After a storm or a frost: having the roof and facades of a house held from afar inspected

Why is roof damage always spotted too late?

A displaced tile makes no noise. The water slipping through does not pour in: it seeps in a thin stream, crosses the under-roof, soaks the insulation and dampens the frame. For weeks, sometimes months, everything remains invisible from the living rooms: the stain only appears on the ceiling once the materials upstream are saturated. By then, the repair no longer concerns one tile but an entire assembly.

Frost works the same way, silently. The freeze-and-thaw cycle lifts tiles, loosens fixings, bursts ageing flashings and opens the joints of the facade. Each episode worsens the previous one, and the first visible sign often arrives seasons later, at the worst moment.

From abroad, nobody looks up at your roof. The neighbour notices a fallen branch, not a shifted row of tiles; the post says nothing about the overflowing gutter. That is why roof and facade checks must be triggered, not awaited: they belong to the reflexes you install, not to the evidence that presents itself.

The protocol to follow straight after a weather alert

The order of operations matters as much as the operations themselves. Here it is, as it unfolds.

• The visual inspection first: from the ground, the street and an upper-floor window, sweep the roof, the verges, the chimney stacks, the gutters and the trees overhanging the house with your eyes. Never climb up.
• The photos next: general and close-up views, time-stamped, before any clean-up and before any tarping. They form the memory of the claim.
• The interior, always: loft or attic, ceilings of the rooms below the roof, looking for damp marks, water points, mouldy smells.
• The declaration to the insurer, within the deadlines set in the contract, even without a final assessment of the damage: an initial report describes what is observed, and the file is completed afterwards.
• Waiting for the expert, finally: no definitive repair before their visit, except a clear emergency, tarping, securing, and in that case photos beforehand and safekeeping of the removed parts.

Better still: part of this protocol is prepared before the season. In autumn, cleaning the gutters and pruning the branches overhanging the roof directly reduces the damage of the next gale. These season-closing gestures, repeated every year, are the best informal defence, and the post-storm check then merely confirms that everything held.

For an owner abroad, this protocol requires someone on site, methodical and recording every step. This is precisely the role of the Home Select concierge service: someone on site records, photographs, documents the declaration, then coordinates the trades and reports back at every stage.

The tree and the facade after a gust

The roof is not the only exposed part. Wind also works on vegetation and walls, and that damage is resolved easily when caught early.

The tree first: a branch looming over a roof, a leaning trunk, lifted roots cracking a slab. A branch rubbing a tile with every gust wears the roofcovering prematurely, and a hanging branch always ends up falling. Pruning belongs to an equipped professional, never to an improvised ladder and saw, especially near power lines.

The facade next: render cracked beside a hanging gutter, torn flashing, a bent downpipe throwing water against the wall instead of carrying it away. A wall repeatedly soaked becomes waterlogged, and the damage slowly works down towards the lower floors or the foundations. The earlier the discovery, the simpler the remedy: resetting a downpipe takes little effort, redoing waterlogged render across a whole elevation is a project.

Finally, the neighbourhood: if a tree on your plot now threatens the one next door, warning beats enduring the fall. Neighbourly courtesy counts double when you are away.