Allen TX properties will soon face the storm season. Aside from heavy rains and snow, they face the biggest nightmare of any homeowner: hailstorms. If you’ve got insurance, you’ll need a hail damage inspection checklist.

Hailstones can be as large as softballs or as small as bird feed pellets. Additionally, they travel in varying velocities. If your roof exposes itself directly to the clear path of a hailstone, you can expect bruises or even massive damages to your roof material.

No one can do anything to minimize the roof damages during a hailstorm. However, you can prevent further damages from happening if you know how to do hail damage inspection.

In this post, we’ll answer questions like:

  • What’s the common appearance of hail damage on your roof and the different parts of your home?
  • If I have insurance, what can I do to maximize and save my roof and property from further damages?
hailstones piled up near property gate

Hailstones can be baseball-sized or pellet-sized. However, they will still do detrimental damage to your roof.

Hail Damage Inspection Checklist: Signs To Look For

Roofing Material Bruises and Cracks

Once the storm clears, you can begin creating your hail damage inspection checklist.

The first step to take is to get a ladder and carefully walk through your roof. Before doing so, grab a chalk to help you mark any bruises and cracks you find.

You’ll find these types of damages if you are using the following roofing materials:

  • Slate
  • Asphalt shingle
  • Clay tiles
  • Wood shakes and shingles

Bruises do not appear clear to the naked eye. You may notice a portion of your roofing material bunched up in some areas. By shading the area with chalk, you’ll find the bruise as a soft spot compared to the rest of the roof material.

In addition, you can find cracks by drawing your chalk along the affected areas. Make a record of these in your hail damage inspection checklist.

If you have a flat-roofed property, you can conduct inspections without using a ladder. This is one of the many advantages of flat roofs.

Dented Gutters and Downspouts

Next up in your hail damage inspection checklist, look carefully at your gutter. You can do this by placing the ladder on one side of your property and going up in each side to look at the top, bottom, and sides of your system. In this way, you avoid accidents by peering from the edge on top of your roof.

Look for possible impact damages. By bringing your trusty chalk, you can encircle the large visible impacts on your gutter and mark it on your list. Then, you can reveal smaller damages on both gutters and downspouts by shading them with chalk.

pellet-sized hailstones

Small-sized hailstones can penetrate gutters and downspouts if they travel at high velocities.

Siding Damages

This time, you won’t have to climb up dangerously on your ladder to inspect your siding. First, you can walk up to your siding walls then encircle the possible hail damages you see.

Unlike roofs and gutters, it is much more difficult to find small siding damages. However, you can find most of them concentrating near larger hail damages.

Fortunately, most Allen TX properties suffer hail damages from one to two sides of the house only. In extreme hailstorms can a property suffer on all sides.

Deck Impacts

Similar to your roof, decks face the clear sky without any obstacles. Therefore, it faces the brunt of the hailstone’s impact.

However, your deck is made of harder, solid material. In this light, you’ll most likely find impact points appearing as bruises rather than cracks. If this is difficult to see, you can shade the affected areas with chalk to speed up your hail damage inspection checklist process.

pellet sized hailstones on residential deck

Decks will suffer more dents than cracks because of their thick wooden material.

Metal Roof Dents and Scratches

Metal roofs dent in a similar manner as gutters and downspouts. However, thicker standing seam metal roofs will show minimal dents if you compare this to hail-damaged corrugated roofs.

In short, to reveal the standing seam metal roof damage, you’ll need to shade the possibly affected areas with chalk to find the small dents and bruises. While these small damages will never cause any leaks, it pays to record their appearance to help your roofing contractor note the right course of action.

metal roofs dented by golfball-sized hailstones

Metal roofs often suffer small dents even from big hailstorms. However, corrugated variants can suffer similarly to traditional roofing materials minus the chipping and cracking.

What To Do After Your Hail Damage Inspection?

Now that you’ve successfully inspected your roof, it can be difficult for you to conduct the repairs on your own. Unless you have lengthy experience in roofing repairs for your particular roofing material, it is best to call on local Allen TX roofers to help you.

If you have insurance, you won’t have to deal with any financial problems at all if you follow the steps listed below.

Call a Trusted Roofer (Avoid Those Who Come Knocking)

Your local neighbors know the best roofers. If you have a trusted local roofer who helped build or conduct roof-related services for your property, then you can call them to aid you.

However, never trust ambulance-chasing roofers who knock at your doors right after a storm. The reason is they’re likely only trying to make a quick buck off of you by exploiting the hail damages suffered by your roof.

If you haven’t a trusted roofer, here’s one that you can definitely trust.

Have Them Do Their Own Inspection

Roofers have their special methods to define the possible hail damages clearly. They use special tools and some thermal-imaging devices to find leaks and air vents passing through the property. If your property is suffering from micro leaks, then your insurer must consider the hailstorm damage as severe.

With the help of professionals, they can point this out to your insurer including other possible damages their methods will reveal during the course of their service.

Approach the Insurance Adjuster

At this point, it’s time to call your insurer. However, you can expect your adjuster to tag along with their respective contractor. Their contractor will conduct their respective hail damage inspection.

However, because you have your trusted contractor’s transparent report with you, you can compare notes with the adjuster’s contractor and have a clear picture of the total hailstorm damage.

In doing so, you prevent the insurance adjuster’s contractor to leave out or omit certain severe damages in favor of the insurer.

Finishing the Inspection and Starting Construction

Your adjuster and trusted roofing contractor will discuss reparation details and the total amount needed to provide your insurance benefit.

Be aware that some insurance companies will restrict you from using third-party contractors and impose their respective contractors to carry out the repairs. In this light, make sure to review your insurance terms.

Even if your trusted roofer cannot do the job for you, the comparative data will guarantee you have a fully recovered roof from hailstorms.

Wrapping Up

Hailstorm damages are the worst thing any property owner can face. However, you can identify all the hail damages and speed up your repair process by following this guide. In doing so, you speed up the process of claiming your insurance benefits from your adjuster too.

Have you suffered any hailstorm damages recently? How did you go about it? Share it with us in the comments below!