15% of the re-roof cost).^18,19,20

Repair or replace. Replacing 25% or more of a roof section in 12 months generally means redoing the section to current code — unless that roof was built or replaced under the 2007 code or later.^19,20,21,22

Product approval. This area is outside the HVHZ, so roofing products need Florida Product Approval (an FL number you can look up at floridabuilding.org); a Miami-Dade NOA is not required.^{8,21,23,24,25}

Roof age and insurance. An insurer can’t refuse a policy just because the roof is under 15 years old. If it is 15 or older, you can get an inspection first; at least 5 years of remaining life means age alone isn’t grounds to refuse.²⁶