If you have a metal roof on your house, you may feel confident that your home is protected and that your roof will make it through storms. It's true that metal roofs are durable and can tolerate typical storms, but they can still be damaged in the event of a severe storm with exceptionally strong winds or large hail.
Here are factors that affect whether a storm might damage your metal roof and some steps that might need to be taken for storm damage restoration.
Factors That Influence Storm Damage
Metal roofing panels come in different thicknesses. If your roof has thicker gauge steel, it will probably sustain less damage than if you have thin metal, such as aluminum. Plus, the slope of your roof matters when it comes to how wind might lift the panels and how hail hits.
The amount of hail damage is determined by the size of the hailstones and how fast the wind is blowing. When you bought your roof, it was probably rated for hail up to a certain size and wind up to a specific speed. Freak storms or storms with tornadoes or hurricanes might surpass these limits and cause damage.
Storm Damage Restoration That Might Be Needed
Your roofer will assess your roof and let you know the type of damage you're dealing with so you can talk to your insurance company. If your insurance company will pay for a new roof, then you won't have to worry about repairs. However, dents from hail are sometimes not covered, so your roofer might need to take steps to restore your roof.
Dents can be pulled out as long as there aren't so many that it's not realistic to fix them all. The roofer checks to make sure the coating wasn't scratched when the roof was dented. If so, the contractor may need to cover the cracked area or recoat the roof so rust won't form.
Extra large hail might puncture thin metal roofing if it lands with a strong enough impact. While the roofer may not need to repair dents if the damage is just cosmetic, they'll need to patch punctures or rain will leak under the roofing. This could involve adhering a metal patch to the roof that covers the hole.
If a metal panel was lifted and twisted, the roofer might need to replace the entire panel. If panels were battered by the wind, the movement may have worked screws loose. In that case, the roofer may need to tighten or replace screws, especially in exposed-fastener panels.
Also, if the wind hurled objects against the roof or knocked down a chimney and bricks slid down the metal panel, there could be gouges and scratches that need to be filled and coated so they don't start to rust due to the coating being scratched off.
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