Does Your Roof Have Hail Damage? Here’s How to Tell..
As a home or business building owner, there are a number of different events which can cause sudden damage to your property, caused by nothing more than acts of nature. While there are many things which could cause damage to your property: fallen trees, high-force winds, tornadoes, and so on, one of the most common and disheartening problems which the weather can cause is hail damage.
Hail damage is not easily preventable. It only takes one hailstorm with hailstones of decent size to cause substantial damage to a roof. A hail damaged roof can mean anything from simple nicks and depressions in the shingles to leak-causing perforations in the boards of the roof itself. It is therefore important to assess and repair roof damage as quickly as possible, in order to avoid further damage to your property. If you have recently endured a hailstorm in your area, though, how do you know whether the hail damaged your roof? How do you identify hail damage?
If it’s not too late, check out your non-damaged roof prior to Spring showers.
Identifying hail damage can be fairly straightforward, given the right frame of reference. One of the most efficient ways to identify any new damage to a roof is to be familiar with the roof as it existed prior to the damage. If, for example, a homeowner knows that their roof is in excellent condition, and a hailstorm hits, then they have a great frame of reference for identifying the specific damage the hail had done. Of course, perhaps there is a roof that is damaged already. In this case, identifying hail damage requires just a bit more work.
Hail Damages Shingles
Hail Damage Spots
Identifying hail damage from above.
Before beginning, consider having someone evaluate the damage for you if any of the following apply. Since examining a roof for hail damage requires climbing a ladder and may even require walking the rooftop, it is not recommended to proceed on your own if you are not comfortable with heights or have other reservations about ladders or roofs. If this does not describe you, climb a ladder set near the site of the suspected section of hail damaged roof. This allows you to view the damage from above, which will allow you to identify the nicks a bit more clearly.
Look for spots or speckled areas.
In identifying hail damage, look for patches of potential damage to the roof that have a “spotted” or “speckled” look. From afar, hail damage looks a little like the roof has suddenly developed spots. However, because this same look can also be achieved by sparse water without causing damage to the roof, it is important to take a closer look in order to identify the damage properly. Up close, a hail damaged roof has several round spots depressed into the shingles, and some shingles may even be broken off at the end, depending on the specific roofing materials used.
Roof damage can lead to further damage to your property if left unattended. If, on closer inspection, you suspect that your roof has suffered from hail damage, don’t wait: call the professional roofing contractors at ARC Contracting for a free roof inspection and to repair the storm damage today.
ARC Contracting proudly serves the following cities and their surrounding areas: Madison, Brookfield, Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Green Bay, Neenah, Appleton, Stevens Point, Algoma, and more Northeast Wisconsin cities.
