Some roof inspections may be done by a home inspection service; perhaps like a metal roof or tile roof inspection .These are two of the most common and strongest roofs you can have on a building or home, in Indian River County. A damaged tile or metal roof would be obvious to spot if you have some experience working with roofs or doing roof inspections. On a tile roof one may find broken or cracked tiles, chipped mortar finish or failing counter flashing sealant ,to say the least.
On a metal roof, you may find rust, missing fasteners or deteriorated neoprene washers, bent or dinged metal roof panels. So the signs of damage are obvious.
Sometimes the most inexpensive and easiest to apply roof ,like a shingle roof may present a greater challenge to find hard to see mistakes or damages. I recently was called to estimate a shingle roof, that as per the roof inspection report, claimed only to have ridge shingles damaged by hail. As soon as climbed on the roof and took a closer look, I noticed that the roof had over 25 exposed nails or as the industry calls them ,shiners, throughout the roof, these shiners are caused by installer error or sometimes improperly placed nails that will pop out through the shingle tab. These nails are usually the most common causes of leaks on asphalt shingle roofs, the exposed nail will eventually begin to rust and deteriorate and act as a conduit to the plywood that will eventually leak into the home and create more damage to repair. Other incorrections that I found ,was exposed bull or tar.
When flashing with bull it should always remain concealed, this homeowner may have hired someone to perform some roof maintenance on their roof , that was probably was lacking in experience because after applying bull over the shingles it was obviously that a leak may have occurred in that area of the roof and they were trying to repair by spackleing black tar cement over the problem. A proper repair on a roof is no different than any other type of repair where one should remove the necessary layers in steps to reach the problem. Once the problem is corrected reinstall the existing or new pieces back to its original place, and once completed the repair should look almost as it never happened. This inspector, sorry to say, obviously had very little experience working with roofs and missed a lot in correction that would have caused his buyer headaches down the road.
