hail claims
We're your roofing contractor, not a public adjuster — we document the hail pattern and its effect on the roof so your claim reflects the real scope, beyond what's visible from the ground.
Hail is a real, recurring problem for Midlands commercial roofs — Columbia sits inside a spring-and-summer thunderstorm corridor that regularly produces hail-bearing cells, and low-slope membrane roofs take that impact very differently than a shingled house does. A homeowner's roof shows cracked shingles that anyone can spot from the street. A commercial TPO, EPDM, or modified-bitumen roof can absorb a hailstorm and look almost untouched from below, while the membrane surface, seams, and rooftop equipment carry damage that only shows up on a close inspection.
What Hail Actually Does to a Commercial Roof
The effect depends on the system. Single-ply membranes like TPO and EPDM can bruise — the surface thins or fractures at the impact point without an immediate hole, which weakens the material's resistance to UV and weathering over time. Modified-bitumen and built-up roofs, common on older buildings around downtown and the Vista, can show cracked granules and mat exposure. Metal edge, coping, gutters, and rooftop unit housings take visible dents that are useful because they corroborate hail size and direction even when the membrane itself looks intact. We check all of it, membrane included, because a claim built only on visible dents in metal can undercount the real damage underneath.
Why Hail Claims Get Disputed
The most common fight on a commercial hail claim is functional versus cosmetic damage: does the bruising actually shorten the roof's service life, or is it a mark that doesn't affect performance? That question gets answered with evidence, not opinion — impact density per roof zone, membrane thinning at hit points, whether hits cluster near seams and penetrations where a failure would actually leak, and how the pattern compares to known hail direction from the storm. We build that record on-site rather than relying on a drive-by estimate written from the parking lot.
Documenting a Hail Claim That Holds Up
We mark and count impacts by roof section, photograph each area with a scale reference, note impact size and density, and record which rooftop components — HVAC housings, vent caps, pitch pockets, edge metal — show matching damage. On distribution and warehouse roofs along I-20, I-26, and I-77, where a single membrane run can cover an acre or more, we section the roof into zones so the density map is legible instead of one blurred description. On buildings near Fort Jackson and the airport corridor, where rooftop equipment tends to be denser, we pay particular attention to curb flashing and unit pans, since hail damage there often precedes a leak that shows up weeks later.
Timing Matters
Membrane bruising softens visually as heat and UV exposure continue to work on the surface, so an inspection done a month after the storm can miss evidence that was clear the week it happened. If your building took a hail hit, the sooner we get on the roof, the more defensible the documentation.
Send us the building address, the date of the storm if known, roof age, and access instructions, and we'll schedule a roof walk to document the hail pattern and put together the findings your claim needs.
