Roof inspection
An inspection earns its cost when it answers a decision. In a state with housing this old, the decisions are specific: what is actually under the covering, whether the framing has moved, and whether the ice that appears at the eaves every winter is a roofing problem or a heating one.
When it earns its price
Before buying, above all: on a nineteenth-century house the roof is one of the largest numbers hiding in the purchase, and a general home inspection rarely establishes the layer count, the sheathing type or whether a sag is old and settled or still moving. Before winter, on an aging covering: the freeze finds every loose edge, and finding them in September costs less than finding them in February. And on any house that ices at the eaves each year, because that symptom is worth diagnosing before it is worth roofing over.
What gets checked
On the roof: what the covering is and how many layers it appears to be; whether the edges are still sealed; the difference between the north and south slopes, and how much moss is established; every wall junction and whether the flashing is layered metal or sealant doing the work; the uphill side of every chimney, and whether a cricket exists; the valleys and what sits in them; and the ridge line, sighted along its length for deflection.
Off the roof: the attic, where most of the real story is. Whether intake exists and is open rather than buried, rust on nail points (condensation, not a leak), staining on the underside of the deck, daylight at penetrations, and, on old houses, what the framing actually is and whether anything has moved. And in winter, the single most informative observation available: how the snow melts off the roof, which says more about the house than any measurement.
What the report is good for
A written report turns impressions into decisions. For a buyer it puts a number on the largest hidden item in the purchase, and distinguishes a settled century-old sag from a structural problem. For an owner it fixes the scope, so three bidders price the same deck assumption, the same layer count and the same ventilation work, the only way a comparison between quotes means anything. And it puts the job in the right season: identified in spring, quoted properly, installed in the warm months when the covering will actually seal.
Questions about inspecting a roof in a Connecticut winter
- Can the inspection be done in winter?
- Winter is the most informative time for half of it. NOAA's records at Bradley average about a hundred and twenty nights at or below freezing and roughly forty inches of snow a year over the last decade, and snow on a roof is an instrument: the melt line shows where the heat escapes, the ice shows where it refreezes. February reads the attic; the covering gets read in May.
- What does the report say about the chimney?
- Whether there is a saddle behind it, and whether the snow has been piling against the brick for want of one. On a house with a wide chimney on the uphill side, that saddle, built or missing, is the finding that matters most.
- Does the inspection go into the attic of a house framed before 1900?
- It has to. Rafters spaced by eye, boards laid with gaps, a ridge that has settled. None of it shows from the ground, and all of it decides what the next roof can be. The report should describe the framing, not just the covering.
- Why is the north slope graded separately?
- Moss. The north face holds moisture because it never dries out, and it ages on its own clock. A single grade for the roof hides the one slope most likely to need attention first.
- What kind of finding fails a roof inspection in this climate?
- A missing cricket behind a wide chimney, step flashing sealed instead of layered into the courses, ice-and-water membrane that stops short of code distance up the slope, and a ridge vent buried under packed snow with no way to exhaust. Any one of those can fail a report on a covering that otherwise has years left, because they are graded as their own findings, not folded into a general impression of the roof.
- Why do I keep getting calls about roof inspections?
- Most of that outreach comes from a purchased list of addresses rather than anything actually observed on your roof, and calls tend to increase after any hard winter or heavy snow event in the area. A real inspection is one you scheduled yourself for a reason you can name, and it comes with a written report and photographs rather than a same-visit sales pitch.
- 1 Ridge caps. Thin, exposed, and worked loose by a winter of freezing and thawing.
- 2 The field. One layer or two, and the answer changes what a tear-off costs.
- 3 Valleys. Leaves mat where two slopes drain as one, and snow sits on top of them.
- 4 Flashing. Old masonry chimneys, and the saddle behind them that should shed snow.
- 5 The vent boot. A collar that goes brittle in the cold and splits without warning.
- 6 Eaves and ice dams. Where escaping attic heat melts snow that refreezes at the edge.