Performing a Roof Inspection with Russ Ackerman CMI®

Hi. My name is Russ Ackerman. I'm a Certified Master Inspector through InterNACHI. I'm here to do a roof inspection. Today we're going to cover a typical inspection of a roof from the exterior. My roof inspection starts from the ground. As I'm as I'm inspecting the exterior of the home, I'll usually start by documenting attic ventilation which might not otherwise be visible from the roof that would include gable and soffit vents. So I'm going to walk around the house now and try to look for those and here in the side of the house we can see we have a gable bent so I'm going to take a picture and document that on my report when I set up my ladder I typically look for a place where I got a nice flat surface to set the ladder anytime you're setting up the ladders I always want to look for wasps nests that might be around always looking for overhead power lines as well as you get up in the ladder we're always going to tie off our butt ladders with a bungee cord as you see up there I always want to keep your ladder tied once we get up at the gutter line I usually want to check for any drip edge flashing that might be here this one does not have any because the gutter is serving as the drip flashing or gently pull up on the shingles I can see that there's underlayment going over the flashing make this sure to bond it down it's not the wind is not going to take and pull it up once we're on the roof here I'm going to continue looking for attic ventilation so I'm going to be looking for a roof vents will go overlooked for that here we can see we have roof vents for the Attic so I'm going to talking about that take a picture of that make sure all the nails are sealed down as well next we take some overview shots of the roof I always like to make my pictures look great so if I have a mountain view versus another house I'm going to take the mountain view so I'll go over here and take a couple photos and I'll take some photos some more overview shots and I'll get one overview of justice ingles in general and then as we were looking over the conditional roof I am seeing some granule laws I'll go over look for exposed nails the flashings this is all sealed up good you come over here we have some exposed nails at the ridge line here so I make sure those are all set and sealed they're popping out get over here you can see one exposed nail some granule law so the Hale kind of hits sometimes it shows up on the ridge shingles versus the rest of the roof plane and as we get to the valleys I want to check to make sure they're properly bonded and we want to these shingles sealed against cross wash so the water doesn't wash over and under so I'll give a little Cub going down the valley just to make sure they sealed and these are pretty good these are sealed pretty well also in order to document other flashing around that roof besides a drip edge flashing any roof penetrations I always want to document those look making sure they're properly installed make us your nails are sealed take pictures of everything document everything because this is a area that the client is not going to follow you up on the roof your HVAC vent over here as well check again for flashing issues exposed nails want to make sure there's no cracks in the bed here which might allow water that's actually drain and back into the furnace you come around here you can see some nails popping up the flashing is popping up you got a big gap here on make sure this one have a roofer come in here seal these nails seal that flashing back down same with the skylight here as well got the flashing popping up wanna have that secured and nailed here you can see over the sunroom in the back of the house there there's still asphalt shingles but it's definitely newer it's been installed recently the owner actually said it was 1/2 years old I put it on my report one to five years old so we're to check that out first thing I noticed is some flashing issues where this addition is going against the original roof kind of hard to see here but I'll take some pictures there's a metal flashing and then they just have it covered with tar paper which is a indication this things might have had leaking problems at at one point this plastic is improperly installed on top of the singles should be like a counter flashing installed here so I did take a couple pictures and document that we recommend evaluation repair by a qualified roofer potential leaking point here that's an issue continuing with flashing down here you can see on the lower roof they have actually a piece of wood glued to the chimney or talked to the chimney working as a counter flash and that's improper install but the counter flashing should be going into the motor joints of the chimney which it's not this is a potential issue it's something I would recommend the sellers to caulk or the buyers to have them check the seals make sure this is sealed annually or replace by a qualified roofer also at the bottom of this flashing that we're looking at right now you can see we're missing a kick-out flashing where the flashing ends at the gutter line there that's going to allow water to just pour down along the side of the chimney we want to have a proper kick-out flashing installed there as well on this roof surface you can see that there's a broken there's a low sluice missing tab here on the roof and I recommend having that checked out replaced by a qualified roofer and then we'll check out the last portion of the roof which is this rolled asphalt valley towards the front of the house we'll go check that out right now here we have a little rolled asphalt in this valley here you can see there's a lot of granule loss there's a lot of cracking this foot this portion of the roof is at or near the end of its lifespan I'm going to recommend having this evaluated replaced by a qualified roofer here we have tree branches in contact with a roof surface and several I always recommend trimming trees at least 10 feet away from the roof surface that's not always possible but we just don't want them when they're blown in the wind we don't want to be causing abrasion against the shingles against the fascia so we're going to recommend having these trim back over here we have more tree branches close to the roof surface going to recommend trimming those back and on the back of the house as well you see tree branches in contact with the North corner of the home then we're going to look at the skylights we're looking for proper flashing at the head wall flashing the counter flashing the apron flashing everything looks pretty good here again we made note earlier that the flashing was curling up at the corners here on both these corners would recommend having be sealed secured down also if you look at all three skylights there's condensation moisture between the glass and all three of them these are all failed window seals I'm going to recommend replacing all three of these skylights right here and down here you can see it's all fogged up that's just going to continue to fog up more and it's going to be you won't even be able to see all of them eventually and here you can see the moisture it's in between the panes of glass once you get inside the house we're not going to do that today but once we get inside the house you're going to want to check closely for any moisture stains on the insides of these skylights if they're already you want to confirm it with a moisture meter make sure it's not an active leak either way you would put in your report that evidence of past leaking recommend repaired by a qualified roofer last thing on the roof is the plumbing weather boots I want to make sure that weather boots are intact they're not all cracked up a lot of times it will be on older homes allowing water penetration in the Attic again well makes your nails are sealed up if you find these all bleeped up with tar that's indication that they've been leaking and they need to be replaced by a qualified roofer these are in good shape though the chimney is normally part of my exterior inspection but because there are roof flashing who stuff we'll do a quickie on here we did notice it's a 60-inch wide chimney so we want to make sure we have some kind of cricket or flashing at the head of the chimneys keep water from pouring against it which it does a couple things I'm noting here is the flashing improperly installed here should be inserted into the motor joints there should be a groove cut inserted into the motor joints these are just slapped up against the chimney cocked that's going to wear out eventually cause leakage that's something I'm going to recommend sealing annually until we have proper flashing installed also we'll notice there's a lot of loose missing mortar at the joints these are water penetration these are potential water entry points as rain can get down inside the chimney chase you'll see a lot of that here and all over the side of the chimney here as well there's a lots of gaps in the mortar I'm going to recommend having that tuck pointed sealed up properly getting the side of the chimney again you've got a piece of wood kind of like we head down below you know a piece of wood caulk to the chimney serving as a counter flashing this is not a proper installation we do have proper step flashing underneath but we going to recommend having proper counter flashing installed otherwise this is going to need sealing annually to prevent water entry and as we continued with our roof inspection over the main house we did notice one nail pop on the on the roof here it wasn't set properly it was actually it was actually set where it was supposed to be just wasn't sunk down all the way so I don't have that secured make sure this is sealed down so we don't have nailed poking through the top of the shingle later on and this concludes our inspection of the exterior portion of the roof thank you for watching

Channel: InterNACHI® Ben Gromicko

Views: 105,115

Keywords: internachi, home inspection training class, home inspector, ben gromicko, russ ackerman, roof inspection, roof inspection training video, how to perform a roof inspection

Id: I-sLCkrgSfY

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2017