Does your home have storm damage?

We all know the saying, “April showers bring May flowers.” What we don’t hear is, “April showers can bring powerful hail damage.”  I don’t know about you, but my kids love to see those little pieces of ice dancing and bouncing ice on our driveway.  What they don’t realize, is that those little pieces of hail can also come in larger pieces and cause serious damage to our vehicles and our home.  Often, hail storms will only last for a short period of time or happen intermittently during a storm. Unfortunately, even these little spurts of hail can wreak havoc on a roof, siding, gutters and other areas of your home.

At Benchmark Roofing, our roofing experts will come to your home and perform a free, thorough inspection of your roof.  We can identify hail damage and work directly with your insurance company to handle the claim from beginning to end.  Often, when hail damage is present, we are able to get your entire roof and/or siding replaced at little or no out of pocket expense to you.

Not sure if you have hail damage?  Here are some tips to help identify whether or not your home may have hail damage.

First, you need to consider some other factors that can impact the potential damage caused by hail.  Wind speed and direction during a hailstorm can directly affect the damage or lack of damage caused by hail as it can affect the severity of the impact. The size and density of the hail also determines the amount of damage caused.  Hail can vary in size from as small as a pea to as large as a softball.  Obviously, the size directly impacts the damage that can be caused. Also, hail rarely has smooth edges so the jagged edges also determine the severity of the damage it can produce.

The type of building materials on your home are all designed to absorb hail impact differently.  The impact on aluminum siding versus vinyl siding produces different types of damage.  The age of your roof may also be a factor in the amount of damage sustained in a hailstorm. Obviously, older roofs may not handle the damage as well as a new roof, based on the normal wear and tear that comes with age. Finally, keep in mind that barriers between the direct path of the weather and your home will also affect how much your home is exposed to the storm.  A large tree, a fence or a neighboring house can all act as a barrier from the damaging hail.  Just because the home next to you doesn’t have damage, doesn’t mean your home didn’t sustain a direct hit.

Determining whether your roof has sustained damage from a hailstorm can be a little more difficult than identifying it on other items such as your car, patio furniture, etc.  Knowing what to look for on your roof is important to ensure that your roof continues to stay in the best condition possible to avoid structural deterioration and other issues that may cause leaks.  While your own visual inspection, can be the first step to discovering damage on your roof, if you’re anticipating contacting your insurance company, they will often require the opinion of a professional roofing contractor before they will agree to cover the damage or approve any claim.

What are some signs of damage?  One of the easiest starting points is to examine the metal items associated with your home.  Look at any metal roof vents, flashing, gutters or the metal valleys on your roof.  Do you see any dents?  If so, you likely have hail damage in other areas as well.   Look at the flat areas of your roof as these will be the areas that are most impacted and will often take the most direct hits.  The three (3) major signs of hail damage include bruising, cracking and missing granules.   Examine the shingles carefully and check for missing pieces or areas of exposed black substrate, as this would indicate that the hail has knocked off important components of your shingle.

Search for bruising on the shingles.  Sometimes the dents from hail are not completely visible and you will need to run your hand over the shingle to feel any small dimples in the surface.  If you can press on the dimples and it has some softness, it is likely that the shingle has some type of deterioration likely caused from the impact of the hail.  Remember, depending on the size of the hail, the points of impact and damage can vary drastically from small dimples not noticeable by a visual inspection to obvious cracking and breakage of the shingles on the roof from large, high impact hail.

To summarize, if you can see hail damage on anything surrounding your home, such as your car, patio furniture, chipped paint on trim, dings in gutter systems or cracks or dimpling in siding, depending on whether you have vinyl or aluminum, you likely have sustained additional damage on your roof as well. The tips we provided to you here are suggestions to help you protect yourself and your home from further damage that may result from a hail damaged roof.  If you see anything that you are concerned about, your best course of action is to call a professional roofing contractor to perform a thorough visual inspection of your home.  That’s where we come in!

At Benchmark, we are a preferred vendor with several insurance companies and will work directly with your insurance company to process your claim and get your home back to pre-storm condition.  We offer free inspections and have more than 17 years of experience handling storm damage.  Our roofing teams have more than 50 years of combined expertise and contracting experience.  We’ll take care of your house like it is our home.

If you recently experienced severe weather in your area, call Benchmark today and we’ll inspect your home within 48 hours and contact your insurance company if we find damage that warrants a roofing or siding repair or replacement.  We are storm damage experts!  Contact us today for your free storm damage inspection!