Roof inspection
An inspection is worth its cost when it answers a decision you are about to make: buying a house, planning next season’s budget, or deciding whether an aging covering has another few years in it. In a climate where a roof can read “dirty but fine” from the street and be brittle underneath, one documented look often tells you what the next five years will ask of you.
When it earns its price
Three moments justify the cost here. Before a purchase — a roof at the end of its life changes what a house is worth, and Piedmont streaking makes condition genuinely hard to judge from listing photos: the stains can hide a sound surface or a spent one. After the summer, on an older covering — five months of heat do their damage invisibly, and fall is the least costly time to address what they left. And near the end of a covering’s expected life — when the real question is “this year or in three years,” a documented answer beats a guess in either direction.
What gets checked
On the surface: what actually sits under the streaking, because algae hides the granule surface it covers; the sun-side slopes, where age shows first; the edges — eaves, rakes, bottom courses, fascia — where Piedmont roofs actually end their lives; valleys under their straw load; sealant and flashing at every chimney, wall and vent penetration; and the rubber boots at plumbing vents, which crack in their second decade and are often a roof’s first true leak.
On the attic side, which a street-level look can never replace: ventilation — intake, exhaust, and whether twenty summers of builder-minimum airflow have been cooking the covering from below; moisture staining on the underside of the decking; bath fans ducted into the attic instead of outside; and daylight where there should be none. A report that skips the attic is half a report.
What the report is good for
A written report with photographs does three jobs. It turns a purchase negotiation from opinion into evidence. It converts “sometime soon” into a plan with a season attached — which is what lets you gather quotes unhurried, in late winter, instead of urgently in July. And when replacement is the verdict, it becomes the scope document that makes three bids comparable, because every bidder is pricing the same documented findings — the same valleys, the same edge repairs — rather than their own quick look.