Determine Your Loss

The critical first step is to determine the extent of your loss. In many cases you may not know what to look for as some of the most costly repairs often result from damage that is not apparent. Our trained specialists can assist with determining the extent of your loss. Most insurance companies require a certain amount of damage to qualify for replacement or repair. Knowing what these requirements are, and understanding the way the insurance company works set us apart from most other companies.

In most cases your roof is the most costly of the repairs to your home after a Hail storm.

Damage cannot be seen from the ground!

Just because you don’t have a leak doesn’t mean you don’t have damage. This is a major misconception. The insurance owes for the roofing not because it has put holes through the shingle but because you have a shingle or product that has been damaged and instead of having a shingle with a 25/30 year life it now has been reduced considerably. Sometimes the roof will fail in only 2 to 3 years.

The first step to determine the loss is to document all damages.

At H & R we do a complete evaluation of the property including taking photos, and video of the roof, siding, gutter, all elevations, and personal property that has been damaged from the storm. Most insurance and engineering companies allow a test square on the roof and this determines the amount of damage and if the roof is repairable or if replacement is warranted. The test square is a 10ftx10ft area and then the number of Hail hits is then marked in the test area. The general rule is if there is more than 6-8 hits in the test areas then the slope is figured for replacement.

Many factors play into how much damage a roof has:

• Age of the roof
• Direction the storm came from and the way the roof slope faces
• Trees and other buildings that may block or slow down the hail prior to impact
• How Steep the Roof is
• Type of shingle and thickness of the shingle
• Density and size of the hail
• Wind speed also plays a factor in the damaged caused as well in general it take hail that is 1.75 to 2” to cause any significant damage but if very high wind is associated with the hail then damage can occur.