How To Check Your Roof After An Extreme Weather Event

How To Check Your Roof After An Extreme Weather Event

Extreme weather can cause all sorts of damage to the roof. After a storm, you should check your roof for any damage. If roof damage is not repaired quickly, it can cause water damage to the interior of your home, so it is important to seek professional roof repair help in Chalfont, PA.

Hail Damage to the Shingles

If you see dents on patio furniture or cars after a hailstorm, you can be fairly certain there is some damage to the roof shingles. Hail can damage your entire roof or just a couple of shingles. Look at the bottom of the downspouts, if there is a large number of shingle granules, this could indicate hail damage. A small number of granules can be normal if the shingles are new.

Once on the roof, look for indentations or dents in the asphalt shingles. You might see groups of small round divots on the edges of the shingles, or indentations that are black where the shingle granules are missing.

These dents and indentations can cause the shingle to crack, which will cause water to leak in under the shingles over time. Some hail damage is too small to see by the untrained eye. Even small hail damage can cause leaks in the future.

Damage to Flashing

Hailstorms can also damage the flashings around chimneys, skylights, vents, and where peaks of the roof meet. Flashing can get broken or the caulking around it can crack. Either way, this should be fixed soon as water will leak in.

Wind Damage

After a wind storm, walk through your yard and look for shingles on the ground. Get on the roof and look for missing and creased shingles.

In addition to blowing shingles off, the wind can bend them, which causes them to crease. Creased shingles will break the adhesive seal, causing them to leak. The adhesive seal of asphalt shingles is how they shed water, and if this seal is broken, they will absorb water and leak instead of shed water.

Tree branches or other debris can land on your roof causing damage to the shingles and flashing. Wind damage usually starts near the edges of a roof and should be fixed quickly, or the next windstorm could do even more damage.

Ice Dams

Heavy snowstorms also cause roof damage. Ice dams are created when warm air from inside your home rises and heats the shingles. This causes the lower levels of the snowpack to melt and drip down to the colder areas near the edge of the roof.

As it continues to melt and freeze, it causes the water to dam and back up. This can cause water to seep into the interior of your home. To prevent this, you can add more insulation and ventilation to the attic.