Resources · Siding & exterior
The roof is why anybody came out. The ladder goes up, the slopes get walked and photographed, and the elevations get a look on the way back to the truck. But a storm that reached the roof crossed everything else to get there, and the items it reached first are the ones an inspection built around the roof can pass over.
Nobody is hiding anything. An inspection has a reason for happening, and on a hail file or a wind file the reason is the roof, so the estimate that follows takes the shape of the inspection behind it.
Contractor estimates come out the same way from the other side, since a roofing contractor writes a roof. Both come out roof-shaped for ordinary reasons, and neither describes the whole building.
This page is an informational overview of how exterior 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.
Soft metal is the honest indicator out here, and not because it's the expensive part. It deforms where a shingle may only absorb, so it can record an event that's still in dispute on the roof.
Gutters take it on the flat face and in the round of the bottom, where dimples read only in raking light. Downspouts crease at the flats and the elbows. Fascia and window wrap are coil stock bent on site, thin enough that a dent stays a dent. Screens take punctures, and their mesh stretches. Turtle vents, ridge vents, power vent housings, and gable louvers dent on their upper faces, and so do the aluminum fins on the outdoor condensing unit.
None of that settles a roof argument, and the carrier's estimator has a real point here. Soft metal dents from plenty of things, and aluminum dents aren't dated. What the soft metals give both valuations is something physical to work from.
Siding is a category, not a material, and the common materials fail differently.
Vinyl cracks and punctures. A strike leaves a clean hole with the edges pushed in, or a crack running from the point of contact. Vinyl tends to flex when warm and turn brittle when cold, so an impact that leaves a July wall unmarked can split a January one. And a crack disappears in flat light.
Aluminum dents and tends to keep the dent, which is why the denting argument turns up here. The finish is the second question, because a strike that breaks the baked coating leaves bare metal open to the weather.
Fiber cement fails through its coating. It's a dense cementitious board, so impact chips a face or corner and leaves a lighter core showing, or opens a hairline crack. It doesn't dent. It breaks, and a broken finish leaves the substrate unsealed.
Wood splits. Cedar shingles, shakes, bevel boards, and board-and-batten take impact along the grain, and the paint or stain film opens where the wood moves under it. Once that film is open, the wood can take moisture, and a mark recorded in September may not be the same mark by March.
Engineered wood is another thing again, a resin-bonded composite finished at the factory. Where the surface opens, the core can take on water and swell at the break, so what matters is less the mark than what it lets in.
Material decides what the repair involves too, not only what counts as damage. A vinyl or aluminum wall arrives with its color made in, and the other three get finished.
The argument on a siding file is narrower than whether siding can be damaged. It lands on whether one mark on one wall came from this event, since walls chalk and fade, and aluminum oil-cans in the heat.
A house has elevations, and a storm has a direction. The west wall can be visibly damaged while the east wall comes through untouched, which is ordinary rather than a contradiction in the file.
That cuts both ways, and here the carrier's position carries weight. Damage on the exposed elevation isn't evidence of damage on the sheltered one, and an estimate pricing four walls because one was hit describes work the building doesn't require.
The unit of measurement matters too. Siding is priced by the wall plane, which runs course over course until it reaches a corner post, a change of direction, a trim line, or the end of the building. An estimate reading "siding" without naming elevations can be read two ways.
Removing siding is never only about siding. A weather barrier sits behind it and sheathing behind that, and whether water reached either is a question of fact a valuation answers.
A wall also carries items fastened over the siding, including shutters, light fixtures, hose bibs, dryer and bath vent terminations, and downspout straps. Those come off and go back on, so a valuation pricing the panel alone has priced only part of the job. Gutters run the same way, since a gutter hangs on fascia, and a wrapped fascia is part of that same work.
The principle runs the other direction too. Detach-and-reset lines get written where the work doesn't call for them, and a padded valuation is as wrong as a thin one.
Siding is harder to match than roofing. Profiles turn over quickly, and a panel that has to lock into the courses around it can't be substituted the way a shingle sometimes can. A wall also fades where it faces the weather, and whether that turns a repair into a larger scope is a separate argument with a page of its own.
An exterior file splits three ways like any other property file. Scope, price, and depreciation are the arguments, and the glossary lays them out in full. Scope is the widest of the three out here, since it's where the elevations, the soft metals, the detach-and-reset lines, and everything behind the panel live. Price is local, because a wall in Columbus doesn't install for a national average.
The mechanics don't change for siding. A written demand invokes the clause, each side names an appraiser with no financial stake in the result, and what the two can't close goes to an umpire. That's walked out step by step on its own page.
What a panel decides is the amount of a covered loss. It doesn't decide coverage, and it doesn't interpret what a policy requires. A disagreement over which elevations belong on the list and what they cost to put back is an amount question.
The record looks different on an exterior file. Material identified by name and profile rather than written down as siding, and every elevation documented on its own, including the ones that came through clean. Raking light does the rest, since a crack in vinyl vanishes in a flat photograph.
Our fee is set in writing before the engagement begins and never depends on the size of the award. Nobody bought the number, and that's what lets it hold up. What we do as appraiser and umpire sits on the services page.
It depends on what the disagreement is. Where the argument is whether the siding belongs on the list and what the wall costs to put back, that's amount of loss, and the clause was built for it. Where the carrier's position is that the siding isn't covered rather than isn't damaged, that's coverage, which a panel doesn't reach. Whether the marks came from this event at all is contested ground. Whether that argument belongs inside appraisal depends on the wording of the clause and the facts of the file, and there isn't one settled answer to point you to.
That gets argued constantly, in good faith on both sides. One position holds that a panel still shedding water is doing its job, and that hairline cracking turns up on walls that never saw a storm. The other holds that a crack is a break that opens further with each year's temperature swings, so the wall is no longer what was installed. Pricing either version is inside what a panel does.
Two positions, and neither one is unreasonable. One reads a gutter that carries water as a gutter that works, and treats denting as appearance rather than function. The other reads dents as damage to the component whether or not water still moves, since aluminum doesn't come back to shape. Where the disagreement is about the work and its cost, it stays an amount question.
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