Repair
Storm Damage
How much of the seal is gone?
Missing shingles are the part you can see. What decides the job is how far the broken bond runs past them, and that has to be checked by hand.
Not what you are looking at? Hail Damage, Metal Roofing.
Right now
What to do before anybody arrives.
Move what you can out from under the water and put something down to catch it. Do not go up on a wet or damaged roof to look — that is the part that injures people, and it can wait for somebody with the equipment.
What you are seeing
Wind lifts before it tears.
Most wind damage isn't a missing shingle. It's a seal broken at the tab, which leaves the shingle lying where it was and no longer holding anything down. The next storm is the one that takes it.
- Shingles lying flat but no longer bonded — they lift by hand at the tab
- Damage running along one rake or edge rather than scattered across the plane
- Ridge cap displaced, which is usually the first thing to move
- Impact marks from debris, which is a different failure from uplift
- Drip edge, fascia or gutter pulled loose at one corner
How the roof gets read
Elevation by elevation, with the wind direction in mind.
Wind damage has a direction, and working out which way the system came through decides which slopes get looked at hardest. It's also what separates this storm's damage from the one before it.
- 01The windward elevations first, then the leeward ones for debris
- 02Every tab along the rakes and eaves checked for bond, not only the visible gaps
- 03Ridge and hip lines, where uplift concentrates
- 04Penetrations and flashings that may have been levered rather than lifted
The work itself
What Storm Damage involves.
Assessment and documentation of wind and hail damage, photographed and written up while the evidence is still on the roof.
Patch the run, or replace the plane
Wind damage is decided by how much of the seal is left.
Replacing the tabs that blew off and leaving the ones beside them unbonded is a repair that lasts until the next system comes through. What matters is how far the broken seal runs, not how many shingles are actually missing.
- Loss confined to a rake or a ridge line with the field still bonded
- Shingles available that match the existing run closely enough
- A covering with enough life left that a repair buys real years
When the slope has finished.
An aged covering that has lost its seal across a plane won't re-bond. Every storm after this one takes a little more, and the repairs start arriving annually.
- Tabs lifting by hand across the whole elevation rather than in one run
- A roof that has already been repaired after a previous storm
- Underlayment exposed over an area, or deck visible anywhere
What you are left with
Written up while the evidence is still on the roof.
Wind damage gets tidied away fast — by the next rain, by a neighbor, by whoever puts a cover on. The record of what was actually there is made before any of that, and where a temporary cover goes on, what it covered is photographed underneath it first.
The next step
Get it recorded before it's tidied away.
The next rain, a helpful neighbor and whoever puts a cover on will all remove some of it. What's on the roof now is the only version anybody can document.
Cedar Park · Lakeway · Leander