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Tom's right...there is no definite answer.  It depends on the carrier.  I've seen carrier instructions that ranged all the way from 7 hits per square to 12 hits per square to justify a total.  Their fee schedules also differed.    

P.S.  Was coming back in to edit, and see Dave's posted before me.  Ditto on what he said.  We'll also have to assume you're not talking about cedar shingles/shakes.  Those have different criteria discussed in an older forum as well.

Thanks for your help-KB

The test square has four damaged 3-tab shingles, each tab of each damaged shingle has a nickle sized dimple in the center of the tab.  If  you lick your thumb and press into the dimple, a powdery residue same color as roof sticks to your thumb.  Amazingly, all slopes have at least one test square of similar damage. Lucky for us, the worst damage is very near the best spot to place the ladder.

The gutters, turtles and roof jacks escaped damage from this storm.  How many hail hits should we circle with the chalk?  How many test squares should we do?

Randy Cox

Thank you, Peter.  Normally the asphalt would be more resilient to a hail hit than the soft metal accessories.  Mother Nature is random and not consistently uniform.  Also, the granules used on 3-tab shingles are coated with a ceramic material that is harder than even the hardest density of hail.  The colored powder on the thumb would probably be crushed ceramic material.  Whatever crushed the granules was most likely harder than ice, possibly steel...like a ball peen hammer.   Sometimes, man-made "hail hits" are very close to the ladder--even an arms length away in a non-random arc..

In my contrived example, only four shingles were damaged but each shingle had a hammer hit centered on each tab.  Even if those marks had been legitimate hail marks, the count should have been four....not 12 as I was taught to count the damaged shingles...........not just the marks.

Also, I was taught to be wary if the insured meets you too eagerly as you drive up.  Sometimes (not always) they want to define and quantify the damage,  planting the  suggestion, before you have a chance to discover it for yourself. 

RandyC

Deleted

Uhm, Brent...check with Tom T.   His apostrophe key wasn't working, and it looks like none of yours are.  This is a freebee, no consulting/troubleshooting fee involved.    Don't go to the same place Tom did, though....$300 per key????

Talk about lazy. My apointment time  with roofer was 11 and  arrived at 10:45. Got on the roof and found some very odd hail hits on the front three slopes of a hip roof. The hits were in the 5 ocloock position about one inch from the bottom and about one inch from the tab punch out. All the hits were a neat round circle about 1/2 inch dia. the left 180 circle was slightly deeper than the right. The donut hole was missing.

When the roofer came up I ask him what did he think caused the damage. His answer was hail damage. I ask him again he was he sure it was hail damage. His answer was yes he was positive it was hail damage.

I then ask him to get on the detached garage with me, no marks, fungus, anything to be found.  About this time the female catcher of the contracters softball teams came rushing up shouting what are you accusing me of, I was able to retreat to my car and had to past the contractors truck and saw 4 foot section of 5/8 EMT in the trunk that had hammer marks on one end and a sharp beveled edge on the bottom.

This guy was so lazy he made a tool he could use while standing up.

Now the rest of the story, the company supervisor requested that my boss not give me anymore of thier claims as I was too confrontational, as I did not  see this was a  V & MM loss, since I could NOT PROVE it was intentional. (yes but my photos did)