After a storm or a cold snap: having roof and façades inspected

After a storm or a cold snap, the priority is to have the roof, facades, gutters and nearby trees inspected quickly, by someone else, from the ground. The protocol has four stages: visual inspection, photos, declaration to the insurer within the deadlines set in the contract, and no repair before the expert except in an emergency. For the rest of the year, a systematic annual check reveals slow infiltrations before they reach the ceiling.

Why is roof damage always spotted too late?

A displaced tile makes no noise. The water slipping through does not pour in: it seeps in a thin stream, crosses the under-roof, soaks the insulation and dampens the frame. For weeks, sometimes months, everything remains invisible from the living rooms: the stain only appears on the ceiling once the materials upstream are saturated. By then, the repair no longer concerns one tile but an entire assembly.

Frost works the same way, silently. The freeze-and-thaw cycle lifts tiles, loosens fixings, bursts ageing flashings and opens the joints of the facade. Each episode worsens the previous one, and the first visible sign often arrives seasons later, at the worst moment.

From abroad, nobody looks up at your roof. The neighbour notices a fallen branch, not a shifted row of tiles; the post says nothing about the overflowing gutter. That is why roof and facade checks must be triggered, not awaited: they belong to the reflexes you install, not to the evidence that presents itself.

What is the protocol straight after a weather alert?

The order of operations matters as much as the operations themselves. Here it is, as it unfolds.

• The visual inspection first: from the ground, the street and an upper-floor window, sweep the roof, the verges, the chimney stacks, the gutters and the trees overhanging the house with your eyes. Never climb up.
• The photos next: general and close-up views, time-stamped, before any clean-up and before any tarping. They form the memory of the claim.
• The interior, always: loft or attic, ceilings of the rooms below the roof, looking for damp marks, water points, mouldy smells.
• The declaration to the insurer, within the deadlines set in the contract, even without a final assessment of the damage: an initial report describes what is observed, and the file is completed afterwards.
• Waiting for the expert, finally: no definitive repair before their visit, except a clear emergency, tarping, securing, and in that case photos beforehand and safekeeping of the removed parts.

Better still: part of this protocol is prepared before the season. In autumn, cleaning the gutters and pruning the branches overhanging the roof directly reduces the damage of the next gale. These season-closing gestures, repeated every year, are the best informal defence, and the post-storm check then merely confirms that everything held.

For an owner abroad, this protocol requires someone on site, methodical and recording every step. This is precisely the purpose of a claim assessment and coordination service: a caller records, photographs, documents the declaration, then coordinates the trades and reports back at every stage, each action remaining on quotation.

The tree and the facade after a gust

The roof is not the only exposed part. Wind also works on vegetation and walls, and that damage is resolved easily when caught early.

The tree first: a branch looming over a roof, a leaning trunk, lifted roots cracking a slab. A branch rubbing a tile with every gust wears the roofcovering prematurely, and a hanging branch always ends up falling. Pruning belongs to an equipped professional, never to an improvised ladder and saw, especially near power lines.

The facade next: render cracked beside a hanging gutter, torn flashing, a bent downpipe throwing water against the wall instead of carrying it away. A wall repeatedly soaked becomes waterlogged, and the damage slowly works down towards the lower floors or the foundations. The earlier the discovery, the simpler the remedy: resetting a downpipe takes little effort, redoing waterlogged render across a whole elevation is a project.

Finally, the neighbourhood: if a tree on your plot now threatens the one next door, warning beats enduring the fall. Neighbourly courtesy counts double when you are away.

Why does a systematic annual check change everything?

The post-storm protocol is a reaction; the annual check is prevention, and it is what genuinely softens claims. Once a year, ideally after winter, a full inspection records the state of the roof, gutters, facades and trees, with photos compared with the previous year’s. Ageing then reads like a slope: what moves from one year to the next calls for vigilance, what is stable can be left alone.

Outside sign	What it may hide	Action
Displaced or missing tiles	Exposed under-roof, slow infiltration	Close inspection, photos, insurer
Hanging or blocked gutter	Water thrown against the facade, waterlogged wall	Cleaning and refitting by a professional
Stair-step crack in the render	Movement or shrinkage, water entering the wall	Close monitoring, professional opinion
Looming branch	Fall onto the roof or onto a person	Secured pruning without delay
Corroded flashing	Discreet puncturing at the next rain	Targeted replacement
Dark mark under a valley	An old, active leak	Leak search and declaration

The ideal window falls after the last frosts and before plant growth: winter damage is visible, vegetation does not yet hide it, and roofers organise their season around it.

This annual check also plays a less visible role: it documents the condition of the property over the years. In the event of a claim, the insurer more quickly separates recent damage from old wear, and the file moves forward without a sterile dispute over the origin of the defects.

Who does what when you live abroad?

The division is clear. You watch the weather alerts for your region and trigger the inspection. A local caller carries out the visual inspection and the photos. The insurer processes the declaration and appoints an expert if the file requires one. Partner firms, selected for roofing and masonry work, step in once agreement is given. Your dedicated contact at French Realty holds the orchestration: checking that each stage follows the previous one, keeping the written record and reporting back, without you having to chase across time zones.

This discipline belongs to the method for managing your property from abroad, in our Owning from a distance series. And the question that precedes all these remains open: an empty property or a lived-in one? Our article on leaving a property empty or bringing it to life covers it in detail.

Every roof has its age, exposure and history. The personal study offered by French Realty exists precisely for that: your dedicated contact assesses your property’s vulnerability, plans the rhythm of checks and organises the response to alerts. You live elsewhere, without discovering the damage on the ceiling.