Spring Storm Roof Prep Before Hail Season

A lot of hail disputes come down to one question: was this damage there before the storm? If you can't answer it, the adjuster's guess wins. A baseline is a set of dated photos of each roof slope, the ridge, the vents, the gutter faces, the downspouts and the AC condenser, taken on a clear day before storms start. Your phone handles the ground-level shots fine. Our free inspection adds on-roof photos and a written note of existing wear, which is exactly what you want in a drawer when a May storm comes through and somebody starts calling fresh bruises old granule loss.

Winter leaves gutters packed with leaves, shingle grit and the occasional hanger bent by ice. Clean them out and run a hose through every downspout. There are two reasons. Water that backs up in a hard spring downpour works under the first course of shingles and into the fascia board. And a clean gutter keeps later evidence readable, since a fresh wash of granules after hail means something only if the trough wasn't already half full. Our page on granules in gutters after hail explains what a deposit does and doesn't prove.

Every spring squall line drops limbs, and the ones that cause real damage were usually dead or split the autumn before. Walk the yard and look up. Branches hanging within about ten feet of the roof, limbs with no buds coming, and trunks leaning toward the house all deserve an arborist's visit. A branch resting on the shingles also scrubs granules every time the wind moves it, and an adjuster will later write that off as wear. Trimming costs far less than a deck repair. It's also work a roofer shouldn't be doing, so hire an insured tree service.

A cracked pipe boot, a nail backing out of a ridge cap, a dried bead of sealant around a chimney's counter-flashing. None of them leaks much in February. Add wind-driven rain and they will. Fix them before the season while it's a short service call. We'll also give you the straight version when a roof is near the end of its life. Patching a twenty-two-year-old roof every spring is money better saved toward a replacement, and we won't sell a repair we expect to fail by August. Our guide to hail damage versus normal wear shows how we separate aging from storm damage on the same slope.

Pull out the declarations page and find two lines. The first is how the wind and hail deductible is written. Many Plains-state and western Midwest policies use a percentage of dwelling coverage rather than a flat amount, so a 2 percent deductible on a home insured for $300,000 works out to $6,000, which changes whether a small claim is worth filing at all. The second is whether the roof is settled at replacement cost or actual cash value, because some carriers write older roofs on a depreciated basis. If a claim worries you because of the premium, our page on whether a hail claim raises your rate covers that too.

Keep it short. After any storm loud enough to hear stones on the roof, walk around the house and look at the gutters, downspout elbows, window screens and the top of the AC unit, then photograph what you find with the date showing. Our after-storm checklist covers what's safe to check from the ground. Stay off the roof itself. If something looks off, call 1-800-564-6232 and we'll set up a free inspection. Peak months shift by state, and our hail season by state page shows when your area usually gets hit.

Spring is when some outfits run pre-storm sales on full replacements for roofs with years left in them. We don't. If your roof is sound, the prep visit ends with photos, a short list of small fixes and nothing to sign. That record will matter more than any sales pitch the first time stones start bouncing off the patio.