Roofing in Bridgewater: The Township Already Tells You When You Need a Permit

Bridgewater's Department of Code Enforcement states it plainly:

> "Permit required for commercial properties and for residential projects when roof sheathing is being > replaced."

That is the whole rule in one line, and it is more than most New Jersey townships put in writing.

Under New Jersey's construction code, replacing the roof covering on a detached one or two family home is treated as ordinary maintenance, which means no construction permit is required. That changes the moment sheathing, rafters or anything structural gets replaced. Then it is no longer ordinary maintenance and a permit is required.

So in practice, for a normal Bridgewater house: strip the old shingles, put new shingles on, no permit. Find rot in the plywood underneath and replace it, permit. And that decision does not get made from the driveway. It gets made when the old roof is off and somebody can see the deck.

That is worth knowing before you take a quote, because a price that assumes zero rot is not the same product as a price that tells you what happens if there is some. We write the second kind.

The office is Code Enforcement at 100 Commons Way, on (908) 725-6300 extension 5560, and that office is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 4:30. They are the authority on your job. Checked August 2026, and rules and fees do change.

We do three things to the outside of a house: the roof, the siding and the gutters. Doing them together means one crew, one schedule and one company answerable for the whole exterior instead of three companies blaming each other.

Bridgewater is a big township and most of its houses are younger than the county seat next door. Green Knoll, Bradley Gardens and Martinsville filled in with ranches and split levels through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and the township's own master plan describes the western side as extensive postwar suburban development along the Route 22 and 202 corridors.

Houses of that generation are straightforward to roof and they fail in predictable places.

Where the low roof meets a tall wall. On a split level, an upper roof plane usually runs down and dies into the side wall of the taller half of the house. That junction needs step flashing tucked under the siding and a kick-out at the bottom to throw the water clear into the gutter. When the kick-out is missing, and on houses of this age it very often is, the water runs down inside the wall instead. You find out through a stain on an interior corner, sometimes years later.

Where the upper roof empties onto the lower roof. Split levels do this constantly. All the water off the top section lands on a small section of the lower one, and that patch wears out long before the rest of the roof does. It is not a defect, it is geometry, and it is fixable with the right underlayment and a diverter rather than by replacing the whole roof early.

The shallow pitch over the garage or the porch. Ranches from this era often carry a much flatter section over an attached garage or a rear addition. Below a certain slope, standard shingles are the wrong product and the section needs a membrane instead. Plenty of Bridgewater roofs have shingles on a slope that never should have had them.

A roof does not flood. But the water a roof sheds has to go somewhere, and on the low, riverside part of Bridgewater that somewhere is often ground that is already holding water.

In September 2021 the remnants of Hurricane Ida put record levels of the Raritan through this part of Somerset County, and Manville, Bound Brook and low-lying Bridgewater took the worst of it. Anyone who lived through that in this township does not need a roofer to explain drainage to them.

What it changes about a roofing job here is the back half of the work. Gutter size, downspout count, and above all where the downspouts discharge. A correctly sized gutter that dumps four hundred square feet of roof water two feet from the foundation is doing damage politely. On the low side of Bridgewater we would rather run the discharge further out and add a downspout than fit a bigger gutter and call it solved.

Our yard is at 1163 Inman Ave in Edison. To the middle of Bridgewater is about fifteen miles and roughly twenty five minutes, most of it on Route 287.

Bridgewater is large enough that the number depends heavily on where you are. The eastern end near Bound Brook is a good deal closer to us than Martinsville up in the north west. What that means in practice is that we schedule Bridgewater as a full day rather than as a drop-in, and we would rather tell you that than pretend we are round the corner.

Does Bridgewater require a permit for a new roof?

Only when the sheathing is being replaced, or when the building is commercial. That is the township's own published wording, and it matches the state rule. Code Enforcement at 100 Commons Way is the authority on your particular job.

My split level has an upper roof that drains onto a lower roof. Is that a problem?

It is normal, and it is the spot to watch. That lower section takes the water from both roofs, so it ages faster than everything around it. When we quote a split level we price that section on its own condition rather than averaging it in with the rest.

What happens if you find rotten plywood once the old roof is off?

We stop, show you, and price the replacement before we carry on. It also moves the job into permit territory in Bridgewater, which we handle. What we will not do is cover bad decking and say nothing, which is the single most common thing we get called out to fix.

How far away are you?

About fifteen miles from our Edison office to the middle of the township, mostly on Route 287. The eastern end of Bridgewater is closer than that and the Martinsville end is further.

Can you do the gutters and the siding at the same time?

Yes, and on a house near the low side of the township the gutters are worth doing in the same visit regardless, because that is when the discharge points can actually be moved.

Somerville sits right next to you and Warren is over the hill to the east. Both have their own page.

Book an estimate and somebody comes out, gets on the roof, and writes down what is actually up there. You get the price in writing before you decide anything, and the visit costs you nothing either way.

A&J Professional Services, 1163 Inman Ave Ste 101, Edison NJ 08820. Call (908) 432-7081.