How important is a permit for a Chicago roof deck replacement?

Post date: 2021-07-30 02:00:25

We're about to replace the flat roof on our Chicago home, and we'll need to remove and replace the roof deck in order to get access to it. The roof replacement is urgent, but the deck replacement requires a long, complex, and expensive permitting process. Would it be a bad idea to just go ahead and do the work without a permit?

Some details: the existing roof and deck date from the late 1990s. We'd either replace the deck on its existing footprint, or expand it a bit to cover more of the roof. We think we'd likely need to replace the deck right away, at the same time as doing the roof, since Chicago building code requires much more stringent load ratings for a "new" rather than "replacement" deck for buildings as old as ours — we're worried that if we take the deck off and don't immediately replace it we'll wind up unable to replace it at all.

The contractor we've found (who'd handle both the roofing and deck work) would be happy to go ahead without a permit, and says that getting a deck permit for a building of our age would be "a huge can of worms" since building codes have changed since it was first constructed. He says we'd need to hire a structural engineer, potentially get holes cut in our roof or ceilings to inspect the interior construction of the roof, and then go through a long bureaucratic process to get approval before the work could begin.

We're trying to figure out what the potential risks are of doing the work without a permit. We aren't especially concerned about the actual structural integrity of the roof — it already has a deck on it, after all. But how likely is it that we'd get some kind of surprise inspection from the city, and what kind of headaches would that bring? And are there complications we might not be considering about having unpermitted work done that might come back to bite us? Or is this basically just red tape that most people ignore?

We'd ordinarily be wary of doing the work without a permit, but we also have a leaky roof that urgently needs fixing before the winter comes. How much of a risk would we be taking if we just skipped the permitting?

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