Storm damage roof repair in San Antonio

The first 48 hours, before you call anyone

You can do all of this yourself. None of it needs a contractor on site.

1. Stay off the roof. Wet shingles are slick and soft decking hides under them. Look from the ground with binoculars instead.
2. Photograph everything, and check that your phone is saving the date. Take wide shots of each side of the house first. Then take close shots of gutters, downspouts, window screens, siding, and the AC fins. Hail that hit your roof almost always hit those too, and they're easier to prove.
3. Check the attic with a flashlight. You're looking for wet decking, damp insulation, and daylight where there shouldn't be any.
4. Stop water from spreading inside. Move furniture, set out buckets, and pull back soaked insulation so the ceiling can dry.
5. Keep every receipt for anything you buy to limit the damage. Emergency mitigation costs are often reimbursable under a policy, even when the repair itself is still being sorted out.
6. Pull out your declarations page. You want three numbers from it: the Coverage A dwelling limit, the wind and hail deductible percentage, and whether roof surfacing is settled at replacement cost or actual cash value. Those three decide most of what happens next.
7. Don't sign anything yet. Not an estimate, not a work authorization, and not any form that says a contractor will handle your claim.
8. If water is actively coming in, tarping is the next step, not a repair. Our emergency roof repair and tarping page covers when tarping helps and when it makes things worse.

Wind damage

Wind doesn't tear a roof off all at once. It works the seal loose first.

A creased shingle has a fractured mat. It can't be glued back down, and it will leak later even if it looks flat today. A tab that unsealed without creasing can sometimes be hand sealed. Missing ridge caps and displaced flashing get replaced and re-detailed, not patched over.

Straight-line winds through San Antonio neighborhoods regularly pass 60 mph. Shingles are tested for wind under ASTM D3161 and ASTM D7158, but the rating on the wrapper isn't the answer. What matters is what your shingles actually did, and whether the rest of the system is still sound.

The other wind problem is matching. A repair only holds up if the replacement shingle still matches in profile and color. Once a line is discontinued, a spot repair starts looking like a patch, and that pushes the decision toward replacement.

Hail damage

Hail damage splits into two kinds, and the difference decides whether a claim pays.

Functional damage fractures the shingle mat and shortens the life of the roof. Cosmetic damage dents or marks the surface without breaking anything. Plenty of Texas policies now exclude cosmetic damage outright. That exclusion gets applied to metal roofs most often, because metal dents and keeps working.

Hail size, the repair-or-replace math, and how a Texas hail claim moves along are covered in depth on our hail damage page.

When hail actually happens here

San Antonio's hail season is short and sharp. Nearly all of Bexar County's severe hail days land in March through May, heaviest in April. Our own storm-tracking data puts the area at roughly 4.4 severe hail days a year over the last several years.

That matters for scheduling. Every reputable roofer in the city is booked solid for weeks after a spring event, and out-of-state crews show up during the same window. If your damage happened in April, you're competing with your whole neighborhood. If it happened in October, you can take your time and be pickier.

What a Texas roofer can and can't do with your claim

This is the part most roofing websites won't say plainly.

Texas Insurance Code section 4102.163 says a contractor can't act as a public adjuster on a property it's working on. That's not a technicality. It means no negotiating with your carrier, no arguing scope on your behalf, and no advising you on claim strategy. A roofer who offers to do those things is offering something the law doesn't allow.

Texas Insurance Code section 707.002 says the policyholder pays the deductible. Texas Business and Commerce Code section 27.02 makes it a criminal offense for a contractor to pay, waive, absorb, or rebate that deductible. Anyone offering to cover it, credit it, or work around it is asking you to take part in that offense.

So here's what we actually do. We inspect the roof. We document what we find, in writing and in photos, with enough detail that it stands on its own. We hand that file to you. You own it, and you're the one who gives it to your carrier.

Why a valid claim can still pay you nothing

Most Texas wind and hail deductibles aren't a flat dollar amount anymore. They're a percentage of your Coverage A dwelling limit, which is the rebuild cost of the house.

On a home insured for $400,000 with a 2 percent wind and hail deductible, you absorb the first $8,000. That number doesn't move with the size of the loss. It's $8,000 whether the storm did $9,000 of damage or $90,000.

Two things follow from that, and neither one gets explained before the inspection.

First, a claim can be perfectly valid and still pay zero. If the loss comes in under your deductible, the carrier agrees you have damage, applies the deductible, and cuts you a check for nothing. You now have a claim on your record and no money.

Second, roof age changes the math. Many Texas carriers now settle roof surfacing at actual cash value once the roof passes a set age. A twenty-year-old roof that's totaled can pay a depreciated fraction of what a new one costs. Stack that against a percentage deductible and the payment can end up smaller than the deductible itself.

None of this is us telling you what your policy does. It's what to go read on your own declarations page before you file. A free inspection gives you a documented starting point either way.

What documented findings look like

A useful inspection report isn't a one-page estimate.

Ours shows the roof slope by slope, with photos tied to locations. Hail impacts are marked and counted per test square. Wind creases, lifted tabs, and displaced flashing are shown up close. Decking condition, ventilation, and flashing details get noted whether or not they're storm related, because your carrier will ask.

When we do complete a replacement, you get the Power Package. That's five documents you keep: the supplier's material invoice, the certificate of completion, the impact-resistant certification, the paid-in-full invoice, and the manufacturer's written warranty registered in your name. They're yours to submit, not ours to submit for you.

When a storm repair turns into a replacement

Repair is usually right when the damage sits on one slope, the roof is under about ten years old, and a matching shingle is still made.

A full roof replacement becomes the more reliable answer when damage crosses multiple slopes, the roof is near the end of its life, or the original shingle is discontinued. After a tree strike, punctured decking and any rafter damage need a structural look before the roof gets closed back up.

Permits and historic districts

Almost every residential re-roof inside San Antonio city limits needs a building permit from the Development Services Department. Your contractor pulls it. Ask to see it.

If your address sits in one of the city's 27 locally designated historic districts, the Office of Historic Preservation reviews exterior changes before the building permit issues. A storm repair that swaps composition for metal, changes tile profile, or alters the visible shape of the roof triggers a Certificate of Appropriateness. Plan for extra time on that. If your address falls inside Alamo Heights or Olmos Park, those cities run their own review, and a San Antonio permit doesn't cover you there.