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August 2009

Roof Inspections

Most homebuyers will have a Home Inspection company complete an inspection of a property before closing on the home being purchased. Regrettably, we find that the typical Home Inspector is a "Jack of all trades, but a Master of none". Many of the Home Inspection reports we have opportunity to review provide a brief paragraph regarding the roof which often indicates: "The roof appears to require maintenance. Recommend needed roof repairs be performed by a qualified contractor". Or in other instances the report may indicate "The roof appears to be no longer serviceable. Recommend the roof be replaced". Yet, in too many instances we find the roofs that the inspector indicated to be "repairable" were so "faulty" it would actually be more economical to replace the roof than repair it. And in other instances, when the inspector indicated the roof should be "replaced" we found the roof to be in satisfactory condition and likely to last several more years. We have therefore concluded that too many of the Home Inspection services are not qualified to make an accurate assessment of a roof's condition and we suspect that many of these inspections are completed from the ground (i.e. not completed by getting on the roof for a close & accurate inspection). Regardless, if you desire a thorough and accurate assessment of a roof's condition, have Larry Vaught Roofing perform the inspection! We get on the roof & look it over closely. And since we have an in depth knowledge of municipal building code requirements (as they pertain to roofing) and thorough knowledge of the proper methods of installation ( as prescribed per shingle manufacturers) we attempt to identify numerous aspects of the roofs installation that are often not noted in a general home inspection report. We also will inspect for visible signs of material defects as well as potential storm related roof damage. Our fee is $290.00 for the typical residential roof inspection. We are confident you will find our inspection to be worth every penny when you consider that a General Home Inspection service report may lead you to believe a roof is in "satisfactory" condition when we may find numerous faults. We've observed numerous inaccurate Home Inspection reports during the last few weeks alone. In one instance, an individual purchased a home which passed the Home Inspection services inspection (including the roof), but our inspection found that one section of this roof had been recently replaced incorrectly. Specifically, we discovered a second layer of composition shingles was installed over an existing composition shingle roof layer on a roof slope less than 4-in-12 and no underlayment was found to have been installed beneath the new shingles. Composition shingles installed on slopes less than 4-in-12 are required to have special attention given to the underlayment in order to compensate for the low slope. Since there was absolutely no underlayment installed, we warned the buyer he was likely to encounter problems. As it turned out, the low sloped roof section leaked badly in a storm just before the closing date, confirming our reported concerns. The seller ended up agreeing to contribute to the cost of replacing this roof section.