Roof Inspection Checklist: Documenting Every Covering Type

Before getting into material-specific items, document how you inspected the roof: walked, viewed from ladder at the eaves, viewed from ground with binoculars, or via drone. This single line of documentation matters enormously for liability, since your findings and their reliability differ significantly depending on access method, and clients need to know which one applied to their report.

Walking a roof gives the most reliable findings but is not always safe or appropriate, particularly on steep pitches, wet or icy conditions, older or brittle materials like aged tile or slate, or roofs beyond your ladder's safe reach. State plainly in the report when you did not walk the roof and why, rather than leaving the client to assume full walked coverage.

Whatever method you use, be consistent about documenting it every time, since an inconsistent access record across your reports is exactly the kind of detail that gets picked apart in a dispute.

For asphalt shingles, document granule loss and its distribution (uniform aging versus isolated wear), missing or lifted shingles, cracking, curling at edges or corners, and exposed or deteriorated nail heads. Note the general condition of ridge caps and hip caps separately, since these areas fail earlier than field shingles due to greater wind and sun exposure.

Check and document flashing at every penetration and transition: chimneys, plumbing vents, skylights, and roof-to-wall intersections. Flashing failure is one of the most common sources of roof leaks and is frequently overlooked in favor of focusing purely on shingle condition.

Estimate remaining useful life carefully and conservatively, and frame it explicitly as an estimate based on visible condition rather than a guarantee, since actual roof life depends on installation quality, ventilation, and climate factors you cannot fully verify from a single visual inspection.

Tile roofing hides its most important information underneath the visible tiles, in the underlayment, which typically has a shorter service life than the tiles themselves. Document visible tile condition, cracked or slipped tiles, and any areas where tiles are clearly out of alignment, but also note explicitly that underlayment condition cannot be assessed without removing tiles, which is outside a standard visual inspection scope.

Walking tile roofs carries real risk of breaking tiles underfoot, particularly on older clay tile, and many inspectors reasonably choose not to walk these roofs at all. If you do not walk a tile roof, say so and explain the reasoning, since this is one of the most common client questions about tile roof inspections.

Pay particular attention to valleys, penetrations, and ridge conditions, which are visible without walking the full field of tile and often show the earliest signs of underlayment failure through staining or displaced tiles.

For standing seam and metal panel roofs, document fastener condition (exposed-fastener systems especially, since fastener backout and gasket deterioration is the most common failure point), panel seam integrity, and any signs of oil-canning or panel deformation that could indicate improper installation or thermal movement issues.

Check for rust or corrosion at cut edges, fastener penetrations, and dissimilar metal contact points, where galvanic corrosion can occur if incompatible metals were used during installation or later repairs. This is a detail many inspectors without metal roofing experience miss entirely.

Document coating condition on painted metal roofs, noting chalking, fading, or coating failure, since this affects both aesthetics and the roof's long-term corrosion resistance, and it is a reasonable thing for clients to want to know about a system that is often marketed for very long service life.

Flat roofs (built-up, modified bitumen, TPO, EPDM) require attention to drainage above almost everything else, since ponding water is the leading cause of premature failure on low-slope systems. Document any areas of visible ponding, note their approximate size and depth if measurable, and check that drains and scuppers are clear of debris.

Inspect seams and terminations carefully, particularly at parapet walls, penetrations, and roof edges, since these transition points fail far more often than the flat field membrane itself. Bubbling, cracking, or separation at seams is a common and meaningful finding on aging membrane roofs.

Note the general age indicators visible, such as membrane brittleness, UV degradation, or patch repairs, and where multiple patch repairs are visible, flag this as an indicator of a roof nearing the end of its serviceable life even if no active leak is currently visible.

Regardless of roofing material, always document attic ventilation adequacy, since poor ventilation accelerates roof deterioration on every material type and is frequently a contributing cause of premature failures that clients attribute purely to the roofing material itself.

Check and document gutter and downspout condition and function together with the roof, since drainage problems at the gutter level directly affect roof edge and fascia condition over time. Treat these as a connected system rather than separate checklist items evaluated in isolation.

Using a structured, covering-specific checklist template in your inspection software, like the customizable templates available in Inspect Ace, helps ensure you do not default to a generic asphalt-shingle mental checklist when you are actually standing on a tile or metal roof with different failure points to watch for.