Hail on Holly Hill Drive and the Estimate That Came Up Short
Hail came through Franklin in late May. The claim on this Holly Hill Drive home wasn’t inspected until October. Hail doesn’t leak on day one. It shortens a roof’s life quietly, and most homeowners find out only when a neighbor’s roof goes on.
The carrier’s first estimate covered the obvious work. Tear off the laminated shingles, install new ones, felt, starter course, hip and ridge cap. What it left out was most of what gets destroyed on the way to installing those shingles.
A 42-square hip roof, and almost all of it steep
The measurements explain how this job ran. 4,214 square feet of roof surface, 42.15 squares. The ridge runs only 30 linear feet while the hips run 270, so this is a hip roof nearly end to end, with all the extra cutting and capping that comes with it. Just over 40 squares sit at a 7/12 to 9/12 pitch, another section climbs into 10/12 to 12/12 territory, and 28 squares are two stories or higher.
Steep and high aren’t cost lines for their own sake. They change how material reaches the roof and how long a crew can safely work a section. On this house it took fifteen labor hours just to get 45 squares of shingles up there, a detail that separates a real scope from a desk estimate on any hail damage roof replacement.
What the supplement added
Step flashing gets nailed through and woven into the shingle courses. You can’t pull a roof off and leave it behind intact, and putting damaged flashing back under new shingles is how a roof leaks in three years. The same goes for the L flashing and the chimney flashing. None of it was in the original scope. All of it was necessary, and all of it went back to the carrier with photo documentation attached.
Drip edge and valley lining were missing from the first pass too. Building code coverage on the policy picked up part of that, which is one reason it pays to have somebody read a carrier estimate line by line instead of accepting the number at the bottom. That reading is most of what our insurance claims work actually is.
Full scope on this one:
- Tear off and disposal of laminated composition shingles (42.15 SQ)
- New laminated composition shingles (45.33 SQ including waste)
- 15 lb roofing felt (42.15 SQ)
- Universal asphalt starter course (299.24 LF)
- Hip and ridge cap, standard profile (301.49 LF)
- Drip edge (299.24 LF)
- Roll roofing valley lining (1.05 SQ)
- Step flashing (43 LF)
- Chimney flashing, 32″ x 36″ (1 EA)
- Pipe jack flashings (3 EA)
- Power attic vent covers, metal (3 EA)
- Rain cap (1 EA)
- High grade gutter guard and screen (297 LF)
- Aluminum gutter and downspout (106 LF)
- Deck sheathing cleaned and refinished (814 SF), handrail (84 LF)
The vents stayed, the covers didn’t
Three power attic vents sat on this roof and the homeowner wanted them kept. Hail had beaten the metal covers, so the covers were replaced and the vents stayed in service. That gets handled badly all the time, usually by ripping the whole assembly out and swapping in something nobody asked for.
Hail hard enough to bruise shingles also dents aluminum and chews up gutter screen. Close to 300 linear feet of high grade gutter guard came off and went back on, along with 106 feet of gutter and downspout. The deck below took its share, so it was cleaned and refinished with the handrail. Bundling that work with the roof means one crew and one mobilization instead of ladders going back up six weeks later, which is why gutter work usually rides along with a replacement on our Franklin jobs.
Start to finish in a day
Work commenced and completed on the same November date. Forty two squares, steep pitch, two stories, one day on site. That comes down to crew size and staging rather than hurrying, and the completion photos show flashing details and finished hip lines instead of one wide shot from the curb.
Holly Hill isn’t the only address on that street we’ve been on. When one storm crosses a neighborhood the claims arrive in clusters, and neighbors comparing scopes is how a lot of people discover their own estimate is thin. A free roof inspection in Franklin will tell you where yours stands, whether you’re on Holly Hill or anywhere else in Williamson County.