A hailstorm can cause serious damage to a roof.
- A hailstone’s impact can bruise or crack roofing shingles, causing water damage to your home.
You can’t always avoid roof damage from hail, but you can minimize the extent of damage by detecting problems early, repairing or replacing your damaged roof as soon as possible, and installing Class 4, impact-resistant roofing shingles. Plants stripped of their leaves, dents in cars, damaged AC units, and other evidence of hail damage can be found around your yard and property. In order to inspect the roof completely, you’ll need to get as close to the surface as possible. Roof surface damage is the first type of damage you should look for. There may be small divots, round black areas, bruises, or lost protective granules on an asphalt shingle roof. Not all hail damage can be seen on the surface of a roofing shingle. If you look at the backside of roof shingles, you can sometimes see splits caused by hailstone impacts. When performing this type of inspection, it’s best to contact a roofing contractor who can lift up, examine, and reseal shingles. Roofing contractors will also inspect other roofing components, such as flashing, roof vents, skylights, gutters, and chimney caps. To implement the best action plan, it’s important to identify the type of roof damage, which may involve a warranty claim or insurance claim. Roofing professionals should be able to distinguish hail damage from other types of roof damage, such as blistering and cracking, scuffing, wind and debris damage, and worn shingles. It can be difficult to understand whether hail damage is only cosmetic or if it affects the roof’s performance. Water passing through your roofing system due to hail damage is a performance issue that needs to be resolved as soon as possible.