Roof inspections in Lubbock
An inspection is not a sales visit with a ladder. It should end with a document you can act on, including the possibility that nothing needs doing.
Most roof inspections in Lubbock happen for one of three reasons. A storm went through. A house is changing hands. Or something has stained a ceiling and nobody knows why.
They are genuinely different jobs, and it is worth saying which one you want when you ring, because the inspector will look at different things.
After a storm
The point here is evidence, not opinion. A storm inspection should produce photographs per elevation with something in frame for scale, a count of impacts per test square, and a look at the soft metal, which records hail more honestly than shingles do.
It should also name the storm date being claimed. Insurers ask, and “sometime this spring” is a weaker answer than a date.
Before you buy
A roof is one of the few parts of a house where the remaining life is both large in money terms and reasonably assessable. What you want is an age estimate, a condition note on the details rather than the field, and a plain sentence about how many years are probably left.
Be careful with the word “serviceable”. It means it is not leaking today. It does not mean you are not buying a roof in two years.
For a leak
This is a diagnosis, and it may take longer than the other two. The inspector is working backwards from where the water shows up, and as the repair page explains, that is rarely under the entry point. Expect them to be in the attic with a torch as much as on the roof, because the dry side of the deck often tells the story better than the wet side.
The thing to watch for
The failure mode in this market is not bad inspecting. It is an inspection that is really a sales opening, where the report exists to justify a scope that was decided in the driveway.
The tell is specificity. A report that says “extensive hail damage throughout” with four wide shots is not evidence. A report that says north and west elevations show eight to twelve impacts per test square with dimpling to the gutters and vent caps, and that the south elevation is clean, is somebody who actually looked.
Questions people ask
- Should an inspection be free?
Plenty of companies do them free after a storm and there is nothing wrong with that. Understand the incentive. A free inspection is a sales call, and a sales call that finds nothing has cost the company money. A paid inspection from somebody who is not bidding the work is a different product and is sometimes worth the money.
- Do they have to walk the roof?
For hail, largely yes. Bruising cannot be assessed from a ladder at the eave or from a drone photograph alone, because it is as much about feel as sight. A drone is a good supplement and a poor substitute.
- How often?
After any significant hail or wind event, before you buy a house, and otherwise every few years once the roof is past the halfway point of its life.