After the Storm: How to Spot Roof Damage You Can't See from the Ground
A lot of Storm Damage Roof Repairs Perth is invisible from the street but still lets water in. This covers the hidden damage storms cause and why a proper post-storm inspection is worth it.
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Most Storm Damage Roof Repairs Perth does not announce itself. Tiles that lifted and dropped back look identical to tiles that never moved and the water gets in anyway.
This is about finding what the front actually did, from the ground and from inside, before a stain on a ceiling tells you the expensive way.
Start inside, in the roof space
Take a torch up through the manhole on the first dry morning after the front. You are looking for daylight where there should not be any, which is the most reliable indicator available and it costs nothing.
Then look for water. Fresh staining is darker than old staining and the edges are still defined. Wet insulation, damp rafters and rusty marks around nail plates all point at where water has been travelling.
Feel the batten timber near any wet area. It should be firm. If a screwdriver presses in easily or the wood separates into fibres, that is a finding worth photographing and acting on.
Then the ceiling, room by room
Walk every room and look up, including the ones you rarely use. Spare bedrooms and garages are where damage sits unnoticed longest.
You are looking for discolouration, a faint tide line, bubbling paint, or a cornice that has separated slightly from the wall. Any of those means water has been above that ceiling.
Sagging is the urgent one. A ceiling holding water can come down without warning and it comes down heavy. Stay out of the room, keep children and pets away and ring somebody rather than poking it.
From the ground, with binoculars
Walk the full perimeter of the house and look at each elevation separately, because wind damage is directional and one side frequently takes everything.
Look along the ridge line for caps sitting proud, out of line, or missing entirely. Look for tiles that have slipped down the slope and for gaps where one is simply gone.
Look at the Roof Valley Repairs Perth where two roof planes meet. Debris packed in there after a storm is a blockage waiting to put water under the tiles during the next front.
Check the Gutter Replacement Perth for tile fragments and mortar debris. Material in the gutter tells you something above it has broken, even where you cannot see the break.
The damage that spreads after the event
Once a tile has lifted, the wind gets underneath the ones around it. Damage that started as a single tile during the storm can be a whole section by morning, particularly on an exposed elevation.
Impact damage from a branch travels further through the structure than the visible hole suggests. Battens crack, adjacent tiles are stressed and a strike that looks contained frequently is not.
That is why a proper inspection after a limb strike covers the whole roof rather than the point of contact and why we photograph the surrounding area as well as the obvious break.
What to photograph, and when
Before anything is covered or cleared. Once a tarp goes on or debris is moved, you have lost the evidence of what the event actually did and that is exactly what an Insurance Roof Repairs Perth wants to see.
Photograph wide and close on each finding. A wide shot establishes where on the roof it is. A close shot shows what failed.
Include the ceiling damage inside, the debris in the gutters and anything on the ground that came off the roof. Date stamps help.
Keep them all, even the ones that turn out to be nothing. A folder of images taken the day after the storm is worth considerably more than a description written a fortnight later.
What not to do
Do not get on the roof. Storm Damage Roof Repairs Perthd roofs are unstable, frequently wet and have breaks you cannot see from above. Ladder falls at home are common and the injuries are serious.
Do not clear debris off the roof yourself, particularly after a limb strike where the structure may be compromised.
Do not accept a doorknock. After a major front, operators appear in numbers and urgency is exactly what they rely on. A temporary cover buys you time to check whoever you engage.
Do not let anybody talk you into presenting existing wear as storm damage. That is fraud and the exposure sits with you rather than the contractor.
When to call somebody
Immediately if a ceiling is sagging, if water is near wiring, or if anything structural has been hit.
Promptly if you have found displaced tiles, daylight in the roof space or fresh water staining, because the next front will make it worse.
At your convenience if everything looks intact but you want it checked. That is a reasonable thing to ask for and the inspection costs nothing.
We attend across the Perth metropolitan area and prioritise by risk rather than call order after a widespread event. Ring 0421 768 842.
Damage that hides under the tiles
Roof Valley Repairs Perth are the classic. The metal trough between two roof planes sits underneath the tiles either side, so debris packed into it during a storm is invisible from the ground and from most of the roof.
Roof Plumbing Perth at wall junctions, chimneys and skylights can be lifted or displaced by wind without any visible change from the driveway. The first sign is frequently damp high on an internal wall rather than anything outside.
Battens crack under impact even where tiles above them survive. A branch that struck and rolled off leaves very little evidence until somebody walks the area or looks from underneath.
Sarking, where it exists, can tear without the covering moving at all, which removes the secondary barrier you were relying on without any external indication.
A sequence worth following
Wait for daylight and for the weather to pass. Nothing on this list is urgent enough to justify a torch and a ladder in the wet.
Roof space first, because it is safe, it is quick and it produces the clearest evidence.
Ceilings second, every room, looking up.
Perimeter walk third, with binoculars, one elevation at a time.
Gutters last, checking for tile fragments, mortar debris and anything that came off the roof above.
Photograph as you go rather than afterwards, because you will not remember which elevation a close up came from.
Suburbs where particular damage patterns repeat
Exposed coastal suburbs from Scarborough through Trigg, Sorrento and Hillarys lose tiles to wind that inland streets never feel and losses concentrate on the seaward elevation.
The hills suburbs including Kalamunda, Lesmurdie, Roleystone and Mundaring see limb strikes rather than wind loss and those are structural events as much as covering ones.
Uniform post war streets through Balga, Girrawheen and Nollamara tend to lose ridge caps together, because the mortar across whole suburbs reached the end of its life at the same time.
River suburbs with mature canopy see a mix, with the added complication that Roof Cleaning Perthy tile makes any subsequent inspection genuinely hazardous underfoot.
A short glossary for describing what you found
Ridge is the horizontal line at the apex. Hip is the sloping line where two planes meet outward. Valley is the internal angle where they meet inward and it carries the concentrated runoff from both.
Capping means the curved or angled tiles finishing the ridge and hip lines. Bedding is the mortar underneath holding them. Pointing is the compound finishing that joint.
Flashing is the metal waterproofing any junction between roof and vertical surface. Apron flashing sits where a roof meets a wall head on, step flashing runs alongside a sloping roof.
Batten is the timber the covering fixes to. Sarking is the membrane beneath, providing a secondary barrier and most Perth roofs built before the nineties have none.
Using the right word saves a phone call. Telling somebody the capping on the eastern hip has lifted is considerably more useful than saying a tile came off.
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