Lesson 7. How to Inspect Your Roof From the Ground

Do This Instead of Climbing

More people are hurt each year inspecting their own roof than by anything a roof does to them. A ladder on soft ground, a wet shoe, a gust of wind. You do not need to take that risk to know what is going on up there.

Take binoculars, stand back far enough to see the whole slope, and walk all the way around the house.

The Checklist

• Shingles curling up at the corners, or lying flat and looking thin
• Dark patches where granules are gone and the black mat shows
• Missing shingles, or shingles out of line with their neighbors
• The ridge line. It should be dead straight. A sag means a structural problem, not a roof problem
• Rusty or lifted metal in the valleys
• The rubber collars around vent pipes, for cracks at the top
• Dark streaks, which are usually algae rather than damage
• Any patch of moss, especially on a north facing slope
• Gutters, for sag, rust and separated joints
• The underside of the overhang, for peeling paint or stains

The Gutter Test

Open a downspout, or look in the gutter, and see how much granule sand is sitting there. Every roof loses some, and a new one sheds loose granules for the first year.

A cup or more of granules coming out of one downspout, on a roof over fifteen years old, means the shingles are shedding their protection. That is a real signal and it is free to check.

Inside, Too

Take a flashlight into the attic on a bright day and turn it off for a minute. Any daylight you can see from inside is a hole, except along the ridge vent and at the soffits.

Then look at the wood. Dark stains, white mineral trails and any sponginess in the decking all mean water has been here, whether or not it is here today.