Roof inspection
An inspection is worth its cost when it answers a decision you are about to make: buying a house, planning next season’s budget, or deciding whether an aging covering has another few years in it. In a climate where a roof can read fine from the street and be finished at the edges, one documented look often tells you what the next five years will ask of you.
When it earns its price
Three moments justify the cost here. Before a purchase: a roof at the end of its life changes what a house is worth, and this region’s stock makes condition easy to misjudge: the sunny slope shows the buyer what the shaded slope knows better.
After the wet season: the slow damage of eight damp months shows itself by March, and spring is the least costly time to address it, before the dry-window rush. And near the end of a covering’s life: when the real question is “this year or in three years,” a documented answer beats a guess in either direction.
What gets checked
On the surface: the moss line and what sits under it, because an established mat hides the condition of everything beneath; the edges, eaves, rakes, bottom courses, fascia, where Sound-area roofs actually end their lives; valleys under their debris load; sealant and flashing at every chimney, wall and vent penetration; and the rubber boots at plumbing vents, which crack in their second decade and are often a roof’s first true leak.
On the attic side, which a street-level look can never replace: ventilation, and the broad-area staining that separates condensation from a point leak: a distinction that changes the entire diagnosis in this climate; moisture on the underside of the decking; fans ducted into the attic instead of outside, a common find in the mid-century stock; and daylight where there should be none. A report that skips the attic is half a report.
What the report is good for
The value of a written report is that it survives the conversation. Three bidders pricing the same documented findings, the same valleys, the same edge condition, the same moss line, are finally comparable, and a purchase negotiation stops being a matter of whose contractor said what. It also converts a vague sense that the roof is tired into a season, which is how you avoid ordering work in the middle of the wet months.
What an inspection covers on the Puget Sound
- What is the inspector looking for under the moss?
- The edges and the bottom of each slope, mostly. Moss is a symptom of a slope that stays wet; what decides the roof is whether the covering under it has lost its granules and whether the eaves have started to soften. The report should say what the slope looks like once the mat is lifted, not just how green it is.
- When is a roof dry enough to inspect here?
- Less often than people hope. NOAA's records at Sea-Tac average about a hundred and fifty-five days a year with measurable rain over the last decade, spread across eight months, so the roof visit is scheduled around a dry window. The attic side (the part that explains why the slope stays wet) does not need one.
- Do the valleys get checked under the needles?
- Yes, and the report should say what kind of valley it is. Open metal sheds needles; a closed valley holds them, and holds water with them. Under fir and cedar, that detail decides how the roof drains for the next decade.
- What does the report say about a cedar-shake roof that was re-covered with composition?
- What lies beneath. Shakes went down over spaced boards, and composition laid over that without a new deck is sitting on gaps. The inspector reads it from the attic, and the report should say whether the deck is continuous or not before anyone prices the next roof.
- What findings actually fail an inspection around here?
- Softened fascia and deck at the eave, a valley holding needles and water against open metal that should be shedding both, exposed fasteners, and condensation staining across the attic deck rather than a single point leak. Any one of those can fail a report on a roof whose field still looks reasonable from the yard, because the moss and the sunny slope tend to hide exactly this kind of edge damage.
- Why do I keep getting calls about a free roof inspection?
- That kind of call is almost always generated from a list of addresses rather than from anything actually observed on your roof, and it tends to pick up after any stretch of wind or heavy rain in the area. A real inspection is booked on your own schedule, produces a written report with photographs, and answers something you asked about, not a pitch that starts with an unsolicited knock.
- 1 Ridge caps. The first pieces to lift, and the ones the weather gets underneath.
- 2 The field. Moss on the damp slopes holds water where the covering wants to dry.
- 3 Valleys. Needles mat where two slopes drain as one, and stay wet for months.
- 4 Flashing. The chimney, and where an addition meets the original roof.
- 5 The vent boot. Rubber perishes quietly under a canopy that never lets it dry out.
- 6 Eaves. The last part of the roof to dry, and the first to go soft.