We’ve had some wild weather in the Mid-Atlantic during the past couple weeks. While summer storms usually bring relief from heat waves, they can damage your home, particularly your roof, in a number of different ways. We’ll try to give you some tips on avoiding this damage.
Lightning
Although more people worry about the damage that power surges caused by lightning can do to electronic devices, this article shows that it can also cause damage to the shingles on your roof and bricks in your chimney. To avoid such damage, the article advocates a lightening protection system for your home that goes beyond the traditional lightening rod to a series of terminals on top of your home to offer lightening a quick, safe way to the ground that spares your home.
Hail
Some of the more violent storms bring hail with them, which can also damage your shingles. Unfortunately, there’s no way to guarantee hail won’t harm your roof, although there are grades of roofing material that are more “hail-resistent” than others. If your see granules from broken shingles in the runoff from your downspouts or damage to your downspouts or siding following a storm, you may have sustained hail damage. A leak following a storm is another indication. If you encounter any of these, have your roof inspected as quickly as you can.
Wind
The high winds of storms can damage your roof directly by blowing off shingles or indirectly by blowing trees or limbs onto the roof. Either way, it’s a massive headache. You can reduce the threats from blown trees by removing dead trees or limbs above your roof. As for the direct threat high winds pose, a periodic inspection to ensure your roof’s fasteners are in place is the best policy.
At Allied Remodeling, we’d like to help you in any way we can if you should sustain roof damage during a storm. We’ll try to steer you in the direction of a trusted inspector, and if you need repair work done, we’ll be there to do the job. Contact us to learn more.