Hail Damage Roof Inspection

The reason hail inspection is a distinct job, rather than something you can settle by walking your yard, is that the damage hail does to asphalt shingles is nearly invisible at a distance.

A hailstone does not usually punch through a shingle. It compresses the fiberglass mat underneath the surface and knocks the protective granules loose. What is left is a round spot, slightly darker, that feels soft when you press it, similar to a bruise on fruit. From the driveway, and often from a ladder at the eave, that reads as a normal weathered roof. The roof does not leak. Nothing looks wrong.

What has actually happened is that the shingle's protective layer is gone in those spots, so the asphalt underneath now ages under direct ultraviolet exposure. The roof does not fail that week. It fails years early. By then, tying the failure to a specific storm is difficult and the window your policy allows for reporting that loss may have closed.

That gap between when the damage happens and when it becomes visible is the entire argument for inspecting after a storm rather than waiting for a symptom.

There is a defensible method here, and it matters because an inspection that is just someone's opinion is worth very little to you or to an adjuster.

You get a record, and it is yours regardless of what you do next.

That means dated photographs, wide enough to establish the property and close enough to show the damage, covering every slope and the soft metal. It means the test square locations and counts. It means notes on where the damage sits, what type it is, and how it compares to undamaged sections of the same roof. If a repair or replacement is warranted, it means an itemized written estimate.

If you decide to open a claim, that package is what you bring to it. Our roof insurance claim documentation page explains where the legal line sits: in Texas a contractor who is also contracted to do the repair may not act as a public adjuster on the claim, so we document and we build, and we do not file or negotiate.

An inspection is a diagnostic step, and it has three possible endings.

Sometimes the honest answer is that your roof was not damaged, or that what you are seeing is age rather than hail. That is a real outcome and we will say so plainly.

Sometimes the damage is localized to one slope at low density, and that is a repair. Our hail damage roof repair page covers what that involves.

Sometimes bruising shows up across multiple slopes at meaningful density, and at that point the whole surface has been aged rather than a part of it damaged. Patching a roof whose granule layer has been knocked loose across the board buys very little, and roof replacement is the honest recommendation. If you are replacing anyway, impact resistant shingles are worth discussing, since many Texas carriers discount premiums for Class 4 products.

If the storm brought wind as well, which it usually does here, our wind damage roof repair and storm damage roof repair pages cover that side. For a general condition assessment unrelated to a storm, see roof inspection.

ROYH Build Co is GAF Platinum and Atlas Platinum certified, licensed and insured, and works across Montgomery County and Harris County.