Storm and hail
Insurance claim help
We inspect the roof, document what the adjuster has to find, and push for a re-inspection when a carrier says no.
Chapter 01
The test square, and the number your insurer will not tell you
Every insurance provider has its own bar for what counts as storm damage, and none of them publish it up front. What they do is send an adjuster who marks out a square of your roof, ten feet by ten feet, and counts the hail bruises found inside it. Depending on the company, the job needs somewhere between five and 15 bruises in that one square to qualify.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is why two houses on the same Richmond street can file the same week and get different answers. A roof can be genuinely damaged and still fail a test that was rushed, or done in a patch of the roof that took less of a hit than the rest. We walk the whole field first, not just the one square the adjuster will use, so we know before they arrive whether the count is close.
Close view of an aged shingle field showing granule loss and hail impact marks
What a denial letter actually means
A denial is not a final verdict on your roof. It is one inspector's read of one visit, and it can be wrong, incomplete, or based on a square that happened to miss the worst of the damage. When a claim comes back denied, we can request a re-inspection and put the case in front of the carrier a second time.
One Richmond homeowner's initial claim was refused this way. Our team appealed it, a second inspection was granted, and the insurance company ended up approving a full replacement, not just a patch. That is the pattern worth knowing before you accept the first answer as the last one: missing or torn shingles, active leaks, and damage to the soffit and fascia are all things an adjuster can miss on a fast first pass, and a second look with the right documentation in hand often reads differently.
Chapter 03
What we document so the carrier cannot re-deny it
We photograph the shingle field before the adjuster ever gets on the roof, so the hail-bruise count and the pattern of missing or torn shingles are on record rather than argued about after the fact. We note where the leaks are actually entering and where the soffit and fascia have taken damage, because those are exactly the things a re-inspection request has to point to.
We work the claim directly with your insurance company from that first inspection onward, in English or Spanish, so you are not translating adjuster language on your own at the kitchen table. Call (832) 220-5057 any hour of the day if you think a storm did more than the first look suggests, whether that is your first inspection or your second one.
Smart Choice Roofers works the claim with you from the first inspection through approval. Call (832) 220-5057.