An inspection that takes fifteen minutes and ends in a price is not an inspection. Ours takes closer to ninety, and roughly half of that happens somewhere other than on the shingles.

It starts in the loft, not on the shingles

We start in the loft, because the underside of the deck tells the truth faster than the top does. From inside we look for:

• Daylight showing through the boards

• Damp or compressed insulation

• Rusted nail tips coming through the deck

• Blocked soffit vents starving the roof of airflow

Outside we check flashing at every penetration, valleys, the condition of the fascia, and how well the gutters are actually carrying water away from the walls.

What most inspections skip

Ventilation is the one that gets missed most often. A roof that cannot breathe cooks its own shingles from underneath, and the failure looks identical to ordinary wear, which is why it is so often written off as age.

The other blind spot is the transition where the roof meets a wall or a lower section. Those junctions rely entirely on flashing rather than on the shingles themselves, and they are awkward enough to reach that a quick survey tends to look at them from a distance.