A documented look at the roof, its drainage and its details before you buy, after a storm, or before you commit to work.
Fastest: call (833) 751-2102. Or send this and we call you back.
A roof inspection is a documented assessment of condition: the covering, the deck where it can be reached, every flashing and the whole drainage path, with photographs. It is most useful before buying, after a storm, or before committing to a repair. Call (833) 751-2102 to arrange one.
An inspection is worth having at three moments: before you buy a house, after a storm has been through, and before you spend money on a roof you have been told needs work.
What you should get out of it is a clear picture rather than a parts list: what the covering is, how old the details look, where the water goes, what is failing now and what will need attention next.
That matters especially here because of the age of the stock. Roughly four in ten city homes date from before 1940 by an older Census-based analysis, and most rowhouse roofs are low-slope, so there is usually a history of patching on top to be read.
Do not inspect your own roof. Most of what matters is at the edges, the outlet and the parapet, which is exactly where a fall happens, and on a slate or worn shingle slope the covering itself breaks underfoot. Looking from a window, from the ground with a zoom lens, or from an attic is safe and genuinely useful; a ladder to a parapet is not. If you have been told a stack or a coping looks loose, keep the pavement below it clear until someone has seen it. Call (833) 751-2102 and have the roof walked by someone equipped for it.
The roofer identifies the covering and the structure: low-slope membrane, built-up with ballast, slate, asphalt shingle, or a combination of a pitched front and a flat roof behind, which is common on older city houses.
The surface is walked where it is safe to do so, and everything of note is photographed as found: patching, ponding marks, lifted edges, failed sealant and the state of any rooftop equipment.
The outlet is cleared and water is run so the flow and any backing-up can be observed. On a low-slope roof the drainage is the single most informative thing to test, because almost every failure on this roof type involves it.
Parapet and party-wall terminations, chimney and skylight details, valleys and vents are each inspected, and where there is an attic or a lifted board the deck is looked at from below for staining and softness.
You get what was found, what it means, and what should be done now as against monitored. Where the question is whether a roof has water in it, a small test cut can be offered, because that is the only reliable way to answer it.
What state the roof is in, independent of a job. A quote describes work someone wants to do; an inspection describes the roof, including the parts that are fine. On a roof you are being advised to replace, that difference is the whole point of paying for a look.
It also gives you a record with dates and photographs, which is useful for an insurer, a buyer, a seller or simply for comparing against the same roof in three years.
Ask for the photographs and for plain reasons. A report that says the membrane is at the end of its life should show you why: the splits, the ponding marks, the cut that came up wet. A report that says it without evidence is a sales document.
The drainage first. The city's homeowner guide puts the fall at a minimum of a quarter inch per foot toward a drain that may exit as a parapet or cornice scupper, or toward a rear gutter. Then the parapet and party-wall terminations, the patching history, and the deck underfoot.
Ponding evidence is read even in dry weather, because tide marks, silt lines and the pattern of granule loss show where water has been sitting. A roof that has been ponding for years will show it long after the puddle has gone.
The number and quality of previous repairs is the other local indicator. Three generations of patching around one drain says more about the roof's prospects than the condition of the open field does.
On an older attached house, yes. The roof is behind a parapet where no one sees it from the street, the outlet is shared with nothing and vital to everything, and the party-wall terminations are the most common point of failure. None of that is visible from a kerbside look.
It is also worth asking the designation question at the same time. On a property in a historic district or on the Philadelphia Register, future roof work visible from the public right-of-way may need Historical Commission review before L&I issues a permit, which affects what any later job will involve.
If you want to understand the housing type before you look at a specific roof, our Philadelphia rowhouse flat roof guide explains how these roofs are built and how they fail.
Yearly on an older low-slope roof is sensible, plus a look after any heavy storm. The drainage path deserves more frequent attention than the roof as a whole, because outlets fill gradually with leaf litter, seed and roof granules until one storm finds the margin gone.
Timing matters more than frequency. Before winter is the most useful single visit, since Philadelphia gets some snow most winters in widely varying totals, and a restricted outlet going into a freeze is the one that overflows on the thaw.
A regular look also makes the big decisions cheaper. Catching a lifting termination or a cracked coping early turns a replacement conversation into a repair, and repairs on a roof whose history is documented are quicker to scope.
Before you buy. A general home inspection may not include walking the roof, and on a rowhouse the roof is both the most expensive element and the least visible, so a separate look is often the best value money spent in a purchase.
After wind or debris. The purpose is to record what moved and to separate new damage from existing wear, photographed as found. That record is what an insurer needs, and storm damage roof repair covers the repair side.
For an owner or landlord who wants a baseline: what the roof is, what state it is in, what to clear and when, and roughly what order future work should come in. Most useful on a roof with a long and undocumented patching history.
Two inspections, two scripts. On the flat rows of Center City, South Philadelphia, Chester and Upper Darby the inspection is about drainage, parapets and patching history; on pitched twins in Germantown, Mount Airy and the suburbs it is about valleys, chimneys, the slope covering and the attic.
Slate changes the method. On older stone houses in Chestnut Hill and along the Main Line, a slate slope is assessed without being walked where possible, because walking it damages slates, and national park service guidance for historic slate is to repair rather than replace wherever that can be done.
Post-storm inspections cluster along the paths the Weather Service documented: the Isaias track on 4 August 2020 from Northeast Philadelphia toward Doylestown, and the microburst corridor of 60 to 70 mph gusts across West and South Philadelphia and the Lower Merion area.
If it's an emergency, call now. For non-urgent roof inspection, send the form and we'll call you back.
Not sure if you're covered? Check your ZIP code.
Tracing a leak to its actual entry point on flat or pitched roofs, then repairing the detail that failed.
Repairs to flat and very low-slope membrane roofs on Philadelphia rowhouses, twins and converted buildings, starting at the drainage path.
Assessing and repairing wind-driven roof damage across the region, with the record an insurer will ask for taken at the same time.
Repairing slate slopes on older stone houses, Victorian twins and historic-district properties, repair-first and with non-ferrous fixings.
No public price list exists for roof work in Philadelphia, so this guide does not print a dollar figure.
Pennsylvania has no separate roofing credential.
New Jersey issues no roofing-specific credential.
Historic slate in Philadelphia should be repaired rather than replaced whenever possible, according to National Park Service guidance.
Not always, and often not from the roof itself. On a parapeted rowhouse the only way to assess the covering, the outlet and the terminations is to be up there, which is why a separate roof look is worth arranging.
Yes, and that is a useful result. An inspection that ends with a maintenance list and a clear note that nothing needs replacing has done its job, and it gives you something to measure against later.
It can, and on a roof where the question is whether there is water in the build-up it is the only reliable answer. It is a small, repaired intervention and it is agreed with you before anything is cut.
Yes. A documented condition report with photographs answers buyer questions directly and avoids a late renegotiation based on a kerbside guess. It also shows what has been maintained rather than only what is worn.
Your insurer sets what it needs. What helps any claim is an assessment with photographs taken as found and a clear separation of storm damage from existing wear, which is what the Pennsylvania Insurance Department's advice on documenting damage points toward.
A single house is usually a short visit, longer where the roof has several levels, multiple outlets or awkward access. Wider roofs on converted buildings take longer because each outlet and each change of level is assessed in its own right.