Weather damages to your roof: be careful and avoid disasters

Roofs are one of the elements most prone to weather damage.  The impact of lightning, heavy rain, hurricane winds or hail can cause irreparable damage to homes each year.

Statistics indicate that damage caused annually to homes by inclement weather exceeds $15 billion nationwide. This indicates that approximately 40% of homeowners’ insurance claims were caused by severe weather.

Lightning

To reduce the risk of lightning damage to your roof, the best alternative is to install a complete lightning protection system. These systems are designed to protect the entire structure of your home. These types of systems safely channel the received energy to the ground without affecting the structure.

This equipment is placed on the roof and connected through wiring to terminals on the ground.  It is advisable to securely anchor the lightning rod to the roof to prevent it from being torn off by the wind. The installation must be carried out by a certified specialist who performs the work according to the current regulations.

Moderate rainfall

Damage from relatively heavy rains can be extremely severe. Heavy rains can cause shingles to warp or buckle, especially if they are already showing signs of wear. When shingles wear out, they begin to deteriorate, making them more prone to break during a storm.

And once there is a small area of your roof exposed, your interior is very likely to suffer water damage. You wouldn’t want to be sitting on your living roof under an improvised (and expensive) rain.So taking care of these minor problems as soon as they appear is the most important thing to do. Specially when the rainy season is approaching. This prevents damage from spreading and ultimately saves you the cost of more extensive repairs.

Hail

The type and severity of hail damage to your roof differs depending on the type. Other factors, such as the age and slope of the roofing material, must be considered. Also the size of the hail stone and the wind speed and direction. This may not be a foolproof method of assessing the likelihood of storm damage to your roof. However, knowing the size of the hailstone in question is a good starting point.

Property owners often dismiss potential roof damage after smaller caliber hail storms because they underestimate their impact. Depending on the wind speed of the storm, hail as small as ¾ inch can cause severe damage to your home’s roof, metal fascia, vinyl siding, gutters and downspouts, and window screens. It can also dislodge granules from asphalt shingles.

In addition to the damage caused by smaller hail, stones measuring 1 inch can also cause significant bruising to shingle underlayment. Again, wind speed will determine the severity of the damage. As it starts to get bigger, the hail can make a huge difference. It’s hard to believe, but just a quarter inch more in size makes the potential for hail damage much more significant. Even with minimal wind speed, hail this size is potentially very damaging to your roof.

Some hail damage is immediately noticeable. For example, broken edges of shingles or battens are easy to spot. However, be sure to look carefully near gutters for less obvious signs of high-impact hail damage. Chances are that if the hail was heavy enough to dent your gutters or downspouts, it may have caused damage to the surrounding roof.

When combined with high winds, hail can also cause shingles or roof tiles to crack, leaving the roof with bare spots. The impact of hail on a roof can break the surface of the shingle, causing it to separate from the underlying layer and expose the fiberglass. Hail can also fracture fiberglass matting. Less visible but even more serious, a fractured fiberglass mat seriously compromises the integrity of your roof.

High winds

High winds can weaken the self-sealing strip of the shingles, causing the shingles to detach completely. Wind damage will often affect roof edges or areas of the roof that have already suffered damage/wear. Once it has torn off some shingles, it could initiate a domino effect and lift other linked shingles.

In addition, high winds, with or without driving rain or hail, often cause more subtle damage to your roof, such as granule loss, punctures and bruising.

Granules are the sandpaper-like outer coating of the shingle. High winds can tear the granules from the shingles, exposing the asphalt coating to the elements. This degrades the performance of the material, leading to accelerated aging and poor performance. Severe weather can cause thrown granules to accumulate in the gutters.

Bruising is the soft, spongy area in or around where shingle granules are missing or displaced. It occurs when hail has exerted enough pressure on the shingles that the fibers within the mat have loosened and begun to separate.

Roof evaluation experts can usually feel indentations or nicks in this area that are not obvious to the untrained eye. Because the bruises are not externally noticeable, you may be tempted to ignore them. However, because the bruised areas on your roof are not protected by a thick layer of granules, they are susceptible to future damage from temperature changes and more.

Damage is not always visible

Unlike other areas of your home, you can’t always see the damage that may have occurred on your roof. However, staying on top of repairs is vitally important to its longevity. After a severe storm, have your roof inspected, especially if you can see debris on the ground or other telltale signs that roof damage may have occurred out of sight.

Remember that although there is no proven way to protect your roof from damage by heavy rain, hail or high winds, a well-maintained roof will hold up better against the elements than one that has suffered even minor damage in the past. Don’t ignore even the smallest problems: keeping up with relatively minor repairs as they occur is far better than having to replace the entire roof prematurely, or risk damaging the contents of your home.