A practical record
- Date and approximate time of the weather event and first observed symptom
- Ground-level photos of visible material displacement, impact, debris, and building elevations
- Interior photos of water entry and affected contents
- Temporary mitigation invoices, communications, and roofing-company findings
- A copy of the final repair or replacement scope and changes
Keep conclusions separate from observations
Write what you observed rather than assigning cause. A lifted shingle, puncture, missing panel, or interior stain is an observation. The cause, repairability, and coverage may require different professionals and evidence.
Insurance boundary
Promptly contact the insurer if you intend to make a claim and follow reasonable loss-mitigation duties without undertaking unsafe work. A roofing proposal does not guarantee that the insurer will agree with cause, scope, price, or coverage.
Document before anyone touches anything
Storm claims are decided on evidence, and evidence degrades fast. Debris gets cleared, tarps go up over the damage, wet materials get thrown out, and the record of what actually happened disappears within a day. Photographs taken before any of that, with dates, cost one phone and ten minutes and are the single most valuable thing you can do.
Keep the two categories of cost apart from the outset. Emergency mitigation to prevent further damage is commonly treated differently by insurers from the permanent repair, and separating them on paper at the time is much easier than reconstructing it afterwards.
- Date, time and weather conditions when the damage occurred
- Interior photographs before any cleanup, with something for scale
- Exterior photographs from the ground on every elevation, not just the damaged one
- Photographs of temporary protection, before and after installation
- Serial numbers or photographs of damaged equipment and belongings
- Retain damaged material until the insurer has had the chance to inspect
Who decides what
Confusing these three causes most of the friction in a storm repair. No roofing company can tell you what your policy covers, and a website certainly cannot. What a roofing company can do is produce a written scope detailed enough that your adjuster and your contractor are discussing the same roof.
| Party | Decides | Does not decide |
|---|---|---|
| Your insurer | Coverage under your policy, and claim value | What work the roof needs |
| The roofing company | What it recommends, what it will contract to do, and its price | What your policy covers |
| You | Who to hire, and whether to proceed | Neither of the above on your behalf |
The pressure patterns worth recognising
Storm periods draw operators from outside the region who follow weather. Some are competent. The pattern to be wary of is pressure: insistence on signing immediately, a contract contingent on insurance proceeds with the scope to be defined later, a request for substantial money before materials arrive, or an offer to absorb your deductible.
Your deductible is a term of your policy, not a discount in a contractor's gift, and arrangements built around absorbing it tend to involve inflating the claim. Vermont's registration requirement and its contract content rules apply to storm work exactly as they do to planned work — a company unwilling to put a defined scope, a price provision, dates and a signed change-order process in writing has told you something useful.
- Verify the contracting entity name against the state registry and the insurance certificate
- Decline to sign anything on the spot
- Be cautious of any contract that assigns your claim or leaves scope to be set later
- Get a written scope you could hand to a second company for comparison
- Treat a deductible-waiver offer as a warning rather than a saving
Published August 12, 2026 and last reviewed August 16, 2026 by Greater Burlington Roofing. General roofing information; an on-site inspection is required for property-specific recommendations.