We suffered an amazing hail storm a few days ago. Over 2,500 square feet of copper on one house is dented. Barrel dormers, flat roof sections, open valleys, standing seam – got it all! My roofer advises me that a dent in copper can lead to a hole within ten years due to thermal cycling. The insurance adjuster wants to replace only the work you can see from the ground. Can anyone help me find “proof” that the life expectancy of the copper work has been compromised?
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If there's a lot of dough involved, I'd contact a metallurgist (my father's a retired one who consults) and ask him about it. I wonder if "work hardening" I think it's called is a factor inasmuch as the impact would change the temper of the copper?
Decided to call Dad... hate to tell you but he says (this is from a retired aerospace metallurgist with like 50 yrs experience whose specialty was failure analysis) that your roofer is wrong. He said thermal cycling is irrelevant. He said there mightttttttttttt be some effect if water stood in little pools in the dents but was very skeptical it would make any difference. Basically he thought the dents would make no difference whatsoever... not what you wanted to hear but there it is. HTH nonetheless.
PaulB
Edited 5/17/2006 6:29 pm ET by PaulBinCT
Wait until you get a response from Seeyou. He's the copper expert on this forum. My own guess is that dents in the flat stuff holding water would be a big issue.
-- J.S.
i don't know about copper but i know about insurance
simple... put it back like it was before the storm... period...
what kinda crap is "fix what you can see"
I'd get a price or the total redo and hand it to the adjuster...
you are to be put back "whole" not whole as in what you can see.... it wasn't dented now it is... fix it... period... oh yeah and try to keep the tearoff
p
I agree with you except that the insurance company is unlikely to be footing the full bill unbless it is an expensive full replacement policy. They usually take depreciation from time of installation.With price of coper shootintg sky high, the amt they will kick in on a five year old roof will look pitiful
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Yeah, but you can recycle the old copper for some pretty good $$.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
Piffin, I've got full replacement w/ $500 deductible, and it can't be that expensive, 'cause Mrs. ,Snort okayed it<G>Our gutters got trashed in an ice storm, agent came out and only wanted to replace what he could see from selected vantage points...I'm pretty persistant...we got all new gutters.House got broken into later, thief got all our dead and dying audio/video stuff, everything was replaced. I didn't have half the receipts, just descriptions.You're making me feel great about Farm Bureau<G> I need a dump truck, baby, to unload my head
They're a good outfit
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
They're a good outfitWell, not always as their first option...sometimes ya gotta just show 'em the light<G> I need a dump truck, baby, to unload my head
Piffin
Having just had a hail storm come through Texas, well make that several hail storms coming through Texas, our house and car were both hit very hard, the car could not have been worse if I'd have taken a baseball bat to it, seriously.
The house has what the insurance man calls "hard hits" where the shingle is showing black fiberglass, the grit is completely gone.
Talked with the insurance man yesterday and he started in on the "depreciation" BS, I let him know that the roof was two years old and that I'll accept a certain amount of depreciation but when they are all said and done I better have a roof equivalent to what I had before the hail. I know that the insurance companies job is to make money but they don't have to right to do it at my expense.
When we got done, just as I had 15 years ago on a claim, they gave me the amount minus the depreciation, but when I prove to them that the work was done I get the check for the depreciation. This is how it is normally done.
You cant expect to get a full roof replacement if your not going to do a full roof replacement. Other wise you have a defective roof and you put money in your pocket, which is not the purpose of the insurance money.
The incident that I referred to about the house 15 years ago had a roof that was 27 years old and in dire need of replacement, they handled it the same way. They depreciated it, but once it was redone, I received the depreciated amount.
On this particular situation with the OPer I'd have a completely new copper roof at the insurance companies expense(give or take a few bucks) and the price of copper would have no baring on it! That's what those premiums that you've been paying are for. I know that you already know this, intended for the OPer then for you specifically.
Doug
Edited 5/17/2006 9:35 pm ET by DougU
That's what those premiums that you've been paying are for.
Absolutely!
Live the Good Life in the Permian Basin.
IC
Your over near Huston right?
Did you guys get any of the hail thats gone through here lately?
My wife works out at the outlet mall and the hail went through there and just beat the living sh!t out of that place. Tile roofs destroyed, a lot of windows broken, parking lot looked like a demoliton derby.........
Our house is only about 2 miles away, close to Jacks Tav, it took a good hit as well.
I was up in Iowa when it hit, when I got home I went down to San Antonio to replace the wifes car, they had a hail storm that same week and every car in the lots on the north side of SA were damaged to some degree. I got a good deal on a 1 year old with 6K and they have to fix the hail damage. Insurance co.'s must be hating life right now!
Doug
Insurance co.'s must be hating life right now!
They get paid for it. Don't feel sorry for them.
Houston didn't have much hail. I was through Austin-San Antonio area and saw a lot of signs advertising 'paintless dent repair' hanging at every corner last week.
Lotta signs busted out at the outlet mall. Not much else visable from I-35 at 80 mph.
I like that Jack's place. They still have a little BBQ on Sunday afternoons?
Are you getting a new roof?
Live the Good Life in the Permian Basin.
I think the last time I drove by Jacks on a Sunday I did see some one out tending the grill, always smells good! I need to stop by some time.
Yes, I'm getting a new roof, also had an aluminum awning over my patio and that thing looks like a country stop sign, you know, full of dents!
So the awning is coming off and I'll build a roof over the patio and enclose it to gain sq. footage. Works out OK because I was planing on that anyhow, now I have an excuse to get busy on it.
Oh, BTW, I wasn't feeling to sorry for the insurance co.'s!
Not much else visible from I-35 at 80 mph.
Did I hear right, they thinking about raising the speed limit to 80? If so you'll be OK. I drive that fast on I-35 myself, always wonder how fast those guys are going that are pulled over by the highway patrolman, they must be flying!
Doug
Yeah, it's goin up to 80 in west Texas on I-10 from Kerr County to El Paso. That'll be a breeze.
I like that drive except for the last few miles when you get into El Paso county and have to slow down. It's already 75 out there now, anyway.
Glad to hear they treated you right on your roof.
Live the Good Life in the Permian Basin.
I'm south ofn 1604, between I-10 and 281. When that outlet mall hail storm went through, we got a little hail and some rain, not enouygh to talk about. It must have come through from the northwest on a southeast headinmg, cuz the east side of SA got hammered.
About 2 days later we got a hail storm very early Saturday morning, left about 2" in the front yard, but it was pinto bean size and did very little damage in town.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
Ed
I was up in Iowa when it hit, we had tornados there to contend with!
I got back down here late April, went down to San Antonio on about the 4th or 5th of May and the guy at Mission Jeep on I-35... said that they had hail on Tuesday May 2nd. Maybe it just hit north SA. It was enough to do damage to every car on the lot with one exception, a Hummer!
I drove north after the visit with Mission and every dealer from there on up had hail damage. You didnt get any of that? I'm fairly sure of the date.
The one that hit the mall was bad, a lot of the tile roofs on the facads of the stores was broken like someone had taken a sledge to it. My wifes car had the mirrors and door handles sheared right of the car.
Doug
I remember the big one that hit the outlet mall. All the tv and radio stations could talk about was how bad the traffic jams were, and they showed videos of cars at the mall with all the windows busted out. Showed one pic of a minivan ... must have a fiberglass hood ... hail had punched a hole clean trhough the hood. My neighborhood literally got light rain.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
Any idea on the size of the hail
that did that kind of damage?
I think they were saying golf ball sized up to baseball sized.
But I think it was more like the ice in an ice bucket, you know how it all gets stuck together, creates one really big ice cube!
Also I think it was the amount of hail that fell, sounds like it was large amounts, not just the typical 60 seconds worth of it but maybe 5 solid minutes of it, with some strong winds to help speed it up some.
I know there are parts on my wifes car that if I was to hit it with a baseball bat I'd have a tough time making such a dent.
I was in Iowa so my son wanted to save me some of the hail to see, he picked some up out of the yard to put in the freezer to show me, it was maybe inbetween a ping-pong ball and a golf ball, this was picked up in the yard 2 hours after the storm!
They had to close the mall down for that day and the day after because there was so much glass from cars and stores that it was a safety thing. Signs dangling from the stores, clay tile sliding off at will, air conditoners on the roofs were pumeled to the point that the fins were all smashed together, they couldnt cool the air anymore. Temps were in the high 90's low 100's.
Doug
Edited 5/19/2006 3:10 pm ET by DougU
What could you do to design for that kind of weather? Maybe steep stainless steel roofs? Stainless work hardens, you could put it up and just wait for the free shot peen job.... ;-)
-- J.S.
Kevlar roof tiles?
Sod roof.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
There you go. We had the top 50' of an 80' tulip poplar come down on our roof, courtesy of a hurricane remnant. No damage. Hail would only hurt the tomatoes up there.
And a bit cheaper than copper these days...
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Edited 5/20/2006 8:03 am ET by VaTom
all depends how the policy is written. When I worked in texas, I saww a variety of types pf copverage.This I will say - those who got jhit in the first five years were generally very happy with the way they were treated by their ins co. The ones with older roofs groused a bit about how much they had to kick in.reminds me of another story.
An old man moved from the city ( Denver area) to my small mountain town for his retirement and bought a smallish house. Withina month or two, he discovered that it had a leak. He called his State Farm agent who put me onto the job. For various reasons, he and I ate lunch together once a week.Anyway, I went to see the job and it was laughable as a roof. Shingles curled up and obviously ten years past their prime. I kept my professional poise though and advised that walking on the roof would do more damage than I could fix in an attempte to deal with the leak.So I worked up an estimate and talked to him about it. he was pretty straight forward - You just take this to State farm. They're gonna giove me a new roof if that's what it takes to stop this leak.So I gave him a copy and another one to the agent, mentioning top him that it was fully depreciated. A normal question they usually asked me.A few days later, I had a phone call from the agent that he had a check in hand for me - full amount - whenever I had it finished up.Amazing, I said, how'd he get past the depreciation thing?"Well, this guy has been a State Farmer all his life - all his houses and cars, and he has never made a claim on anything. We just felt like we needed to make him happy for that loyalty."
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Piffin
I agree with ya, I'm sure there are more ways to settle an insurance claim then there are ways to hang kitchen cabinets!
Doug
But when replaced they usually owe the 'replacement cost'. If they withold depreciation at first it should be refunded when the replacement is completed.
Live the Good Life in the Permian Basin.
I think you are exactly right. You would be if it was MY house.
The ins. contract calls for returning the insured to the same position as before the loss (indemnity) not just in function but also in appearance. If someone looked at the roof from above it's not the same as before.
Make 'em pay what's fair. Nothing more nothing less.
Best question to ask: "Show me in the policy where it allows that?"
Live the Good Life in the Permian Basin.
>>>>>My roofer advises me that a dent in copper can lead to a hole within ten years due to thermal cycling.
Your roofer must be slow and looking for work.
My guess is that the damage is purely cosmetic. That being said, graffiti sprayed on a $100,000 car is purely cosmetic, but it lowers the value. The copper should be replaced by the insurance company (IMHO), but not for the reason stated by the roofer which is total BS. Good luck.
Its never too late to be up to date.
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Ask the man if he would be willing to climb a ladder or ride in a helicopter so he can see better.
If people only replaced the part of the roof they could see then roofers would be out of business.
You do not change the oil in your car for cosmetic reasons.
When they agreed to insure your roof they did not do that with the idea in mind of only what they could see.