Resources · Hail & storm damage
The storm came through in the spring, the way it usually does here. Your carrier agreed the loss is covered, an adjuster walked the roof, and the estimate landed a few weeks later. Read it closely, and it funds a repair rather than the repair.
Two people can walk the same roof and write two very different numbers. Neither of them has to be wrong for that to happen. A storm estimate is built from three separate judgments, and each one has room in it. Scope, price, and depreciation.
This page is an informational overview of how storm losses get valued. It isn't legal advice, and your policy's exact language controls everything described below. Ironclad Assessment Group serves as a neutral appraiser and umpire. We're not a public adjuster, and we don't adjust, negotiate, interpret your policy, or settle your claim.
The first question is which items made the list at all. Hail rarely hits only one plane of a building. It often arrives at an angle with the wind behind it, so the north slope and the west elevation can tell two different stories, and an estimate built from the slopes reachable off a ladder may not describe the whole house. Wind damage argues differently, and a storm that brings both leaves two arguments running at once.
Soft metals are where two valuations often separate. Gutters and downspouts, ridge and turtle vents, fascia wraps, window wraps, screens, the aluminum on a bay window. These usually dent before a shingle bruises, and they're easy items to leave off a summary page. Siding goes the same way, especially on an elevation that faces away from the street.
Then there are the test squares. An adjuster chalks a ten-by-ten on a slope and counts hits, and what that documents doesn't always turn into a line item on the estimate that follows. Where it doesn't, the two appraisers are starting from different lists.
Scope answers what. Price answers what that costs, in this market, this year, on a house in Hilliard or Westerville rather than in a national average.
A square of architectural shingle doesn't install for one figure everywhere, and the pricing databases carriers build from are updated on their own schedule. Tear-off and disposal is real labor and a real dumpster, priced by what crews around here actually charge. Pitch and height move the labor too, since a roof steep enough to need staging doesn't cost what a walkable one costs.
None of that is exotic. It's the ordinary work of pricing a repair at local rates, and it's where two honest valuations drift apart.
Then the carrier subtracts for the life the roof already used up. Depreciation is a judgment, not a measurement, and careful people land in different places on it. A twelve-year-old roof under a thirty-year shingle draws one figure from one estimator and a noticeably different figure from the next.
Two things matter. How much was taken, and whether it's recoverable when the work is done. Recoverable depreciation comes back after the repair is completed and documented, on whatever terms and deadlines your policy sets. Non-recoverable doesn't. Which one applies is a policy-language question, and yours is the only copy that answers it.
On a hail file, repair or replace is usually the single largest gap between the two numbers.
Say the damage concentrates on one slope. The carrier's estimate repairs that slope, on the reasoning that undamaged shingles don't need replacing. The contractor's position is that the shingle line was discontinued years ago, nothing available blends, and the repaired slope will read as a repair from the street. Both positions can be argued in good faith, and both routinely are.
The argument turns on what the policy says about reasonably uniform appearance, and on how far that obligation reaches, whether to the damaged slope only or to the roof as a whole. Some policies address it directly. Some don't. Whether your policy requires matching is a policy-language question, and it isn't something an appraiser reads for you.
Ice-and-water shield at the eaves. Drip edge. Decking that no longer meets the current fastener requirement, and re-nailing when it doesn't. Ohio sets its residential building code at the state level, but what a local inspector in Columbus or New Albany calls for on a given tear-off still isn't automatically what an older desk estimate assumed.
These show up as disputed line items constantly, and this is the place to be precise about lanes.
An appraisal panel values the loss. Whether your policy funds ordinance-or-law upgrades, and up to what limit, is a coverage question, and coverage questions sit with your policy language and, if it comes to it, a policyholder-side insurance attorney. If the disagreement is about what the work involves and what it costs, that's amount. If it's about whether the policy pays for the upgrade at all, that's a different door, and appraisal isn't it.
Sooner or later a storm file runs into some version of this sentence. The granule loss is consistent with wear and age rather than with hail.
That one is genuinely hard, and it earns an honest answer instead of a confident one.
When a carrier accepts a claim but attributes part of the damage to wear rather than to the storm, the dispute sits on contested ground. Whether a causation argument belongs inside appraisal or outside it depends on the wording of the clause in front of you and on the facts of the file. There isn't one settled answer to point you to.
We won't tell you which side of that line your claim falls on. Nobody selling you an appraisal should. What's worth saying plainly is that this is the question to put to a policyholder-side insurance attorney before you spend money going down either path, because picking the wrong one costs you the thing a storm file can least spare. Time.
Storm files sit. You're collecting bids, the estimate is being revised, someone's waiting on a supplement, and a season goes by.
Two provisions in many Ohio property policies keep running. Most policies contain a prompt-notice requirement, which asks you to report the loss and cooperate within some window after it happens. Most also contain a suit-limitation clause, a deadline for filing legal action that is often shorter than people assume. Your policy's exact language controls both, and there's no substitute for reading yours.
The appraisal clause has a clock of its own once a demand goes out. Twenty days is a common figure for each side to name its appraiser after a written demand. Common isn't universal, so check yours.
The mechanics don't change for hail. A written demand invokes the clause, each side names an appraiser with no financial stake in the result, and the two value the loss independently before comparing positions item by item. What's left goes to an umpire, and an award signed by any two of the three panel members sets the amount. We've walked that out step by step on its own page.
What's different on a storm file is the evidence. Slope-by-slope documentation. Test-square photographs with a scale in the frame. Weather data for the date of loss. The shingle manufacturer and line, and whether that line is still produced. All of it built into a valuation someone else can check.
Our fee is set in writing before the engagement begins and never depends on the size of the award. That's what keeps the number credible. Nobody bought it. The full picture of what we do as appraiser and umpire is on the services page.
That can be an amount question, and when it is, the appraisal clause is built for it. But if the real argument is whether your policy requires undamaged slopes to be replaced for appearance, that's policy language, and an appraisal panel doesn't interpret it. Read your clause before you decide which problem you have.
Sometimes, and sometimes not. When a carrier attributes damage to wear rather than to the storm, whether that belongs inside appraisal depends on your policy's wording and on the facts, and there isn't one settled answer. Put that one to a policyholder-side insurance attorney before you commit to a path.
No. Appraisal decides the amount of a covered loss, not whether a loss is covered. A denial is a coverage question, and coverage questions belong with an attorney. Don't let the deadlines run while you think it over.
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