Hail damage is no joke, especially in Colorado. There aren’t even any hail damage jokes–that’s how serious it is. When a severe hailstorm hits, the trick is to thank your roof profusely for its sacrifice, and then prove how you feel by getting any and all hail damage repair performed ASAP after the storm.
The roof is one of the most difficult parts of a house to work on, too. You don’t see as many DIYers trying to perform their own roof repair as you do, say, painting. It’s hard and dangerous, even with the proper equipment and training–let alone without it.
And it’s important to get it right. The roof is the main reason to even have a house. The expression is, after all, “a roof over your head”–not “walls enclosing your face”. So with that in mind, especially combined with the fact that not all hail damage even looks the same, it’s very important to get a professional out to inspect your roof if you suspect hail damage. Read on to get a little background on the subject to inform the conversations you have with contractors.
Of course, one of the very first questions that needs answering is, what does hail damage look like on roofs?
What Does Hail Damage Look Like On a Roof?
Hail can wreak havoc on a roof or even siding, spreading damage indiscriminately across the exterior of your house. In the long run, it can lead to the classic bucket-under-ceiling-leaks situation. So, in the interest of not letting it get that far, what does hail damage look like on roof shingles?
Sometimes, hail damage looks just like you’d imagine. Dents in metal, hailstone-sized cavities in shingles, cracks…. But hail can also knock your roof’s granules off their shingles and into the gutters. So that’s another thing that hail damage can look like–roof granules all over the place. Leaves and pine needles are bad enough–don’t leave pieces of your roof in the gutter!
When the granules come off, asphalt shingles often end up looking shiny to the naked eye. If you get outside and look at your asphalt roof and find that it does look shiny, case closed; it’s time to look for companies like us who provide Denver CO hail damage repair.
But what does hail damage look like on roof shingles that are wood? Often, they simply split. But they don’t split in a clean way like when you tear a piece of paper. It’s more like… well, it’s more like a whole lot of hailstones pelted the roof for a while and caused random, patternless dents and cracks; the splits aren’t going to be “clean breaks”. They’ll be more jagged and worn-looking than that.
Long-Term Effects of Hail Damage
What does hail damage look like on roofs that have been damaged for months? Gross–and worse all the time. Obviously, the more damage of any kind that your roof takes, the more like not having a roof it gets to be. And the longer you leave roof damage alone, the more it grows and spreads and costs certainly add up.
Not all types of weather can get roof damage started but once the damage is there, just about all types of weather can make it worse. In time, wind and moisture make their way into and through the cracks and soft spots, gaining an ever-widening foothold in their eternal fight to break your house.
Even sunshine and heat can expand the unprotected shingles; when the temperature drops again, they come back to an approximation of their original size. This process makes them brittle and much easier to outright destroy. The next hail storm could cause much more damage, even if it’s a significantly less severe storm.
If you leave hail damage alone for long enough, moisture can build up and continue migrating into the ceiling and walls, sort of “melting” your house from the inside. Mold takes root. Soon, electrical issues can come up. If it gets far enough to affect your electrical, you have an emergency.
Proper Hail Damage Repair
Most of the time, hail damage repair means replacing shingles. We replace shingles to avoid having to replace the roof. Seriously damaged shingles can’t just be patched; they’re broken now, or at least too weak. Often, the shingles around a damaged one need to be pulled up too. Someone who doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing can easily miss spots that need attention, or even tear up more shingles than necessary, making the job much harder and slower than it needs to be.
It’s a slow and tedious process that’s quite dangerous without the proper equipment and experience–even with those things.
If hail damage repair doesn’t visit your roof soon enough after the hail damage does, the problems mentioned above will plague your roof and cause the whole thing to need replacing much sooner than it otherwise would. Thus, forking out the money for hail damage repair can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars by significantly delaying the need for a full roof replacement.
Let Rocky Mountain Roofing & Exteriors Help with Colorado Hail Damage!
If a thing is part of the outside of your house, Rocky Mountain Roofing & Exteriors can fix or replace it. The first step is just getting us out there to see what’s all going on. Hail damage isn’t always easy or even possible to see clearly from the ground. Sometimes, the only way to make a proper diagnosis is to get up on top of the house and take an up-close look.
We’ve completed over 3,000 jobs since our founding in 2011; we’ve gotten pretty good at this. Thankfully, because of local companies like Rocky Mountain Roofing & Exteriors, hail damage repair doesn’t have to be too painful. Reach out to us. Let’s see just what it will take to fix ‘er right up.
