Riverside, CA
Storm damage, and what to do first
The first hour after a storm is about stopping water, not about getting the best price. Those are two separate jobs and they happen in that order.
Describe the storm damage job
Three questions, then the address. Up to three Riverside contractors who do this work.
You are on the list.
No provider in Riverside is taking requests through this service yet. We are lining them up, and yours is kept until one can.
- Nobody gets your details yet. Your request stays with us and is not passed to any company.
- One email when someone can help. When a provider covering your area can take it on, we email you once and ask whether you want that company, by name, to contact you.
- Deleted after 90 days. If nobody can take it on, or you do not say yes, your contact details are deleted 90 days after your request.
- You decide, or you do not. There is nothing to cancel and nothing to pay us.
Nobody will call you about this request unless you say yes to a company by name.
Before you let anybody on the roof
The things worth pinning down on a storm damage job. A contractor who has not raised them has not looked properly.
- What the emergency tarp costs, separate from the repair
- Whether the contractor is licensed and insured in this state
- A written scope of the work, line by line
- Photographs of the damage before any work happens
- A local address you could actually drive to
If two contractors describe the damage differently, ask each to show you on the roof or in their photographs. It changes the conversation.
Do not sign anything on the doorstep. Read any contract twice before you sign it; most home improvement contracts in California can be cancelled within three business days.
Damage that matters is often invisible from the ground. Bruised shingles, lifted seals and hairline mat fractures fail years later, long after the storm is forgotten.
Locally
Then, less dramatically: sudden dry winds that test every lifted edge on the roof. These winds are not constant, which is the problem. A roof gets nine quiet months and then one night at fifty miles an hour, and whatever was marginal goes.
About storm damage here
Do you handle commercial buildings?
We do. It is a different set of contractors — commercial and low-slope work is a separate trade from residential re-roofing — so answering the property question accurately matters.
Can I stay in the house while it is done?
Yes, though it is loud, and things will fall off shelves in the garage. Move cars out of the driveway and take anything fragile off the walls of the top floor.
Are gutters included in a re-roof?
Normally a separate line. It is the one add-on that genuinely costs less when done at the same time.
I have solar panels. What happens to them?
They come off and go back on, and that is a separate cost, often handled by the solar installer rather than the roofer. If the roof is near the end of its life, do the roof first — removing and refitting panels twice is money wasted.