We Document The Damage. You Decide What To Do About It.

How A Roof Claim Actually Works In Illinois

Most people file their first roof claim with no idea what happens next, which is exactly why the process feels adversarial when it usually is not. Here is the plain version.

A covered peril hits your house: hail, wind, a falling limb. You report it to your carrier, who opens a claim and assigns an adjuster. The adjuster walks the roof and writes a scope of what they believe the storm damaged and what it costs to fix. The carrier issues a first payment based on that scope, usually the actual cash value, which is the repair cost minus depreciation for the age of the roof, minus your deductible. You get the work done. Then the carrier releases the rest, the recoverable depreciation, once you show the job was completed. That is the whole cycle.

Two things determine whether it goes smoothly. First, whether the damage is documented well enough that the adjuster sees what is actually there in the time they have on site. Second, whether the scope they write covers the real work rather than a partial version of it. Both of those are where a roofer earns their place in the process.

What The Adjuster Needs To See

An adjuster covering a Cook County storm route may be walking eight roofs a day. They are not out to cheat you, but they are moving, and what does not get shown does not get scoped. We build the file before they arrive:

• Date of loss tied to a documented weather event for your zip code rather than to memory.
• Test squares chalked and photographed on every slope with hits circled and counted.
• Soft metal evidence: dented gutters, downspouts, vents, fascia wrap, condenser fins. This is what establishes that a storm hit your property.
• Interior photos of every stain, wet insulation batt or ceiling bulge, dated.
• Attic photos where framing, decking or sheathing has moved or shows daylight.
• Emergency mitigation receipts and photos of the tarp work, kept on a separate invoice.

That file goes to you as much as to the carrier, and it is yours whether we end up doing the work or not.

Meeting Your Adjuster On The Roof

The single most useful thing we do on a claim is stand on the roof with the adjuster. Not to argue. To make sure both of us are looking at the same slopes and the same evidence, in person, before anything gets written down.

Adjusters generally know their standards well, and when the evidence is chalked and photographed most disagreements evaporate on the spot. The ones that do not get resolved up there are usually about scope details rather than whether damage exists: whether the ridge vent is included, whether ice and water shield is required by current code at the eaves, whether the drip edge gets replaced. Those are worth ten minutes of conversation on the roof and three weeks of letters if you skip it.

Angelo does these himself. He has been standing on Chicagoland roofs since his father Frank had him carrying bundles, and an adjuster can tell inside two minutes whether the contractor knows the trade.

Supplements, In Plain Language

A supplement is a request to add something to an approved scope. It sounds like a fight and usually is not. Most supplements exist because things are genuinely invisible until the roof comes off.

The common ones in our area: rotten decking discovered under the old shingles, an extra layer of shingles nobody knew was there, code requirements the original scope missed, or flashing details that only show up once the tear-off exposes them. We photograph the condition, price it at the same rates the carrier uses, and submit it. It is normal, and a carrier who wrote a fair first scope will usually approve a documented supplement without drama.

What a supplement is not is a way to run the number up. We submit what the roof needs, with photos of why, and nothing else.

What We Will Not Do

Storm season brings out contractors who make promises they legally cannot keep, so it is worth being direct about where we stand.

We do not promise anybody a roof at no cost, because we do not control your carrier’s decision and neither does anybody else knocking on your door. We do not offer to absorb, discount, rebate or otherwise make your deductible disappear. In Illinois that is against the law, it is insurance fraud, and it puts the homeowner at risk along with the contractor. We do not add damage that is not there, exaggerate a hit count, or describe wear as storm damage.

What we do is document the truth thoroughly enough that the truth gets paid for. Thirteen years at one Alsip address and an A plus with the BBB are worth more than any single job.

Yours To Decide, Ours To Handle

The line is simple. You decide whether to file at all, since you are the policyholder. You decide who does the work. You pay your deductible directly to us like any other customer, and you sign off on scope before we order material.

We handle the inspection, the photo file, the adjuster meeting, the scope review, the supplements, the material ordering and the completion paperwork the carrier needs before they release the rest of the money. If the answer after an inspection is that you have wear rather than storm damage, we say so and quote the work straight, without a claim in the picture. Plenty of our shingle roof replacement jobs are cash jobs with financing help and no carrier involved at all.

Start with a look at the roof. Call, or use the contact page, and we will get you scheduled. Finished claim work is in the gallery, and we run these claims regularly in Blue Island, Naperville and Chicago.