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
A written report with photographs does three jobs. It turns a purchase negotiation from opinion into evidence. It converts “sometime soon” into a plan with a season attached — which is what lets you gather quotes unhurried, in spring, instead of urgently in August. And when replacement is the verdict, it becomes the scope document that makes three bids comparable, because every bidder is pricing the same documented findings — the same valleys, the same edge repairs — rather than their own quick look.