Check the condition of your commercial roof
Your address and four quick questions, about two minutes, and a plain read on how likely your roof is to cause you trouble. No obligation.
Commercial roofs fail slowly, in plain sight from above. The signs an insurer looks for are usually visible years before anyone claims.
This check is for people who own the building. Renting the premises you trade from? The building is usually the landlord's to insure, so start with insurance for business owners who rent.
Your address, then four quick questions about the roof. Where you are not sure, say so or skip it, and you still get a read.
What is the building address?
Start typing and choose your building from the list.
How do I check the condition of my commercial roof?
Quick answerStart from the ground and from inside. Look for rust streaks around the fixings and gutters, water stains on the ceiling below, standing water after rain, loose or missing sheets and tiles, and any patch repair somebody did years ago and nobody has looked at since. Then get the parts you cannot see checked properly, because the laps, the box gutters and the flat sections are where commercial roofs actually fail, and none of them are visible from the ground.
Most owners have never seen their own roof. That is not carelessness, it is geometry: you cannot see a low-pitched commercial roof from the footpath, and climbing onto one is a job for somebody with a harness and a reason to be there.
So the roof becomes the one part of the building nobody looks at until it leaks. Meanwhile it is doing the hardest work of any part of the structure, and it is the part most likely to be argued about when you claim.
From the ground and from inside you can still learn a lot. Rust bleeding from screws, laps and gutter lines. Water stains on the ceiling, or that faint smell in a back corner after heavy rain. Water still sitting on a flat section a day after the rain stopped. A tile out of place. A patch of sealant somebody put on in a hurry. Those five things are what this check asks you about, because each one of them is also on the list an insurer's assessor works through.
The rest needs a look from above, which is what we do for our clients: more than 1,200 roof condition checks a year, reviewed from aerial imagery alongside the desktop building replacement valuation we already commission. The method, and what you get when we find something, is set out on Roof Condition Monitoring. If your question is really about a claim, whether a leak is covered depends entirely on the cause, and that is answered in full in How Your Roof Condition Affects Insurance Claims.
What this check asks, and why
Quick answerFour things tell you most of what there is to know without going up there: what the roof is made of, roughly how old it is, when somebody last looked at it, and what you have already noticed. Age and neglect drive the risk. The material tells us how it will fail. What you have seen tells the broker where to start.
What the roof is made of. This one does not change your result, and it is worth saying why we still ask. Material decides the failure mode, not the odds. Metal rusts, first at the fixings and the laps. Tiles crack and slip. Flat membrane roofs pond, and standing water finds every seam eventually. Knowing which of those we are looking for is what makes the check useful rather than generic.
Roughly how old it is. Age is the biggest driver of condition, and it is the roof's age we mean, not the building's. A re-roof resets the clock. Past twenty years, most commercial roofs are into the part of their life where fixings, seals and flashings start letting go, and the odds of something being wrong stop being theoretical.
When somebody last looked at it. This is the question the whole service exists for. A roof that gets checked every couple of years has small problems found while they are still small. A roof nobody has been on for five years has whatever it has, and neither you nor your insurer knows what that is. One of you will find out first.
What you have already noticed. Rust, water inside, pooling water, loose or missing sheets and tiles. These are the same signs an assessor is trained to look for, and if you can already see one from the ground, it is not subtle from above. Any of them moves your result, and water already coming inside moves it furthest, because that is a roof failing now rather than one that might.
What this check will not do
Quick answerIt will not tell you your roof is fine. Nobody at Consolidated has looked at your roof when you get your result, so what you are reading is a read on your own answers, nothing more. A green result means you have not described the usual warning signs, not that your roof has been checked.
Two honest limits, stated up front rather than buried.
The result is only as good as your answers. If you are not sure how old the roof is, or nobody has been up there in years, then the truthful answer is that neither of us knows what is up there, and the tool says so rather than guessing.
And a green result is not a certificate. It is the absence of the usual warning signs in what you told us. That is genuinely useful, and it is not the same as a roof somebody has looked at.
There is one more thing worth being straight about, because it cuts against the easy sales pitch. Writing a roof problem down does not put you in a better position at claim time. It cuts the other way: a documented defect the owner then leaves alone is exactly what an insurer points to when it argues the damage was gradual rather than sudden. Records only help you when they show a problem being found and fixed. That is why the point of a roof check is never the paperwork. It is getting the thing repaired while it is still a maintenance job, so there is nothing left for anybody to argue about.
What happens if the result is amber or red
Quick answerWe look at the roof properly, from recent aerial imagery, and if we find something you get a Roof Condition Alert within three business days: what we found, why it matters and what a roofing contractor should look at. It costs you nothing, you are not committed to moving your insurance, and the point of it is to get a repairable problem repaired before it ever becomes a claim-time argument.
Here is the plan, in order.
- You give us your name and a number. We already have the building address, so that is the whole form.
- A broker who works on commercial buildings rings you and asks about the building: age, what has been done to the roof, whether anything has been repaired, what the inside looks like after heavy rain.
- Your roof gets reviewed from recent aerial imagery, the same kind of imagery an insurer's assessor can pull, and your Roof Condition Alert is produced within three business days.
- You go through the findings with us in plain language, including what it would mean for a claim if it were left as it is.
- If there is something to fix, you get a roofing contractor onto it on your terms and your timeline, while it is still maintenance.
The reason this is worth two minutes of your time is what happens in the other order. When a storm damages a roof that was already deteriorating, insurers routinely argue that the real cause was wear and tear rather than the storm, and every commercial policy excludes wear and tear. What decides that argument is evidence of the roof's condition and of what actually caused the loss, and your insurer may well hold dated aerial imagery of your roof before you have even lodged the claim. The full mechanics, the exact exclusion language and the published determinations behind it are in How Your Roof Condition Affects Insurance Claims.
We do not promise a claim will be paid because we checked, and we never will. What we promise is that you hear about a problem from us while it is still cheap and fixable, instead of hearing about it in a decline letter.
Commercial Roof Condition Check: your questions answered
How do I check the condition of my commercial roof?
Is a red result proof that something is wrong with my roof?
What happens to the answers I give this check?
What does the Roof Condition Alert cost, and what happens after I submit my details?
The information on this page is general in nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on it, consider whether it is appropriate for your circumstances. Where the information relates to a particular insurance product, consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement before making a decision.
Get ahead of the one part of your building nobody looks at
Fit-for-purpose insurance at a competitive rate starts with a building somebody has actually looked at. We check our clients' roofs from the air every year, more than 1,200 checks, and tell them plainly what we find.
Call now, most enquiries are settled in one conversation - or leave your details and we'll ring within 90 minutes on a new enquiry (8am–6pm Mon–Fri).