Hail Damage Roof Inspection in Elgin: The Test Square and the Count

A hail inspection is a counting exercise, not a look. Whether your roof gets replaced is decided inside a chalked ten-by-ten square on each slope, by a count of what is found in it, measured against a number your carrier chose.

Almost everything homeowners get told about hail skips it, because a count is harder to sell than a picture.

The ten-by-ten test square

One hundred square feet — not a coincidence: a square is the roofing trade's unit of measure, what materials and labor are priced in. Haag Engineering's engineers built the method in the early 1960s, published it in 1975 and had it peer reviewed in 1999. It is what most adjusters trained on.

The order matters as much as the square. Haag's protocol starts at ground level — junction boxes, fences, gutters, downspouts, decks, the air-conditioner — to establish the size and direction of what fell, then the ridges and valleys where shingles are poorly supported and break first. The squares come last.

One per directional slope, because hail arrives from a direction and a leeward slope is a different sample. They go away from overhanging trees and the paths people walk, and extra ones get drawn where the roof genuinely differs: an old 9:12 main slope and a new 3:12 porch are two roofs.

Inside, every shingle is examined and hand-manipulated for creases, breaks, soft spots and bruises. The count is multiplied by the squares on that slope direction, which is how a hundred square feet becomes a roof — then a price. Haag's DURA formula, damaged units per square times unit cost times a repair-difficulty factor times actual slope area, is why the square exists at all. It produces a number, not a verdict.

What does hail damage to shingles look like when someone is counting it

A fracture in the mat, and what that is and is not is a subject of its own. Inside the square the question is narrower: three conditions get recorded as hail impact — bruises, meaning mat fractures; punctures; and displacement of granules sufficient to expose the bitumen underneath.

Two mechanics decide whether two inspectors agree.

Counting is per roofing unit, not per mark. Three bruises on one shingle is one damaged shingle. Someone reporting "thirty-one hits" without saying which they counted has reported nothing.

The soft spot is found by hand, not by eye. That is why every shingle in the square gets manipulated, and why a drone finds candidates but cannot finish the job.

Chalk is trade practice rather than protocol: marks get circled so they can be photographed, re-found and recounted, and so nothing is counted twice. It washes off; anything that does not has no business on a roof somebody may keep.

How many hits it takes, and why nobody can give you the number

There is no national threshold. Haag publishes the method and not a replacement number; its material stops at the observation that a repair-or-replace decision can be made once the extent of damage is known. Figures like eight or ten damaged units per square circulate everywhere, repeated as though they were a standard. They trace to neither Haag nor any published standard. They are carrier claim-handling guidelines, and they differ by carrier and by region.

So the count is measured against a private number. Not a scandal, just the shape of the thing — and it changes the questions.

Three are fair, all on the day: how many squares were run and where, what is being counted as a unit, and what threshold the file is worked to. Write the answers down. A slope that never got a square cannot have been counted, and slopes get missed — the back of the house and the detached garage most of all.

Hail damage asphalt shingles: what moves the count

The method was built around asphalt composition shingles and the criteria are theirs — on tile, slate, wood or a membrane the square still gets drawn, but what qualifies as damage inside it changes entirely. On asphalt, three things move the count independent of the storm.

Age and mat type. Older, more brittle shingles fracture at smaller stone sizes, and Haag's ice-impact thresholds differ between three-tab and laminated products.

Support underneath. Ridges, hips, rakes and eaves have the least backing and break first, which is how a roof with a clean field still fails at its edges. An old plank deck flexes more than modern sheathing.

Impact rating, if the roof has one. UL 2218 grades coverings Class 1 to 4 by dropping steel balls twice on the same spot, a two-inch ball for Class 4; FM 4473 runs a comparable scale with launched ice balls, aimed at rigid coverings. Both are laboratory results against a projectile, not a promise about a storm. The practical argument for Class 4 at replacement is the premium discount carriers give it.

Hail damage roof pictures: what a photograph can prove

Less than you would like. The fracture propagates from the underside upward, so a photograph of the top of a shingle records a mark, not the damage. Pictures are evidence of what was found and where, not a diagnosis at a distance. A set that survives a second reading contains:

• One wide shot per slope, with something in frame identifying which slope it is
• The chalked square, so the sample area is visible and re-findable
• Each counted mark close up, with a tape or a coin for scale
• At least one lifted shingle showing the underside — the only image that settles anything
• The ground-level collateral — dented gutters, vent caps, condenser fins — at the same scale, uncropped and with timestamps intact

Take them before anyone walks the roof: foot traffic on warm asphalt leaves its own marks, and they get argued about later.

A warning about the pictures you find by searching: galleries select for the unmistakable, because those photograph well. Real damage is often invisible in a photograph of a real roof, so a gallery talks people out of good claims about as often as into bad ones.

Two inspections, two purposes, one morning

Both are legitimate, and they are not the same product.

	Contractor's inspection	Adjuster's inspection
Paid by	The contractor, from work it hopes to win	Your carrier
Question answered	What is damaged, and what would it cost	Does this policy pay, and how much
Output	A scope and a price	A scope sheet and a settlement
Standing	None until the two are reconciled	Decides the claim

Say the quiet part: a free inspection offered door to door after a storm is a sales call. Not a slur — it is how storm work has always been sold, and plenty of those crews are competent. It stops being fine when it is offered as a neutral second opinion. What a paid report contains is in roof inspection cost.

On the adjuster's day, be there. You need not climb anything — stand at the ladder, ask the three questions above, and ask for photographs rather than a verdict. Bring your own documented inspection, pre-storm pictures and the storm date; building that file is the half you control.

Your contractor up there at the same time is useful: the two scopes get compared while everyone is still on the roof. What it may not do is work the claim for you — several states forbid exactly that.

What credential a Illinois roofer can actually show you

The week after a hailstorm, the number of people offering to inspect your roof goes up sharply, and the credential they hold up varies by state more than anything else here.

Illinois is one of very few states with a roofing license of its own, and there is no dollar threshold - any roofing work for pay requires one. Limited covers residential buildings up to eight units; unlimited adds commercial and industrial. The bond is ten thousand dollars for limited and twenty-five thousand for unlimited, and an exam covering Illinois jurisprudence is required. Working without the license is a Class A misdemeanor, a felony the second time.

Signing before the claim is decided, in Illinois

Hail contracts get signed in driveways, often within days and often before a single shingle has been lifted. Whether you can get back out of one, and when the clock starts, is set by statute.

Two clocks run in Illinois. Every roofing contract signed since August 2025 must contain a rescission clause giving you seventy-two hours and a full refund of your deposit. Separately, after a storm that damaged more than one home, you may cancel at the earlier of five business days after a denial notice or thirty business days after the insurer received your proof of loss - so that right can expire before the insurer has decided anything.

The deductible offer, and where Illinois puts it

It surfaces during the inspection, phrased as helpfulness: we will work with your deductible. Before deciding how that sounds, read what it is where you live.

Illinois bans this twice over. A contractor may not advertise or promise to pay or rebate any part of your deductible, and that reaches allowances, discounts off the fee, and any payment to you or to anyone connected with the property. Since August 2025 your contract must also carry an affirmative notice saying the roofer cannot do it. A first offense is a Class A misdemeanor, a later one a felony, plus civil penalties.

Hail damage on a roof: when to replace

The question is never whether a mark exists. It is how many, on how many slopes, and what condition the rest of the roof is in.

Repair holds up when the count sits on one slope or on the unsupported edges, the shingles still lift without cracking, and the product is still available in a livable color.

Replacement is the honest answer when several slopes count over the threshold, when the shingles are brittle enough that repairing them breaks more than it fixes — a real limit, not a sales line — or when the product is discontinued and the repair leaves a band across the front of the house. If the roof was near the end of its service life anyway, the storm did not cost you a roof; it set the date.

There is a third answer people are rarely offered: a real count, under the threshold, documented and filed. A bruised mat is a shortened life, not an open hole, so nothing leaks to force your hand — which is why the decision drifts until the policy's notice window has closed. That report becomes the baseline for the next storm.

Bottom line

Ten by ten, one per directional slope, every shingle inside it touched. The count is per shingle, not per mark, and the threshold it is measured against is your carrier's rather than any national standard — so ask what it is. Photograph the square, the scale and the underside of a lifted shingle before anyone walks the roof. Then make the call on the count, not on a picture gallery or a driveway opinion.

Elgin Roof Pros runs documented roof inspections, storm damage restoration and roof replacement across Elgin and northern Kane and McHenry counties. Call (855) 528-5287 for a slope-by-slope report with the test squares marked and photographed — including the times the count comes back under the line and we say so.