Sussex County is the highest, coldest and most wooded part of New Jersey — steep-pitch roofs, real snow load, lake-community cottages and long driveways that shape every job.
Sussex is roofing at the extreme end of New Jersey's climate. It gets the most snow in the state, the coldest sustained temperatures, and it sits under dense forest across the Kittatinny ridge and the highlands. Roofs here are designed steeper for a reason, and the details that matter are the winter details: eave protection, ventilation balance, valley capacity and fastening that holds through freeze-thaw cycling.
The housing is unusual too. Alongside conventional colonials and ranches you get a large stock of lake-community homes — Lake Mohawk, Highland Lakes, Lake Hopatcong's Sussex shoreline — many of them originally seasonal cottages that were winterised over the decades. Winterised cottages are notorious for undersized ventilation and for additions built onto additions, and both show up as roof problems.
Access is a practical factor here in a way it is not in the rest of the state: long unpaved driveways, steep grades and tight tree lines affect delivery, staging and debris removal, and an estimate that ignores that is not a real estimate.
The Sussex County building stock we work on
Steep-pitch roofs built for the state's heaviest snow load
Lake-community stock (Lake Mohawk, Highland Lakes, Sussex shoreline of Lake Hopatcong) — often winterised seasonal cottages
Additions built onto additions, creating stacked tie-ins and mixed roof planes
Long, steep and often unpaved driveways affecting staging and debris removal
Roof problems we find most often in Sussex County
Ice damming and eave rot
The dominant Sussex problem. Repeated melt-refreeze cycles push water back under the shingles and rot the eave and fascia over years, not weeks.
Winterised-cottage ventilation
Seasonal homes converted for year-round use often have no intake ventilation at all. Condensation on the underside of the sheathing gets misread as a leak.
Moss and organic growth
Deep shade plus humidity grows moss that lifts shingle edges and holds water. Pressure washing destroys the shingle; correct treatment and ventilation do not.
Snow-load stress at valleys and additions
Snow slides and accumulates where planes meet. Those transitions need capacity and proper membrane, not a shingle-woven shortcut.
Communities we cover in Sussex County
Each community below has its own page with local detail. City pages keep their original addresses from the current Done Rite site — this county hub adds hierarchy without moving a single existing URL.
Permits are issued by each Sussex municipality. Lake community associations may also have their own approval process for visible exterior changes, which is worth confirming alongside the municipal permit.
Warranty, licensing and credentials
Done Rite Roofers is a GAF Certified roofing contractor licensed in New Jersey (HIC #13VH12674100), Pennsylvania (#PA192943) and Connecticut (#HIC.0698708), carrying $2 million in insurance plus bond. Workmanship in Sussex County is backed by our 25-year workmanship warranty, alongside the manufacturer's separate material coverage.
Reviewed by
Technical accuracy of this page is reviewed by Done Rite's lead roofing estimator, based on ten years of roof repair and replacement work across New Jersey.
Answers
Sussex County roofing questions
Coverage
Explore our North New Jersey coverage
Tap any county to open its roofing page, and tap a city marker where we have a dedicated community page. Boundaries are real county lines, and every county shown has a live page on this site.
Bergen County is home base — the Done Rite office is in Garfield. Local housing stock is dominated by pre-war and post-war homes carrying multiple shingle layers, with rear additions creating pitched-to-flat transitions.
Every county and community listed here has its own page on this site. Duplicate legacy URLs are kept reachable but deliberately left out of this index.
Real projects
Recent New Jersey roof projects
A look at recent New Jersey roofs we have worked on: the town, the roof system, the problem the homeowner called about and how we solved it.
Ventnor City, NJ · Atlantic County
Architectural asphalt full replacement
Problem
Recurring second-floor ceiling stain traced to failed original chimney counter-flashing on an early-1900s barrier-island home, with two existing shingle layers and soft decking at the north valley.
Solution
Full tear-off of both layers, decking replacement at the valley, ice-and-water shield at eaves and valleys, rebuilt chimney step and counter flashing, new open metal valley, balanced soffit intake with ridge exhaust.
Ponding water on a row-home roof with a clogged interior drain and shrunken seams at the parapet termination, leaking into the top-floor rear bedroom.
Solution
Tear-off to deck, tapered insulation to re-establish slope toward the drain, heat-welded TPO membrane, new drain assembly and clamping ring, fully terminated and coped parapet.
Storm-torn shingles across the rear slope of a two-family with active water entering the second-floor hallway during a nor'easter.
Solution
Same-visit tarping and water diversion, photo documentation for the insurance claim, then permanent slope repair with new underlayment, matched shingle courses and replaced pipe boots.
