One storm, several different kinds of damage
A storm is not one thing happening to a roof. Wind lifts, and it lifts hardest at the corners and along the edges, so the first failure is usually a piece of perimeter metal rather than anything in the middle. Hail hits, and what it does depends entirely on what is underneath the membrane at the point of impact. Debris travels, and a branch or a sheet of somebody else’s flashing does damage no forecast would have predicted. Rain arrives faster than the outlets can take it, and water that would normally have drained sits over details that were only ever built to shed it.
Those four things need four different repairs, and they are often all on the same roof after the same night. That is why the survey comes before the number. A crew sent to fix the thing the tenant reported will fix that thing and leave the other three, and you will hear about them one at a time over the following year.
We cover the mechanisms separately: wind damage at the edges and the laps, hail damage to the membrane and to what sits under it, and emergency work when water is coming in now and the permanent repair has to wait.
What we will not do
We will not write storm damage as a finding. It is a cause, not a description, and a report full of it tells you nothing you can act on or hand to anybody else. Each item gets what it is, where it is and what it needs.
We will not quote the repair before we have walked the whole roof. The reported leak is one item. On a roof that has just taken a storm it is rarely the only one, and pricing it alone produces a number that goes up twice.
And we will not tell you the storm caused something we believe was already failing. That distinction costs us work sometimes. It is still the one thing in the report that has to be right.
When the call comes
The night it happens, when water is in the building. A week later, once the weather has passed and somebody has finally been up with a phone. And a month later, when a stain appears in a part of the building nobody connected to the storm at all, which is the expensive version, because the board under it has been wet since the night it happened.
If the building is dry and nothing is visibly wrong, a post storm survey is still worth booking while the date is recent and the evidence is intact.
Common questions
How soon after a storm should the roof be looked at?
As soon as it is safe to be up there, and before the next rain if that can be managed. Most storm damage is cheap on the day and expensive by the end of the month.
- An opened lap lets water in every time it rains until somebody closes it
- Wet board spreads sideways, so the repair area grows week by week
- Debris left in the outlets turns ordinary rain into standing water
- Evidence is clearest before anything is cleared or trampled
If nothing is leaking, this is a survey rather than an emergency and it can be booked for a dry day. The mistake is reading no leak as no damage. A roof can be open at the perimeter, or crushed under an intact membrane, and give you nothing at all to see from the floor below.
How do you tell storm damage from wear that was already there?
By what the damage looks like and where it sits. Weather and age fail a roof in different patterns, and the difference is usually plain on the roof even when it is invisible in a photograph.
- Storm damage is sudden, directional and clustered on one elevation
- Wear is even and gradual, and worst where the sun and the water always were
- A fresh tear has clean edges and clean material under it
- An old split is dirty inside and the board beneath it is already wet
We write both into the report and keep them apart, because mixing them helps nobody. Where a finding is genuinely uncertain we say so rather than pick the answer that suits the invoice. If the damage looks like a matter for your insurer, what helps is a dated record of what was found and where, and a conversation with your carrier.
Should we clear storm debris off the roof ourselves?
Clear an outlet if you can reach it safely from a hatch, and leave the rest. Much of the harm done after a storm is done by people walking a roof they cannot read.
- Standing water hides openings, soft board and a deck that may not carry weight
- Dragging sheet metal or branches across a membrane cuts it
- Gravel underfoot grinds into the sheet on a ballasted roof
- Moving debris before it is photographed loses the record of what hit the roof
If water is backing up and the outlet is within reach of a safe standing position, clear it, and photograph it first. Anything that needs somebody out on the field of the roof is worth waiting for a crew with fall protection and a way of telling a sound area from a soft one.
What should we photograph after a storm, and when?
On the day, before anything is cleaned up, and photograph the ordinary as well as the dramatic.
- The date and the weather, written down while you still remember them
- Interior water, damaged stock and the ceiling, before anyone mops
- Anything visible from the ground: displaced metal, debris, a unit that has moved
- Soft metal on the roof, which records an impact better than a membrane does
Wide shots first so a later reader can place the close ones, then the close ones. Keep them with the invoice for any emergency work, because holding the water out is normally expected of an owner. If this is heading toward a claim, tell your carrier early and let them say what they need rather than deciding it for them.
Is storm damage repaired, or does it mean a new roof?
Usually repaired. A storm damages a roof in places, and a roof is replaced because of its condition overall, which is a separate question the storm did not change.
- Isolated tears, lifted flashings and punctures are repair work
- A perimeter released along a whole elevation is larger, and still repair
- Wet board across a wide area is the finding that changes the answer
- A membrane already brittle will not take a patch, storm or no storm
The honest version is two answers in one report: what the storm did and what it costs to put right, and what condition the roof is in apart from that. Owners are often told the two are the same thing. They are not, and separating them is what lets you decide between the repair and a budget for replacement.