The morning after a storm there's a pot under the ceiling and every roofing truck in Fort Myers is somewhere else. Nothing in the next two months matters as much as the next two days. Stopping the rain water comes first. Then somebody has to photograph the roof before a repair covers what the wind did, and somebody has to put a meter on the decking before a single sheet goes back over it. Here at PRG Roofing & Construction Inc. we work storm calls in that order, and each step gets harder the moment the one before it is skipped.

Close The Opening First

Our crew carries two things up the ladder, tarps and rolls of temporary membrane, and which one goes on depends on the roof. A tile roof takes a cover differently than a shingle roof with half a slope in the yard, and the crew makes that call standing on the ladder. Before anything goes on, they photograph what's under it. That view is gone the second it's covered. Whatever goes on has to hold for however many weeks the permanent repair takes to schedule, so the crew sets it to last that long.

Photograph Everything Before A Repair Covers It

A finished repair is a photograph of a finished roof. That's all an insurance adjuster can see once it's done, and it's why our inspection comes first. It runs on CompanyCam, which stamps the date and the spot on the roof onto every picture as the crew takes it. Our crew shoots the flashings, the penetrations, and the underside of the deck from the attic, and puts a pin moisture meter on every penetration and roof-to-wall transition. Then they write down what caused each problem and what fixing it takes, with an arrow on each failure point. You can open that report on your phone while the crew is still up there. Your insurance adjuster and our crew end up looking at the same pictures, with no room for two memories of the same roof.

Put A Meter On The Decking Before Anyone Builds Over It

Decking soaks up water for weeks before a ceiling stain shows, and it's the most expensive thing on a roof to get wrong. Up in the attic the crew puts a pin moisture meter on the wood deck and probes it by hand, and whether a panel comes out depends on its condition. Sheathing that's soft or delaminated, or that won't hold a fastener, comes out before anything goes back over it. A panel that's only wet gets dried and stays, and we don't close the assembly until the meter shows it under 18%. September heat in a Fort Myers attic is enough that wet decking keeps breaking down, so the difference between dried and replaced is usually how long the water sat.

Follow The Stain Back Up The Roof

Your ceiling stain is where the water ended up. Rain water that gets past the covering leaves a brown track on the underside of the sheathing, and it only runs downhill, so the opening sits at the high end of that track. Our crew starts at the wet end with a flashlight and follows the track uphill to the highest wet fastener, and the failed flashing or boot is right above it. Say the stain is under a bathroom vent stack and the pipe boot up there is fine; the track runs six feet upslope to a wall flashing that has lifted enough to catch every afternoon storm since. The repair goes there, and the ceiling gets fixed once instead of twice.

One More Storm On An Open Deck

Your insurance claim runs on its clock and our schedule runs on ours, and one more afternoon storm lands in between. On a deck that's covered, that storm is rain on a tarp. Where the deck isn't covered, it's another inch of rain water into sheathing that was already wet, and the repair that was going to be one slope starts looking like two. The difference between those two jobs is the cover that went on the first day. A dry-in and a documented inspection on the first day are what keep that job at one slope.

Call Before Anyone Puts A Sheet Over It

If rain water is coming through the ceiling right now, call PRG Roofing & Construction Inc. in Fort Myers at (239) 237-2906 and ask for an emergency dry-in and a documented inspection. Our crew will close the opening, photograph the roof, and meter the deck on the same visit. Nothing gets rebuilt until we've seen the deck numbers.