What Roof Adjusters Look For During an Inspection (And How to Document It First)

If you sell and install roofs, you eventually end up on a ladder next to an insurance adjuster, both of you staring at the same slope and seeing two different things. You see a roof a storm wore out. They see a checklist, a deadline, and a file they have to defend. The gap between those two views is where most contractors lose scope, lose time, and lose the homeowner's trust.

The fix is not arguing better on inspection day. It is knowing exactly what the adjuster is trained to look for, then documenting the roof so thoroughly and so accurately that the facts are already on the table before they climb up. When your photos, measurements, and repair estimate line up with the way carriers evaluate damage, the conversation gets short and professional. When they do not, you are improvising against someone who does this forty times a week.

A quick framing before we go up the ladder. A roofer's job in a storm-damage situation is to inspect, document what they see, and write an accurate estimate to repair their own scope of work. The homeowner files the claim. The insurer decides coverage. You are the witness and the estimator, not the judge. Keep that line clean and everything below stays on the right side of it. We will come back to the do-not-say list near the end, because crossing it is how good roofers get themselves into trouble that has nothing to do with roofing.

How a Roof Adjuster Actually Works the Roof

Most contractors picture an adjuster as a gatekeeper looking for a reason to deny. That is the wrong mental model. A field adjuster is closer to a claims auditor with a ladder. Their job is to determine three things: whether a covered peril caused damage, how much of the damage is attributable to that peril versus age and wear, and what it costs to repair to pre-loss condition. Everything they do on the roof maps back to those three questions.

They arrive with a date of loss already on the file. That date matters more than almost anything else, because it scopes what they are even allowed to consider. If the reported event is a hailstorm on a specific day, the adjuster is looking for damage consistent with that event on that date. Damage that looks weeks or years old, or damage that does not match the hail size and wind direction recorded for that storm, gets set aside as not from this loss.

Here is the rough sequence a typical residential field adjuster follows once they are on the roof:

1. Orientation and elevation walk. They note which slopes face the reported storm direction and identify the most exposed elevations. Hail and wind are directional. A west-facing slope tells a different story than the leeward east side.
2. Soft-metals survey. Before they ever look at a shingle, experienced adjusters check the soft metals: gutters, downspouts, gutter aprons, valley metal, vents, flashing, the rain caps on pipe jacks, and any HVAC or AC condenser fins on the ground. Soft metals dent before shingles bruise, so they are the honest record of whether hail of impacting size actually fell here.
3. Test squares. They mark off a 10-foot by 10-foot square (100 square feet) on a representative slope and count the qualifying hits inside it. This is the single most important thing they do, and we will spend real time on it.
4. Collateral and accessories. Window screens, soft fascia, painted surfaces, garage doors, mailboxes, shutters, and skylights. Collateral damage corroborates the roof story.
5. Wear-and-tear assessment. They evaluate the overall condition and age of the roof to decide how much of what they see is storm versus the roof simply aging out.
6. Documentation and call. Photos, measurements, and a scope decision, often using the same estimating platform you do.

If you understand that sequence, you can document ahead of it. Your photos should answer their questions before they ask. Your estimate should reflect their scope logic. You are not trying to outsmart anyone. You are removing every reason for friction.

The estimating platform sitting under all of it

Most carriers price losses in Xactimate, the same estimating database many restoration contractors use. That matters because it means there is a shared, line-item language for the repair. When your estimate is built in the same structure, with the same line items, quantities, and waste factors, the adjuster can reconcile it against theirs in minutes instead of treating it as an outside opinion to be discounted. We will get into line items later. For now, internalize this: an estimate written in the carrier's language is a document they can use, and a document they can use is one they tend to honor.

Hail Damage: What Counts and What Gets Thrown Out

Hail is where the most scope gets won and lost, because the difference between functional damage and cosmetic marking is subtle, and the cost of guessing wrong is the whole roof. Adjusters are trained to a fairly specific definition. If you can see the roof the way they are trained to see it, you can document the right things and skip the arguments that go nowhere.

What a real hail bruise looks like

Functional hail damage on an asphalt shingle has a recognizable signature, and adjusters look for the whole signature, not one isolated part of it:

• A point of impact with displaced or fractured granules, exposing the asphalt mat underneath. The exposed mat often looks darker and shinier.
• A bruise you can feel. Press a thumb near the impact and you feel a soft, give-y spot where the mat fractured. This is the mark of actual mat damage versus a surface scuff.
• Random distribution. Real hail hits are scattered, not in lines or clusters. They do not follow the shingle pattern, the nail line, or foot-traffic paths.
• Directionality consistent with the storm. More hits on the windward slopes, fewer on the protected sides.
• Fresh granule loss with sharp edges, often with corresponding granules washed into the gutters.

What gets thrown out, and why your case dies when you photograph it as damage:

• Blistering. Little popped bubbles in the shingle from off-gassing asphalt. They look like hail hits to an untrained eye but have no fracture and a consistent, manufacturing-pattern distribution. Adjusters spot these instantly, and pointing at blisters as hail damage costs you credibility for the rest of the inspection.
• Granule loss from foot traffic, wear, or shade/algae. Diffuse, patterned, or path-following granule loss reads as wear, not impact.
• Mechanical and installation marks. Scuffs from prior work, nail pops, exposed nails, manufacturing defects. Real, but not storm.
• Old, oxidized hits with no fresh mat exposure. If the impact point is weathered to the same color as the surrounding shingle, it predates the loss.

The test square: how it is really scored

The test square is the heart of a hail inspection. The adjuster chalks a 10-by-10 square (100 square feet) on a representative, sufficiently exposed slope and counts qualifying hits inside it. Many carriers use a threshold in the range of 8 to 10 qualifying impacts per test square to support replacement of that slope, though the exact number is a carrier and adjuster judgment, not a published universal rule. Do not promise a homeowner that a specific count guarantees anything; you do not control the threshold or the decision.

What you can control is making the square defensible. When you mark and document your own test squares before the adjuster arrives, do it the same way they would so your photos line up with theirs:

1. Pick a representative slope on the storm-facing elevation. Not the worst patch you can find, and not a tiny sheltered corner. Adjusters discount cherry-picked squares.
2. Chalk a true 10-by-10. Use a tape, mark the corners, snap the lines. A photo of a measured square is worth ten of an unmeasured circle of chalk.
3. Circle each qualifying hit with a paint marker or chalk, then photograph the full square wide, then each hit close with a coin or chalk for scale.
4. Note the count per slope, not for the whole roof. Carriers scope by slope. A roof can have one replaceable slope and three that do not qualify.
5. Record the soft-metal evidence separately. Gutter and downspout dents, vent and cap dents, the AC fins. These corroborate hail size and presence and are harder to dispute than shingle bruises.

The brittleness and exposure traps

Two edge cases trip up even experienced crews. First, age and brittleness. Older asphalt shingles get brittle, and an adjuster may argue that fractures are from age and foot traffic rather than impact. This is exactly why the roof-age picture matters before you ever go up; if you walk in already knowing the roof is in the window where storm damage and end-of-life overlap, you document differently and you set the homeowner's expectations honestly.

Second, directional consistency. If you claim hail damage on all four slopes but the storm came hard out of the southwest, an adjuster will reasonably expect the northeast slope to show far less. Damage that is uniform on every elevation often reads as wear, not a single hail event. Photograph the directional story: heavy windward, light leeward. It makes your case more credible, not less, because it matches physics.

Wind Damage: The Quiet Scope Killer

Wind claims are different in character. Hail is about counting; wind is about mechanism. The adjuster wants to see that wind lifted, creased, or removed shingles, and that what is there is genuinely wind versus an installation problem or simple aging adhesion failure.

Here is what they look for:

• Creasing. A shingle that lifted in the wind and folded back leaves a horizontal crease across the tab. That crease fractures the mat, so even if it laid back down, the shingle is compromised. Creased shingles are a clean, defensible wind finding. Look along the rake edges and the field on the windward slopes.
• Missing shingles and tabs, with the underlying pattern of where they tore. Wind-removed shingles usually leave torn or broken tabs and exposed nails or sealant strips.
• Unsealed shingles. Wind can break the thermal seal between courses. An adjuster checks whether shingles are sealed by lifting tabs. Broken seals from a wind event are different from shingles that never sealed due to cold-weather installation, and they will probe that difference.
• Damaged or displaced ridge cap and hip shingles, which take the most direct wind.
• Collateral wind evidence: displaced flashing, lifted drip edge, fence panels down, debris, damaged soft fascia and gutters.

The quiet scope killer is the seal question. If the field shingles are unsealed across the whole roof and the adjuster decides that is an installation or age issue rather than a wind event, the wind claim narrows to just the obviously missing and creased shingles. Document the creases close and wide, photograph torn tabs in place, and capture any matching debris and collateral on the ground so the wind event is corroborated, not asserted.

Matching, slope continuity, and the partial-roof problem

Wind claims very often turn into partial-slope or partial-roof scopes, and that is where the matching question comes alive. If three squares of shingles blew off one slope and the existing shingles are discontinued or sun-faded, you have a genuine question of whether a partial repair restores pre-loss condition. Some states have line-of-sight or matching provisions in their insurance regulations or market-conduct rules that bear on this; many do not, and it is policy-and-state specific. Your job is to document the mismatch factually: photograph the existing shingle, note the manufacturer and product if you can identify it, and show the color and weathering difference. Whether matching is owed is a coverage question the carrier decides under the policy and the state's rules. State it as a documented fact, not as a promise to the homeowner.

Hail Size, Storm Verification, and the Date of Loss

Before an adjuster credits a single bruise to a covered event, they have to believe a damaging storm actually happened at that address on that date. This is the part contractors skip, and it sinks more claims than bad photos do. A roof can have genuine, well-documented hail marks and still get a soft denial if nothing ties them to a verifiable event consistent with the reported date of loss.

Hail does not damage asphalt shingles until it reaches a certain size, and the size needed depends on the shingle, its age, and the impact angle. As a rough field reference, pea-sized hail (about a quarter inch) almost never bruises asphalt, marble to dime-sized (half inch to three quarters) starts to mark soft metals and aged shingles, and quarter-sized (one inch) and larger is where functional shingle damage becomes common. Larger stones, golf ball (1.75 inch) and up, routinely fracture mats and dent everything. When you document the soft-metal dents and measure their diameter, you are quietly building the hail-size story the adjuster needs.

The verification layer pulls from records outside the roof:

• Storm reports. The reported date of loss should line up with a real severe-weather event for that location. Adjusters and carriers pull hail and wind reports for the address; you should know whether one exists before you ever suggest a claim is worth filing.
• Radar-derived hail estimates. Many carriers buy hail-verification reports that estimate the maximum hail size that passed over a specific parcel on specific dates, derived from radar. If that report says the largest hail at the address was three quarters of an inch on the reported date, your claim of golf-ball damage has a credibility problem you need to resolve, not ignore.
• Directionality of the storm cell. Storm motion tells you which elevations should be hit hardest. Document accordingly.

The practical lesson: the date of loss is not a formality, it is the spine of the claim. If a homeowner is unsure when the storm hit, do not guess a date to make the claim fit. Document what is on the roof, note the storm history that exists, and let the homeowner report the loss they actually experienced. Picking a convenient date that does not match the weather record is exactly the kind of move that gets a contractor and a homeowner into trouble, and it is squarely outside your lane.

Different Roof Types Tell Different Stories

Most storm inspections are asphalt, but the moment you climb a tile, metal, or wood-shake roof, the rules of evidence change, and adjusters evaluate them differently. Documenting the wrong things wastes everyone's time.

Tile (concrete and clay)

Tile is durable and brittle at the same time. Hail rarely produces the granule-loss bruise you see on asphalt; instead it chips, cracks, or fractures individual tiles, often at the nose or the exposed edge. The trap is foot traffic: walking a tile roof carelessly cracks tiles, and an adjuster will reasonably question whether a crack is hail or a boot. Document tile damage with the impact mark visible (a fresh chip exposes lighter, unweathered material), note its location relative to the storm direction, and stay off the tiles you are not stepping on deliberately. The underlayment matters too; on older tile, the felt is often the real service-life question, separate from the tiles themselves.

Metal

Metal roofs are largely cosmetic-versus-functional arguments. Hail dents standing-seam and metal panels, but a dent that does not breach the coating or compromise the panel is frequently classified as cosmetic, and many policies have specific cosmetic-damage exclusions or endorsements for metal. Document dents with raking light (early or late sun across the panel reveals denting a flat midday shot hides), measure dent density per panel, and note any coating fractures or fastener and seam damage, which move the conversation from cosmetic to functional. Whether cosmetic damage is covered is a policy question, not your call.

Wood shake and shingle

Wood reads hail as splits and impact fractures with fresh, light-colored wood exposed at the break, often with a corresponding indentation. Age shows as cupping, splitting along the grain, and erosion. The fresh-versus-weathered distinction is everything; an old split is gray all the way through, a hail split shows bright wood. Photograph the fresh interior of the break for scale and color.

Across all of these, the documentation principle holds: show the mechanism, show that it is fresh, show it is consistent with the storm, and let the carrier classify coverage.

Age, Wear, and the Honest Conversation

The single most uncomfortable part of any storm inspection is age. Adjusters are explicitly trained to separate storm damage from wear and tear, because wear and tear is excluded under essentially every homeowners policy. The older and more worn the roof, the harder they look for reasons to attribute marks to age.

The things they read as age:

• Overall granule loss exposing large areas of mat.
• Curling, cupping, and clawing of shingle tabs.
• Thermal cracking in the field, especially the random craze-cracking of old three-tabs.
• Surface oxidation, where the shingle has weathered to a flat, dull, lighter tone.
• Prior repairs and patchwork that indicate an ongoing maintenance situation.
• Multiple layers, which complicate both age assessment and the repair scope.

Where this gets sharp is the overlap window. A 16-to-22-year-old architectural roof that took real hail is both genuinely storm-damaged and genuinely near the end of its service life. The adjuster sees both. You see both. Pretending the roof is pristine and the only issue is the storm makes you look like you are stretching, and it primes the adjuster to discount everything you point at. The credible move is to document the storm damage cleanly and let the age be what it is. You are not the one deciding coverage, so you do not have to win the age argument; you have to be the honest, precise witness.

This is also where a lot of contractors quietly cross a line they should not. They start telling the homeowner the claim will be approved, the roof will be fully covered, the deductible will not really be a problem. None of that is yours to say, and some of it is illegal. More on that shortly.

Knowing Which Roofs Are Actually Due Before You Knock

Everything above happens on inspection day. The leverage is earlier, in deciding which roofs to inspect at all and walking up with the age-and-storm picture already in your head.

Here is the problem with the usual approach. After a storm, crews canvass a neighborhood door to door, climb anything that will let them up, and inspect roofs that range from three years old to twenty-five. The three-year-old roofs almost never produce a real, age-supported storm scope, and the crew burns daylight and goodwill proving it. The roofs in the overlap window, old enough that real storm damage and end-of-life wear coincide, are the ones where documentation actually changes a homeowner's situation. But you cannot tell which is which from the street, and you certainly cannot tell which slopes faced the storm.

This is the gap RoofPredict is built for. It reads aerial and satellite imagery to estimate a roof-age range per address, then models storm history, hail size and wind, against each individual roof rather than the county-wide storm report. The output is a ranked view of which roofs in an area are most likely due: old enough to be at or near end of service life and exposed to a storm event that could have caused damage. It also enriches a contractor's own CRM or mailing list with those signals, so the database you already own tells you which of your past quotes and contacts now sit on an aging, storm-hit roof.

Be clear about what that does and does not do. A roof-age range is a range, not a birth certificate, and it can be off on a re-roof the imagery did not catch. A storm model is odds, not proof; it tells you a roof was likely exposed to damaging hail, not that the shingles are bruised. None of it replaces the ladder, the test square, or the adjuster's judgment. What it does is point your inspections at the roofs where the documentation is most likely to matter, so you spend your inspection hours on roofs in the window instead of on three-year-olds that were never going to qualify. You still go up and document honestly. You just stop wasting the climb. When a homeowner asks why you knocked, the honest answer, that the roof's estimated age and the local storm history both point to it being worth a real look, is a far better conversation than a generic canvassing pitch.

Building Documentation That Holds Up Before the Adjuster Arrives

This is the operational core. If you do this part well, inspection day is short and the rest takes care of itself. The goal is a documentation package so complete that an adjuster who never met you could reconstruct exactly what you found, where, and why it matters.

The photo protocol

Volume is not the goal; coverage is. A good package is usually 40 to 80 photos for a typical residential roof, every one of them captioned with location and what it shows. Build it in layers:

1. Address and context. A street shot of the house with the address visible, then the four elevations. This anchors every later photo to a real property and a real orientation.
2. Overview of each slope before you focus on damage, so there is an honest record of overall condition. Yes, even when the roof is worn. Hiding condition reads as hiding something.
3. Soft metals. Gutters, downspouts, gutter apron, valley metal, every vent and pipe jack cap, turbine and box vents, the drip edge. Hail dents in soft metal are your strongest corroboration. Photograph the AC condenser fins and any window screens too.
4. Test squares. The measured chalk square wide, then each circled hit close with a coin or chalk for scale, labeled by slope.
5. Individual damage, wide then tight, for creases, mat fractures, missing tabs, lifted shingles, displaced flashing. Always pair a wide shot that locates the damage with a tight shot that proves it.
6. Collateral on the ground and elsewhere: fence, fascia, garage door, screens, painted surfaces, skylights.
7. Interior, if there is any leak evidence: ceiling stains, attic decking, wet insulation, with the location noted.

Two habits separate professional packages from amateur ones. First, scale in every damage photo: a coin, a chalk circle, a tape. A dent with no scale is an opinion. Second, capture metadata. Date-stamped, geotagged photos from a phone or an inspection app establish when and where the photos were taken, which matters enormously when the date of loss is in question. Turn on location services and shoot in an app that preserves it.

The measurement and diagram layer

A documentation package without measurements is half a package. You need a roof report, whether from an aerial measurement service or a hand measure, that gives:

• Total squares, with each slope broken out.
• Pitch by slope.
• Lengths for ridge, hip, valley, rake, and eave.
• Penetration and accessory counts.

This feeds the estimate directly, and it lets you scope by slope, which is how adjusters think. When you can say slope C is 9 squares with 11 qualifying hits in the test square, and here is the measured diagram, you have handed the adjuster a finished thought instead of a debate.

A worked example: one real-shaped inspection

Make it concrete. A homeowner reports a hailstorm three weeks ago. You pull the storm history and confirm a severe event hit the address that day with radar-estimated hail around 1.25 inches. The roof is an architectural shingle you estimate at 17 to 21 years old, a re-roof window that overlaps end of service life. Here is how the documentation comes together:

• Measurement report: 28 squares total, four slopes. South slope 9 sq, west 8 sq, north 6 sq, east 5 sq. Storm moved northeast, so south and west are the exposed elevations.
• Soft metals: gutter aprons show 14 fresh dents across the south and west runs, two downspouts dented, four turtle vents dented on top, AC condenser fins on the south side knocked flat in a cluster. Each photographed with a tape across a dent showing roughly half-inch impressions.
• South-slope test square: measured 10-by-10 chalked mid-slope, 12 qualifying hits circled, each with fresh mat exposure, photographed wide then close with a nickel for scale.
• West-slope test square: 9 qualifying hits, same treatment.
• North-slope test square: 3 hits, mostly old and oxidized. East: 2 hits. You record these honestly; the leeward slopes did not take the storm, and saying so makes the windward findings believable.
• Age and condition: you photograph the overall slopes showing moderate granule loss and mild oxidation consistent with the roof's age, and you note it. You are not hiding it.
• Estimate: a full line-item replacement scope in carrier-compatible structure, with 12 percent waste tied to the measured diagram, ice-and-water and drip edge listed where code requires, gutters and AC detach-and-reset where damaged, disposal, and steep/high charges where the pitch warrants.

When the adjuster arrives, you hand them this at the truck. They walk the south and west slopes, re-mark their own squares, find counts in the same range, see the matching soft-metal story, and the conversation is about reconciling line items, not about whether a storm happened. That is the difference complete documentation makes. Note what you did not do: you never told the homeowner the claim was approved, never quoted a payout, never mentioned their deductible except to say it is theirs to pay.

A field documentation checklist

Pin this in the truck. The crew works it the same way on every roof so nothing gets skipped under time pressure:

• Address photo with house number visible
• All four elevations from the ground
• Overview photo of every slope from the roof
• Every soft-metal component photographed (gutters, vents, caps, valley, drip edge)
• AC condenser fins, window screens, fence, fascia, garage door
• Measured test square per qualifying slope, hits circled, count recorded
• Coin or chalk scale in every damage close-up
• Creasing and seal checks documented on wind claims
• Storm direction noted; windward and leeward both shot
• Date and geotag confirmed on the photo set
• Roof measurement report attached, slopes broken out
• Interior leak evidence captured if present
• Repair estimate drafted in carrier-compatible line items

Tools, safety, and the boring stuff that protects you

The documentation only counts if you came home to write it up. A storm roof is a fall hazard, and OSHA fall-protection requirements apply to roofing work; treat steep, wet, or brittle roofs as the genuine danger they are. The basic kit that makes inspections faster and safer:

• A stable ladder set at the right angle and tied off or footed, with a roof hook for steep slopes.
• Soft-soled boots; on tile, stay off anything you do not deliberately step on, and walk the headlap.
• Chalk and a paint marker for squares and circling hits, plus a tape for the measured square.
• Coins or a chalk circle for scale in every close-up.
• A phone or inspection app with location services on, so photos carry date and geotag metadata.
• A drone for the first pass on roofs too steep or too brittle to walk safely. Aerial imagery does not replace the hands-on test square, but it gives you overall condition, slope orientation, and a safe way to spot the worst elevations before you commit to climbing.

A note on inspection apps: the value is not fancy software, it is consistency. An app that forces the same photo sequence on every roof and stamps each shot with date and location turns a junior crew member's inspection into something an adjuster can trust. Whatever you use, the discipline is the point.

Writing the Repair Estimate the Carrier Can Actually Use

Documentation proves what happened. The estimate proves what it costs to put the roof back to pre-loss condition. This is your scope of work to repair, written to your own work, and it is entirely within your lane as the contractor.

The practical move is to build the estimate in line-item form matching the carrier's estimating database, since most price losses in Xactimate. That does not mean you need their internal pricing; it means structuring your estimate the way theirs is structured, so the two reconcile cleanly. Components a complete roof estimate accounts for, each as its own line:

• Tear-off by layer count and pitch (steep and high charges where they apply).
• Shingles at the correct quantity with a defensible waste factor (commonly in the 10 to 15 percent range depending on roof complexity, hip versus gable).
• Underlayment, ice-and-water shield where code or the existing assembly requires it.
• Starter and ridge cap as separate lines with measured lengths.
• Drip edge, valley metal, flashing, step and counter flashing at walls and chimneys.
• Pipe jacks, vents, and accessories at counted quantities.
• Decking replacement allowance where rot or damage requires it, photographed.
• Disposal and dumpster.
• Detach-and-reset for solar, satellite, or anything that has to come off.

A few estimating realities that earn respect from adjusters:

Code upgrades belong in the estimate when code requires them. If local code requires ice-and-water shield, a drip edge, or a specific deck-fastening pattern, those are part of restoring the roof to a compliant, pre-loss condition. Many policies address code-required upgrades through ordinance-or-law provisions, but whether that coverage applies is the carrier's call under the policy. You list what the code requires and document the requirement; you do not assert the homeowner is owed it.

Waste and complexity are defensible when measured. A cut-up hip roof genuinely wastes more material than a simple gable. Tie your waste factor to the measured diagram and you can defend it. Inflate it and you lose credibility on everything else.

Detach-and-reset is real labor and a real line item. Solar arrays, satellite dishes, lightning protection. If it has to come off to do the roof, it goes in the estimate.

The goal of the estimate is not to be high. It is to be accurate, complete, and reconcilable. An adjuster handed a clean, line-item estimate that matches their platform and is backed by your photos and measurements does not have to take your word for anything; they can verify it. That is what gets a scope agreed without a fight.

The Inspection-Day Workflow When the Adjuster Arrives

You have documented the roof, written the estimate, and the carrier has scheduled their field adjuster. Now you meet them on site. This is where preparation pays off, and where staying in your lane keeps you out of trouble.

A clean inspection-day workflow:

1. Meet at the truck, not on the roof. Hand over your documentation package, photos, measurements, and estimate, before anyone climbs. Let the adjuster review your test-square locations and counts. You are giving them a head start on their own work.
2. Go up together. Walk them to your marked test squares. Let them re-mark and re-count their own; do not insist they accept yours. Your job is to make sure they see the same slopes and the same evidence you documented.
3. Point to facts, not conclusions. Say what you see, here are 11 hits in this square, here is fresh mat exposure, here are the matching gutter dents. Do not tell them what the damage means for coverage. That is their determination.
4. Cover the soft metals and collateral while you are up. These are the corroboration; make sure they get photographed.
5. Reconcile the estimate after. If their scope differs from yours, walk the line items together. Differences are usually quantity, waste, or a missed accessory, all of which your measured documentation resolves quickly.
6. Leave the coverage decision with the carrier and the homeowner. When the adjuster makes their call, the homeowner and the insurer take it from there.

The contractors who do this well are calm, factual, and prepared. The ones who struggle show up empty-handed, argue conclusions, and try to pressure a coverage decision they have no authority over.

The Do-Not-Say List: Staying a Roofer, Not a Public Adjuster

This is the part that protects your license, your reputation, and in some states your freedom from a real legal problem. There is a bright line between what a roofer may do and what only a licensed public adjuster may do, and storm-chasing sales pitches cross it constantly.

What you, the roofer, may do: inspect the roof, document damage thoroughly, identify facts about your own scope of work, and prepare an accurate estimate to repair that scope. You may state facts about your scope to the carrier. You may hand the homeowner a clean documentation package and a real estimate. That is legitimate, valuable, and entirely within bounds.

What you may not do, for a fee or as part of the sale, because it constitutes unlicensed public adjusting in most states:

• Negotiate, adjust, handle, or manage the claim on the homeowner's behalf.
• Interpret the policy or coverage, tell the homeowner what is or is not covered, or what their policy means.
• Promise a specific payout, approval, or settlement amount. You do not control the outcome and you cannot guarantee it.
• Promise the deductible is waived, absorbed, covered, or gone. In many states, eating or rebating a customer's deductible on an insurance job is insurance fraud, full stop. Do not advertise it, hint at it, or build it into a pitch.
• Advertise a free roof. There is no free roof. There is a covered repair with a deductible the homeowner owes.
• Represent the homeowner against the insurer, or position yourself as their claims advocate, specialist, or representative.

The instructive case here is Stonewater Roofing v. Texas Department of Insurance (2024), where even labeling oneself an insurance or claims specialist while soliciting roofing work was treated as unlicensed public adjusting. The line is not only about what you do; it is about how you hold yourself out. Sell roofing and documentation. Do not sell claims handling.

A clean script that stays on the right side: "I will document the roof thoroughly and write you an accurate estimate to repair it. You file the claim with your insurer, and they decide what is covered. If they approve repairs, we will do excellent work for the scope they agree to, and your deductible is yours to pay like any insurance claim." Honest, useful, and uncrossable.

If you want a quick internal compliance check, scan your own sales and marketing copy for the phrases above. The words "approved," "covered," "deductible," "free," "guarantee," and "we handle" near anything about a claim are the ones to hunt down and rewrite toward documentation and estimating.

Common Mistakes That Cost Contractors Scope

A field-tested list of what goes wrong, so you can avoid it:

• Pointing at blisters and calling them hail. The fastest way to lose an adjuster's confidence for the entire inspection.
• Cherry-picking the test square. Marking the one bad patch instead of a representative slope. Adjusters discount it immediately.
• No scale in photos. A dent with nothing for size reference proves nothing.
• Ignoring storm direction. Claiming uniform damage on all elevations when the storm was directional reads as wear.
• Skipping soft metals. The strongest corroboration of hail, and the most commonly under-documented.
• Hiding roof age and condition. It always comes out, and concealing it discredits everything you documented.
• An estimate that does not reconcile. Missing accessory lines, indefensible waste, no measured backup. It invites the adjuster to rewrite your whole scope.
• Promising outcomes. The moment you tell a homeowner the claim is approved or the deductible disappears, you have stopped being a roofer and started being a liability.
• Inspecting roofs that were never going to qualify. Burning inspection hours on three-year-old roofs because you canvassed blind instead of targeting the roofs actually in the age-and-storm window.

Putting It Together

What an adjuster looks for is not a mystery. They want to know whether a covered peril caused the damage, how much is storm versus age, and what it honestly costs to repair to pre-loss condition. They answer those questions with soft-metal surveys, measured test squares, directional logic, wear assessment, and a line-item estimate in a shared platform. Every one of those is something you can document first, better, and more honestly than anyone expects.

Do that, and inspection day stops being a negotiation and becomes a verification. Your photos answer their questions before they ask. Your measurements scope the roof by slope the way they do. Your estimate reconciles against theirs in their own language. And you do all of it while staying squarely in your lane as the roofer who inspects, documents, and estimates, leaving the claim where it belongs, between the homeowner and the carrier.

The earliest leverage is choosing the right roofs to inspect in the first place. Knowing a roof's estimated age range and its real storm exposure before you knock means your inspection hours land on roofs where the documentation actually changes the homeowner's situation, not on roofs that were never in the window. RoofPredict gives you that ranked, per-roof picture from aerial imagery and modeled storm history, and enriches the list you already own, so your crews climb the ladders most worth climbing. Treat the age as a range and the storm as odds, go up, and document the truth. The honest, prepared contractor wins the day every time, and stays a roofer while doing it.

FAQ

What is the most important thing a roof adjuster does during a hail inspection?

The test square. They chalk a measured 10-foot by 10-foot square (100 square feet) on a representative, storm-facing slope and count the qualifying hail impacts inside it. That count, slope by slope, drives whether they support replacing a slope. They corroborate it with soft-metal damage like gutter and vent dents, which are harder to dispute than shingle bruises.

How many hail hits does an adjuster need to find to total a roof?

Many carriers look for roughly 8 to 10 qualifying impacts per test square to support replacing that slope, but the exact threshold is a carrier and adjuster judgment, not a published universal rule, and they scope by slope rather than the whole roof. Never tell a homeowner a specific count guarantees an outcome; you do not control the threshold or the coverage decision.

What is the difference between hail damage and shingle blistering?

A hail bruise has a point of impact with fractured granules exposing the mat, a soft spot you can feel, and random directional distribution. Blisters are popped bubbles from off-gassing asphalt, with no fracture and a consistent manufacturing pattern. Adjusters spot blisters instantly, and calling them hail damage costs you credibility for the rest of the inspection.

What do adjusters look for on a wind damage claim?

Creasing across shingle tabs where wind lifted and folded them, missing or torn tabs with exposed nails, and broken thermal seals between courses. They also check whether unsealed shingles are from a wind event versus cold-weather installation or age. Collateral evidence like displaced flashing, debris, and damaged fascia corroborates that a wind event actually occurred.

How do I document a roof so the inspection goes smoothly?

Build a layered photo package of 40 to 80 captioned shots: address and elevations, an overview of every slope, all soft metals, measured test squares with hits circled, individual damage shot wide then tight with a coin or chalk for scale, and collateral on the ground. Add a roof measurement report broken out by slope, confirm photos are dated and geotagged, and draft a line-item repair estimate.

Should I write my repair estimate in Xactimate?

Structuring your estimate the way the carrier's estimating database is structured, with the same line items, quantities, and waste factors, lets the adjuster reconcile it against theirs in minutes instead of treating it as an outside opinion. The goal is not a high estimate; it is an accurate, complete, reconcilable one backed by your photos and measured diagram.

How does roof age affect a storm damage inspection?

Adjusters are trained to separate storm damage from wear and tear, which is excluded under nearly every policy. On a roof in the overlap window, old enough that real storm damage and end-of-life wear coincide, they look hard for reasons to attribute marks to age. Document the storm damage cleanly and let the age be what it is; pretending a worn roof is pristine discredits everything you point at.

Can a roofer negotiate or handle the insurance claim for the homeowner?

No. A roofer may inspect, document damage, and write an accurate estimate to repair their own scope, and state facts about that scope to the carrier. Negotiating, adjusting, handling, or interpreting coverage for a fee is unlicensed public adjusting in most states. The homeowner files the claim and the insurer decides coverage. Even labeling yourself a claims or insurance specialist while selling roofing has been treated as a violation.

Is it legal to waive or cover a homeowner's deductible on a storm job?

In many states, absorbing, rebating, or covering a customer's insurance deductible is insurance fraud, and advertising a free roof falls in the same category. There is no free roof; there is a covered repair with a deductible the homeowner owes. Keep the deductible out of your pitch entirely and treat it like any insurance claim, payable by the policyholder.

How do I know which roofs are worth inspecting after a storm?

Canvassing blind means inspecting roofs from three to twenty-five years old, and the newest ones almost never produce an age-supported storm scope. Tools like RoofPredict estimate a roof-age range per address from aerial imagery and model storm history against each individual roof, so you can target roofs in the age-and-storm window. Treat the age as a range and the storm as odds; you still go up and document honestly, you just stop wasting the climb.