Roofing in Knoxville, TN
Updated Sep 20267 sources
Looking for a roofer in Knoxville?
Tell us about your roof — we'll match you with local pros.
Free · No obligation · 2 minutes
Key numbers for Knoxville
A plain guide to replacing a roof in the Knoxville, TN Metro Area area: what it costs, whether a tear-off needs a permit, what the local weather does to a roof, and how insurance treats a claim. Every figure links to its source.
What drives roofing work here
Newer housing and the cheapest labour in this corpus. The median home was built in 1986 and only 6.2% of stock predates 1940, so most roofs here are on their first or second covering. Roofer wages are the lowest of any metro covered, which shows up directly in installed price because labour is the larger half of an asphalt re-roof.
Highlights
- What the regional price index actually measures SOURCED
- BEA Regional Price Parity (all-items cost-of-living index; 100 = national average), not a construction-specific index. Knoxville, TN Metro Area scored 92.569 in 2024, the latest observation. Applied only as a labelled general-cost proxy - it measures the whole basket a household buys, not the price of a square of shingles. fred.stlouisfed.org
- Dominant era of housing stock SOURCED
- 1990s is the largest single vintage bucket at 15.7% of the metro's 418,905 housing units (ACS 2024 5-year, table B25034). api.censusreporter.org
- Licensing authority SOURCED
- Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors, Department of Commerce and Insurance. Roofing is classification BC-21. tn.gov
- Whether a roofing-specific license is required SOURCED
- Above $25,000, yes. Tennessee requires a contractor's licence when the roofing portion of a project is $25,000 or more, under the BC-21 (roofing) classification - a rule that has applied since 1 January 2014. Contractors holding BC, BC-A (residential roofing), BC-B or BC-C classifications may also perform roofing. Below that figure the state licence is not triggered. tn.gov
- Adopted building code edition SOURCED
- Tennessee Residential Code 2018, which adopts the IRC 2018 with state amendments. The adopted edition sets the reroofing rules a tear-off has to meet, so it is not carried across from a neighbouring state. up.codes
- Typical weather-driven scheduling constraint SOURCED
- No month here has a normal daily high below 40F (NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 daily normals at McGhee Tyson Airport), so the cold-weather sealing constraint that governs cold-climate re-roof scheduling does not apply. What delays work in this metro is rain rather than cold - shingles cannot be laid on a wet deck. ncei.noaa.gov
- Peak roofing season locally SOURCED
- Every month has a normal daily high of 40F or above at McGhee Tyson Airport (NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 daily normals), so unlike a cold-climate metro there is no season in which asphalt simply cannot be sealed. Work is year-round, and demand spikes follow storms rather than the calendar. ncei.noaa.gov
- Average annual snowfall in inches SOURCED
- 4.6 inches per year on average, measured at McGhee Tyson Airport (NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 Monthly Climate Normals). ncei.noaa.gov
- Average annual freeze-thaw cycles SOURCED
- About 49 freeze-thaw days a year at McGhee Tyson Airport. Counted from NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 daily climate normals as the number of days in a normal year whose normal low is below 32F and normal high is above it — a day the roof surface crosses freezing in both directions. It is a climatology, not a tally of observed events. Freeze-thaw is the quieter half of cold-climate roof wear: it is the repetition rather than the depth of cold that does the damage. ncei.noaa.gov
Sources
Tell us about your Knoxville roof
We'll match you with local roofing contractors — and tell you what you should be paying before anyone quotes you.
Or estimate the job first — 2 minutes