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Roof damage: what to do first, what it costs, and how insurance pays

The first few hours after you find roof damage decide more than most homeowners realize. Not because anything has to be fixed immediately, but because the evidence you capture now is the evidence a claim rests on later, and because one five-minute check — the size of the loss against your deductible — determines whether filing is worth doing at all. This page is the order to do things in.

Reviewed 12 August 2026

The first 24 hours

Nothing on this list requires you to get on the roof. Almost every serious injury in this situation happens to a homeowner who climbed up to look, on a surface that had just been hit hard enough to need looking at.

1. Keep people away from anything sagging, and from water near wiring or a ceiling fixture. A wet ceiling holding water is heavier than it looks.
2. Photograph before you touch anything. Wide shots of each side of the house first, then close-ups. Interior too. Detail is covered below.
3. Contain interior water only where it is safe. A bucket and a moved rug are fine. A ladder in the rain is not.
4. Arrange emergency protection if the roof is open. Tarping is normally treated as reasonable mitigation. Keep the receipt and photograph the tarp in place.
5. Do not throw anything away yet — not the shingles in the yard, not the damaged blind, not the soaked insulation. Photograph it where it landed.
6. Find your declarations page. Before the roofer, before the insurer. Section two explains why.
7. Get one written, itemized estimate so you know the size of the loss as a number rather than a worry.
8. Start a folder. Photos, estimates, receipts, claim number, and a note of every call with the date and who you spoke to.
9. Do not sign an assignment of benefits. An AOB hands your right to collect the claim over to the contractor, who then deals with the insurer directly and is paid directly. Some are legitimate. Signed on a doorstep on day one, before you know the size of the loss, it removes your control over scope, price and settlement at exactly the moment you have least information. Several states have restricted them for this reason. There is no situation where signing one in the first 24 hours is necessary.

Two things not to do in the first day: do not sign anything a door-knocking contractor puts in front of you, and do not authorise permanent repairs before the damage is documented. A permanent repair erases the evidence of what was there.

Check the deductible before you file, not after

This is the step almost nobody takes, and it is the one that changes the answer most often.

A claim is only worth filing if the covered loss is meaningfully larger than your deductible. Below that line you pay for the work either way, and you have added a claim to your record for nothing. So the sequence is: get the written estimate, find the deductible that applies to this cause of loss, and compare them before you pick up the phone.

The trap is that the deductible you remember is often not the one that applies. Wind and hail frequently carry a separate deductible set as a percentage of your dwelling limit rather than a flat dollar figure. Two percent of a $400,000 dwelling limit is $8,000, and it does not shrink because the damage was small. If your declarations page shows a line marked wind, hail or named storm with a percentage next to it, multiply it out and use that number.

The second half of the check is roof age. On an actual cash value settlement the insurer pays the depreciated value and then subtracts the deductible, so an older roof can produce a first check of zero even when the damage is real and covered. The claim gap tool shows where that line falls for your own figures, and the Texas page works through it in the state where percentage deductibles bite hardest.

The five-minute version Written estimate, minus depreciation for the age of the roof, minus the deductible that applies to wind or hail. If what is left is small or zero, filing gains you little. That is a planning calculation, not a coverage determination — but it is the one that tells you whether the rest of the process is worth starting.

How to document it properly

Adjusters see photographs that prove nothing several times a day: a close-up of a damaged shingle with no indication of which house, which slope, or when. Context is what makes an image useful.

Photographs

• Every elevation of the house, wide, before any close-ups. This anchors everything else.
• Close-ups of missing, creased, cracked or bruised shingles, with something in frame for scale.
• Flashing, ridge, valleys, vents, and the drip edge.
• Gutters and downspouts. Dented aluminum is often the clearest evidence hail actually fell, and its size.
• Interior: ceiling stains, walls, and the attic side of the decking if you can reach it safely.
• Damaged contents where they sit.
• Any tarp or emergency repair, photographed before it is removed.

Keep the original files rather than versions that have been through a messaging app. Original files carry their capture date; forwarded copies usually do not.

Write down

• The date and rough time of the storm, or the date you discovered the damage.
• The approximate age of the roof, and whether you have the original invoice.
• Every contractor visit, and what each one said.
• Emergency work and what it cost.
• The claim number and adjuster name once you have them.

What not to do

Do not overstate damage or let anyone add to it — that turns a legitimate claim into a fraud problem that is yours, not the contractor's. Do not go on the roof to get a better photograph. And do not assume the first figure from either side is final; both estimates are opening positions built from different assumptions.

What kind of damage is it

The cause matters more than the appearance, because the cause is what the policy responds to. Sudden accidental damage is usually covered. Deterioration usually is not.

Hail

Round bruises with granule loss, often soft underfoot, sometimes with the mat exposed. Frequently easier to confirm on soft metal — vents, gutters and downspouts — than on the shingle itself. Note that some policies exclude cosmetic damage, which can mean dents that do not affect function are declined even though they are clearly hail.

Wind

Creased or lifted shingles, missing tabs, damage concentrated on one slope or along the ridge and edges. A shingle can be broken at the seal and look intact from the ground; that is why a wind loss is often larger than it first appears.

Water and leaks

The stain on the ceiling is rarely under the entry point. Water tracks along rafters and decking before it drops. This matters when you describe the loss: the visible damage inside and the actual breach outside may be meters apart.

Impact from a tree or branch

Usually the clearest cause to establish, and often the most urgent, because the structure may be affected rather than just the covering. Photograph before removal if it is safe to, and keep the tree service invoice.

Age and wear

Curling, widespread granule loss in the gutters, brittle shingles, repeated small leaks. This is the category insurers decline, and it is the reason a roof near the end of its life is harder to claim on: the argument becomes whether the storm caused the damage or merely revealed it. Being able to show the roof's age and prior condition helps here more than anything else you can do afterwards.

Repair or replace

The matching problem is the one homeowners underestimate. Asphalt shingle lines change every few years, and a repair on a ten-year-old roof often means a visibly different patch on a prominent slope. Some policies address matching and some do not, so it is a question to ask early rather than discover at the end.

Questions worth asking the roofer

• What caused this, and how can you tell?
• How much area is actually affected?
• Is the decking sound, and how do you know before tear-off?
• Can the existing product be matched? Show me.
• Does the price include tear-off, disposal, underlayment, flashing, ventilation, drip edge and the permit?
• What does a repair not fix?
• What is the workmanship warranty, in writing, and what voids it?

What it costs

Repairs vary too much to publish a useful single number: a handful of shingles is a call-out charge, while a slope with wet decking is close to replacement economics. What is worth knowing is the replacement figure, because that is the number a repair quote should be judged against.

For a 1,800 sq ft footprint in architectural asphalt on a 6:12 pitch, two stories, one layer torn off and around 10% of the decking replaced, the roof estimator produces roughly $12,950 to $20,650 before any regional adjustment, made up of:

Two lines are worth watching, because they are where quotes diverge and where change orders come from. A second layer to tear off takes the same job to about $15,180 to $24,870. And decking, which nobody can assess until the old roof is off, moves the range from $12,330 at 0% to $18,530 at a full deck. If a quote is conspicuously cheaper than the others, check what it assumes about those two lines before assuming it is a better deal.

Why the check is smaller than the quote

Almost always two things, in this order: depreciation, then the deductible.

On an actual cash value settlement the insurer subtracts wear from the replacement figure before paying, and then subtracts the deductible. On a replacement cost policy the depreciation is held back rather than removed, and released after the work is finished and documented. Either way the deductible stays yours.

Beyond that, the two documents may simply describe different work. Before disputing a number, put the carrier estimate and the contractor quote side by side and compare quantities and scope line by line — squares, layers, underlayment, flashing, ventilation, drip edge, decking allowance, disposal, permit — rather than comparing totals. Most gaps turn out to be a missing line rather than a disagreement about price.

The insurance guide covers how ACV, RCV and recoverable depreciation work, and the claim gap tool puts your own numbers through it.

Choosing a roofer after a storm

Storm work attracts crews who arrive after the weather and leave before the warranty matters. The checks below are quick and they filter most of it.

• Confirm liability insurance with the insurer, not from a certificate handed to you.
• Check licensing or registration with your city or state. Requirements vary widely and some states, including Texas, do not license roofers at all.
• Get the estimate itemized, in writing, with quantities.
• Ask who pulls the permit and who schedules the inspection.
• Ask for references and recent local work you can actually look at.
• Read the warranty and note what voids it.

Reasons to stop

• An offer to cover, waive or absorb your deductible. In several states this is prohibited, and submitting the paperwork exposes you as well as them.
• A promise to get the claim approved, or to handle the insurer for you. A contractor acting as a public adjuster on work they may also perform is barred in a number of states.
• Pressure to sign today, or a blank or partly blank contract.
• An assignment of benefits presented as routine paperwork, or buried in a contract you were asked to sign before an estimate existed.
• A large cash deposit with no schedule of works.
• A suggestion to add damage, or to describe old damage as storm damage.

Related guides

• Roof replacement cost calculator — the itemized planning range, and the method behind it.
• Claim gap tool — your replacement figure, roof age and deductible, and what the first check looks like.
• Insurance guide — coverage types, ACV and RCV, recoverable depreciation.
• Roof cost in Texas — percentage wind and hail deductibles, and when a claim pays nothing.
• Roof permits and inspections — who pulls it and what happens if it is skipped.
• Cost by square footage — measuring your footprint from the ground.
• Methodology — how every rate on this site is sourced and checked.

Questions