Louisville Emergency Roofing Services

Louisville can experience some severe weather conditions. High winds, hail, tornados, ice storms, torrential rain and intense heat waves. All of this can take its toll on your roof. A large part of our business is occupied with storm damage repair. If you are suffering from a sudden leak in your roof then don’t hesitate to call us. We are on call 24/7 to assist you in your time of need.

Help with your Insurance Claim

Emergency Roofers Louisville

Storm Damage     Wind Damage    Hail Damage     Roof Inspections

 Louisville Roofing Contractors understand the insurance claims process and can assist you with your claim today.

We’ve been working with insurance companies for a long time and we have a lot of experience helping them process insurance claims efficiently and properly.

Contact Chris Moorhead today to schedule a free on-site evaluation to determine if your roof has been damaged and to what extent. The following is a quick overview to working with your insurance company.

• If we determine that damage has occurred you can contact your insurance agent to request an inspection.
• Your agent can then authorize any temporary repairs that are necessary to prevent any further damage to your property.
• The insurance company will request receipts for any emergency repairs that are done in order to reimburse you correctly.
• Make sure to take pictures of any damage that occurred prior to any repairsWhen the inspection is completed, you will be given a claim sheet outlining the scope of damage and the insurance funds that will be made available for the damage.

The claims procedure may vary from state to state but generally it goes like this…

The insurance company, not the roofing company is going to determine the amount of the damages on that loss. Most insurers use a process of doing a physical inspection. Some carriers want to see 4 or 8 hits per 10 foot by 10 foot test square – on all four sides of the roof or two sides if it’s a regular gable roof and once they establish damage some of them may want to see more – in some cases ten to twelve hits, it really can depend on different factors, like how old the roof is.

Different carriers might have different criteria, but once they establish that there’s damage they will create their own estimate. Many of them use software called Xactimate and some use their own variation of that. The software basically breaks down what the current labor and material prices are for a particular market and it’s upgraded monthly. So, insurance companies are not arbitrarily assigning a dollar amount. They’ll break it out and they’ll itemize out how many squares are damaged.

One thing that confuses a lot of people when they look at an adjusters report is they’ll see X amount of squares taken off and a higher value amount on the going back on. That’s because there is a waste factor with roofing, for instance anytime you have to repair around a valley or a hip, you’re going to cut some material and throw it away. It’s the same process as a tiling job, you’re going to need to buy more material than what you tore off to get it finished right. Once they establish this amount they will send you their adjuster’s report.

In a hypothetical insurance claim situation let’s say a $200,000 home with a 1% deductible would mean you have a $2,000 deductible… and let’s say it’s a $10,000 roof. Well in the old days they would give you $8,000 and say, “here you go, have a nice day.” and then what would you do? You would go get a bunch of bids from local roofing companies, shop around, try to find someone you could trust. And then if you could get it done for less than $10,000 you would save some money on your deductible. In fact, if you found somebody who could do it for $8,000 and you were confident that they were competent then you might have saved your entire deductible.

Several years back the State of Texas basically the legislature came to an agreement with the insurance industry and started a process called “Recoverable Depreciation” on these replacement cost coverage policies. Replacement cost coverage policies is what 99% of the people that live in their own home and have a mortgage on their insurance. It basically pays for the full replacement as opposed to an actual cash value policy which you might see in a tenant dwelling or or something with lesser coverage then they pay the actual cash value of it. What is was worth at the time of loss less the deductible so you get far less money. But most of home owners have a replacement cost coverage policy and what they’re going to do is look at the age of your roof and they’re going to say well this roof was 10 years old and it was a 30 year life time roof so 33% of the age of this roof has already been used up and so we’re going to subtract three thousand three hundred dollars from your loss when we pay you that first check.

So let’s just round it to $3,000 and say they applied 30% depreciation on the loss. So, based on a $10,000 loss, subtract the $2,000 deductible and the $3,000 depreciation and your first check will be $5,000. Now a lot of people think that’s all they’re going to get. They don’t read their policy and they don’t really understand their policy and they think “$5,000 that’s not enough to get my roof replaced” and they’ll sit on that check and a year will go by and after one year in most cases unless they filed for an extension they can lose the right for them to recover that other three thousand dollars recoverable appreciation by not taking action in getting the roof replaced.

We’d like to stress that you move quickly with your claim –  you kind of have a ticking time bomb from the date of the loss, ie from when you filed that claim. You need to go ahead and get that roof replaced and send the invoice in to the insurance company.

When the insurance company receives an invoice for ten thousand dollars because the roof was done for the same price as the adjusters report, they’ll analyze it and say “look we’ve already paid five thousand on this. We had three thousand dollars recoverable depreciation. Our adjusters report said ten thousand and that’s what the invoice says” and they’ll release the final three thousand to the homeowner usually a week to ten days after they’ve received proof that the roof is on and that final invoice.

But let’s say the home owner went shopping for a new roof because that’s what people do in a purchasing situation.
It’s normal to go out and look for the best deal that’s how we a programmed and you end up finding somebody who says, “I’ll do it for $9,000” and you think “hey this is great! I’m going to save $1,000 on my claim”.

When the invoice goes into the insurance company for $9,000 instead of $10,000 the adjuster reviews and says, “Hey! they’ve got it down for nine thousand, they picked the roofer, we didn’t make them use those guys, so we’re just going to send you $2,000” and when the home owner gets the $2,000. They go, “wait a minute… on your adjusters report it says that you’re going to send me three thousand dollars when I get this roof replaced”.

The adjuster’s going to say “yeah but we only owe to make you whole – to get you back to full roof replacement. You got it replaced for $9,000, we’ve already given you five and you had a $2,000 deductible so we’re just going to give you two more thousand dollars. Sorry!” but the down side is you probably got a guy who’s cutting corners somewhere.

• He either maybe didn’t put on new felt paper
• He just really tore off the shingles off the old felt and left the old felt paper down and roofed down over that.
• He might have reused the old valley metal
• He might be trying to recycle the old auto caulks, the pipe jacks instead of putting fresh one on it.
• He may not be replacing all of the vents that got hit by hail that the insurance company paid for
• He might just be painting them and skating on it.

So you’re not getting all bang for your buck. Insurance companies aren’t in the business of going broke or grossly overpaying claims. Either the contractor doesn’t have insurance and he’s cutting corners on materials or he’s cutting corners on his overhead to be able to come in under what the fair going rate is. That should be a red flag when contractors come to you with pricing that’s substantially less than what the insurance companies are paying. That’s a sign, that even though they might be telling you they’re going to be first rate, top notch, It’s likely that their going to cut corners somewhere.

So it really isn’t in your best interest to go for the cheapest estimate. This is a different purchase than most purchases. In a roof claim situation, what your goal really should be is NOT how can I save my deductible because that’s not gonna happen if your insurance company applied recoverable depreciation. The best thing to do is to get everything upgraded on your roof that you can for that ten thousand dollar loss.

For example if somebody’s got dented box vents, we say “you’ve got these four dented box vents, they’ve given you “X” amount or dollars – we can apply the dollars that they gave for your box vents for a new rig vent. We fill the old box vent holes with plywood, felt over them and then install abridge vent. This actually lowers the temperature of your attic make your AC not work as hard, thus lowering your monthly payment on electricity and your still just using the same insurance dollars but in the smartest way. That’s what were about… helping the customer get the most bang for their insurance buck.

Emergency Roofers Louisville Ky