Hi everybody this Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing and we're not doing a
Wednesday walk in the park on this video but we are answering a pretty frequent
question that we get. What's the difference between a blister and a hail
hit?
We got called to do an inspection on a roof here in Central Colorado Springs
and it's for sale and this is commonly when we see this problem show up as a
home inspector comes to the house and says that there's hail damage and
recommends that a roofing contractor come out and evaluate it and perform the
repairs. Well this house doesn't have hail damage it has blisters so let's I'm
going to show you what the difference is between those two. Now thankfully this
house actually does have one hail hit on it so I can show you what a hail hit
looks like versus a blister. So right up here is the one hail hit and you can see
how hopefully you can see this all right it's it's real dark in the center and
it's somewhat circular in shape and if you feel it there's a little dimple
right in the middle of it. So those are all really good indications of a hail
hit that's one of my pet peeves about insurance adjusters doing inspections
with drones is with hail damage like that you actually have to be on the roof
and see it, touch it, feel it, and make sure that there is a dimple in there so
that way you know it is hail damaged or not. The other thing about this damage
here is its size a blister typically is not going to be this big you can see
this is just about the size of a quarter hail damage isn't always that big but
frequently if there's hail damage you're gonna see that it's it's larger than a
blister. So let's look at a blister now. The blisters on this roof are actually
really small so hopefully we can get some to show up here all right right
here these are just about a little bit bigger than an eighth of an inch so
there's some here and here's another one here. There's actually quite a few of
them the shingles along the eave here you can probably see
here's some more here's some more. Let's go take a look at one that's quite a bit
larger than these. Typically when there's blistering they're all gonna be right
about that size about an eighth of an inch maybe a quarter of an inch. You can
see here's one here that is showing the fiberglass down underneath the asphalt.
But you can see the shape of this it's kind of all-star shaped with a point
here and a point here and a point here and that's what indicates to me that
that's not hail damage but it's a blister. Plus the fact that there are
blisters all over on this side of the roof. So what causes a blister? Why does
your roof get blisters? Typically it's because of heat buildup it's a thermal
problem more than anything that the shingle gets hot the asphalt kind of
bubbles up a little bit and then when it cools the bubble goes away but it's
loosened all the granules in that little bubble and so then the granules fall out.
Oftentimes that's caused because there's not enough ventilation in the roof to be
able to get that heat out from underneath the shingles. So having a
properly ventilated roof is super important to preventing blisters which
also makes your manufacturers warranty still valid if you don't have enough
ventilation your manufacturers warranty is going to be voided. So if you get a
home inspector or even a roofer who says that you have hail damage ask him to see
the photos and if you see that it looks more like a blister rather than hail
damage then it really would be wise to get a second opinion ask a different
roofing contractor to come out and take a look at it. So I hope this has been
helpful especially if you've got issues on your roof with blisters versus hail
damage. If you've got any other questions about this kind of topic please give us
a call right up here at our office phone number 719.433.6991
you can also visit our website right down here Homestead
Roofing whoops little too low HomesteadRoofingColorado.com. We've got a ton
of information out there for homeowners lots of other tips and stuff especially
if you're selling a house lots of good information for home sellers. If you
liked this video and it's been helpful for you please leave us a comment down
in the section below. We'd also love to hear from you
what kind of videos you'd like us to. Make sure to subscribe to our channel
click the bell icon up there that way you get notified when we produce more
videos. Until our next Wednesday walk in the park which today wasn't really a
walk in the park, I'm Tracey Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing.