Hail Damage On a Commercial Roof — It’s Not Just Hail Threatening Your Building
Hail damage can seem like the end of the world.
When a hailstorm hits, and hits hard, entire communities are often devastated. Even small-sized hail (pea-sized) can damage the roof of your business, your home, your car, and even equipment left outside.
And when hail starts to creep up in size, the danger magnifies — and so does the fear. While the news might love to report on baseball-sized hail (I suppose it makes a good headline), business owners like us live in fear of hail of this magnitude.
Unfortunately, even the strongest roof is unlikely to be able to stand up to hail this massive — that’s what insurance is for.
But for hail of the marble-sized variety, or even hail between one and two inches, your roof can be either your biggest ally…
Or your business’ biggest liability.
Hail Damage Itself Isn’t the Problem — It’s the Leaks the Hail Causes
The reason hail damage is such a problem is because it can cause leaks, leaks that most businesses really can’t afford. A leak in your roof isn’t always immediately apparent, and it isn’t always simple to fix.
In fact, in many cases, once the integrity of a roof is breached, you begin a long process of repairing the roof, waiting for new leaks to form, and then repairing again, until eventually, the entire roof begins to fail.
And along the way, you’ve got water seeping into your building, and not always in noticeable areas. Water can leak into the interior structures of your building for days, weeks, or even months without anyone noticing.
By the time you get back there, you may have entire sections of your building that have been severely damaged, have rotted away, or have filled with mold (or all of the above!), requiring serious, costly repair.
It’s More Than Your Building That’s at Risk
If the leak goes directly into your building, you haven’t exactly won the lottery. If you have expensive or sensitive equipment (and oftentimes, equipment is both expensive and sensitive), a little bit of water could damage a very expensive investment.
Damage to a data center, for example, could not only set you back a large sum of money, but it could also damage your ability to do business, cause you to lose critical customer data (not to mention the customers themselves), or even put you out of business entirely.
Even in a warehouse stocked with water-resistant or water-impervious goods, you still have the danger of a slip-and-fall incident.
Such an incident could cause you to lose a great employee temporarily (or even permanently), trigger an investigation, cost the business a great deal of money, or all of the above.
However, though hail can be severely damaging, there’s another component of hailstorms that most business owners don’t consider.
Wind Can Be Just as Damaging as Hail
While we would never downplay the damage that hail from a severe storm can cause to your roof, we want to urge you to consider the role that wind can play as well.
Wind damage can be just as severe as hail damage, if not more severe, depending on the storm and the type of roof you have.
Wind uplift (where portions of your roof are literally lifted up, or even blown away) and wind scouring (where gravel or other components of your roof are blown off completely) can severely impact the lifespan of your roof…
Without you even knowing about it.
Fortunately, there’s a roofing material that combats both wind damage and hail damage — SPF roofing.
To learn more about how SPF roofing can stand up to hurricane-force winds, follow the link below.
[…] winds can also increase the damage to your roof from hail. Remember, when hail damages your building, it’s not falling straight down—it’s being […]
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