First Choice Roofing believes that your home is your haven. A sanctuary for your house, your families, your memories, and the material items that are valuable to you. Our objective is to ensure that these sentimental items are protected from the shortcomings of a damaged roof.
Did you know a simple hail or wind storm can cause damage to your roof?
As GAF Certified Storm Inspectors, First Choice roofing can do an inspection to look for damages on your roof caused by the weather. Finding hail or wind damage does not mean that your roof is compromised. It does infer that further down the road, those damages can cause strenuous problems to the interior of your home and even your belongings.
Multiple factors go into consideration when assessing hail damage to a roof and its surroundings, such as hail size, hail density, hail shape, velocity, and direction. Our job is to decipher whether the hail damage is cosmetic or functional. Cosmetic hail impacts are visible but do not affect the integrity of the roof. On the other hand, functional damage caused by hail is more urgent, affecting the integrity and the longevity of your roof.
Upon an inspection, our storm inspectors will walk the property with you, looking for storm-related damages that may have affected areas on the ground level, such as windscreens, downspouts, siding, and garage doors. Following, we will get on your roof and examine the top domain: shingles, gutters, soft metals, and other vulnerable areas susceptible to environmental happenings.
Wind-induced damage can look like blown-off shingles or creased shingles that flap in the wind. Roofs that house a three-tab shingle are most likely to have this issue. This type of shingle lays flat on the roof and is more susceptible to wind speeds that exceed 50 mph.
To understand how hail can damage a shingle, you must first know the makeup of a shingle. The base component of an asphalt shingle is a membrane composed of fiberglass that maintains the structure of the shingle and is covered by layers of asphalt that gives the membrane its impermeability. The next layer consists of a thicker coating of asphalt that provides the membrane flexibility and protects the membrane from harsh weather. The top surface is covered in granules, where the shingle color is visible, and those granules make the shingle resistant to the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
North Carolina may not bring softball-size hail, but we do get hail ranging from the size of a quarter to a golf ball. How do these “bigger” problems develop? Hail impacts, at high speeds, knock the asphalt granules off your shingle, essentially leaving the other components underneath unprotected from weather and the South’s intense sunshine. Exposure like this can eventually lead to a melted membrane and exposure to your home, which is where those heinous interior leaks problems begin.
There are solutions to this as a homeowner, always take the safe route and have your roof inspected after every storm in order to preserve the integrity of your roof and home, giving you a little peace of mind.
Bailey Morris is the Project Manager for her family's company 1st Choice Roofing, USA. She's an avid community liaison, an ambassador with the Morrisville Chamber of Commerce, and a member of National Women in Roofing - Raleigh. In her free time, you will find Bailey working out at the gym, indulging in coffee, hanging out with family and friends, and enjoying time with her puppies.
