Roofing and Gutters in Plainfield, and We Are Two and a Half Miles Away

Most roofing companies working in Plainfield are driving in from somewhere else. We are not, and being this close does three practical things for you.

It means we can come and look at a leak while it is still a small leak. It means that when a crew opens up a roof and finds something underneath that changes the job, somebody can go and get the material and be back the same morning instead of losing a day. And it means the tear off, the dumpster and the clean up all happen inside a short round trip of our own yard, which is the part homeowners actually notice.

One thing worth clearing up, because it catches out people who are new to the area. Plainfield and South Plainfield are two separate municipalities in two different counties. Plainfield is a city in Union County. South Plainfield is a borough in Middlesex County. They share a border and half a name and almost nothing else, including their building departments. Our office is in the Middlesex one. Your house is in the Union one.

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.

Plainfield has nine or ten locally designated residential historic districts, which is a lot for a city its size. The largest is the Van Wyck Brooks district: 152 properties, designated locally in 1982 and added to the National Register in 1986. Most of what stands in it went up between about 1875 and 1925, and the styles listed on the district survey read like a catalogue. Italianate. Second Empire. Victorian Gothic. Stick. Queen Anne. Shingle. Colonial Revival. Tudor Revival.

Those are not simple roofs, and the difference is not decorative.

A Second Empire house has a mansard, which is a roof so steep that the lower slope is nearly a wall. It needs different flashing detail and different fall protection than a ranch does, and the shingle that is right on a 5-in-12 pitch is often wrong on a mansard. A Queen Anne brings turrets, dormers and a lot of valleys. A valley is where two roof planes meet, and it is where the water from both of them gets funnelled into one narrow line. Valleys are where old roofs leak first. So is the flashing round a chimney, and a house from that era usually has more than one chimney.

None of that makes an old Plainfield roof a problem. It means the estimate has to be built from looking at the actual roof rather than from a square footage number off a listing, and it means a crew that has only ever done post-war ranches will be slower on your house and more likely to miss something.

Plainfield runs a Historic Preservation Commission and the city publishes maps of the designated districts on its own website. If your property sits inside one, what you are allowed to put back on the outside of the house may not be the same as what is on there now.

We do not guess at that, and you should be careful with any contractor who tells you it will be fine without checking. Before we quote a job inside one of the districts, we ask you to confirm your own address against the city's map and, if you are inside, to speak to the commission about what is permitted. It costs you one phone call and it can save you an entire roof.

The maps are on plainfieldnj.gov under Historic Preservation Commission. Checked August 2026.

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.

Plainfield's Building and Construction Division is at 508 Watchung Ave, and the number is 908.226.2665. They are the authority on your particular job. This page is not, and neither is any roofer.

We pull permits ourselves on the jobs that need them, so if you are not sure which side of that line your roof falls on, ask us and we will tell you straight. Checked August 2026. Fees and rules change, and the city is the authority.

On a house from the 1890s, the gutter almost never is the original. It has been replaced two or three times over the last century, and somewhere in there somebody fitted a size that does not match what the roof actually sheds.

Seamless aluminium gutter is formed on site to the exact length of the run, so it has no joints in the middle to pull apart. That matters more on a long Victorian eave than it does on a short modern one. And where a roof carries a lot of valleys, all that water arrives at one or two points rather than spread evenly along the front of the house. A five inch gutter on a run that needed six will overflow at exactly that point every time it rains hard.

Here is the part people miss. That shows up as a damp basement corner or a stain on the foundation, not as a gutter problem, which is why it goes undiagnosed for years while somebody keeps sealing the wrong thing.

Do I need approval from the Historic Preservation Commission before I replace my roof?

We cannot answer that for your address, and neither can any other contractor. Plainfield publishes maps of its designated districts. Check whether your property is inside one, then call the commission. If you are outside every district, none of this applies to you.

Is South Plainfield the same place as Plainfield?

No. Plainfield is a city in Union County. South Plainfield is a borough in Middlesex County. Separate governments, separate building departments, separate codes officials. A&J started in South Plainfield and now runs from Edison, which is why we are close to both of them.

Do I need a permit to replace my roof?

Usually not, if it is a detached one or two family house and only the roof covering is being replaced. If the sheathing under the shingles has to come off, yes. The Building and Construction Division on Watchung Ave decides, and we pull the permit when one is needed.

How quickly can you get out to look at it?

We are about two and a half miles away, which is the shortest run we make to any town we serve. We will not promise you a same-day slot on a web page, but distance is not what will hold it up.

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

Yes, and on an older Plainfield house it is usually the cheaper way round, because one set-up, one crew and one clean up covers all three instead of paying for that three times.

Westfield is a short run east of you, and Edison is south of the yard. 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 Pro Roofers, 1163 Inman Ave Ste 101, Edison NJ 08820. Call (908) 432-7081.