What Adjusters Look For on a Hail Damage Inspection

Most homeowners meet their first insurance adjuster the same week they learn what a test square is. So let me give you the answer up front: an adjuster is looking for a pattern of storm damage, not a bad roof. That means chalked test squares with enough hail impacts to qualify each slope, bruises that look and feel a specific way, dents in the soft metals around your house that agree with the storm on size and direction, and creased or torn shingles if wind rode in with the hail.

I have spent twenty-plus years in insurance restoration in Charlotte, and I have stood on more roofs with more adjusters than I can count. The damage is either there or it is not; no magic words change that. What changes outcomes is whether everything that is there gets found, photographed, and counted while the adjuster is standing on the shingles. Here is what counts, what gets thrown out, and how to set the inspection up so nothing gets missed.

What is a test square, and why do 8 hits matter?

The adjuster chalks off a 10 foot by 10 foot box on a slope. That is 100 square feet, which roofers call a square. Then they circle every distinct hail impact inside the box and count.

The rule of thumb across the industry is 8 or more hits per test square for a slope to qualify for replacement. Some carriers work from 6, a few hold the line at 10. You will not find any of those numbers in your policy. The test square is a field convention for separating storm damage from a couple of stray dings, and your policy language, not the chalk, controls what is actually covered.

Slopes get counted separately. A south-facing slope that caught wind-driven hail can show 12 solid hits while the sheltered north slope shows 2. Depending on the carrier, that can mean replacing individual slopes or the whole roof once enough slopes qualify. Those judgment calls at the margin are exactly why you want your own contractor up there for the count.

What does a real hail bruise look like?

A fresh bruise is a roughly circular spot, somewhere between a dime and a half dollar, where the impact crushed or knocked loose the granules and the black asphalt underneath shows through. New hits look dark, almost shiny. After a few months of sun they fade toward gray, which is one reason inspections should happen weeks after a storm, not years after.

Size matters more than people expect. As a rough field guide, hail under 3/4 inch rarely bruises a healthy architectural shingle. Around 1 inch, older 3-tab shingles start taking real damage. At 1.25 inches and up, most asphalt roofs show bruising, and golf ball size tears up everything it touches. Age, temperature, and the wind behind the stones move all of those numbers, which is why adjusters confirm hail size using the metals on your property, not the shingles alone.

Bruise, blister, or mechanical damage: this is the whole argument

Almost every disputed hail claim comes down to sorting three look-alikes:

• Hail bruises sit where stones hit: granules displaced, asphalt exposed, mat fractured, soft under the thumb, and concentrated on the slopes that faced the storm.
• Blisters come from heat and manufacturing, not weather. The pits have granules intact right up to the edge, often with a raised rim, and they scatter randomly, including across slopes the storm never touched.
• Mechanical damage is people: scuffed drag marks from foot traffic on a hot day, a dropped tool, a satellite installer's boots around the dish. It clusters in walk paths and around penetrations.

Adjusters get trained hard on these distinctions. If a roof shows blisters, the gutters and vents are clean, and the neighborhood took no hail, the claim gets denied, and the denial is correct. This is also why you never let anyone manufacture hits. Fabricated damage looks wrong to a trained eye (perfect circles, slide marks, no matching collateral), and it is insurance fraud on a claim with your name on it.

Soft metal collateral: the evidence that cannot lie

Shingles can be argued about. A dented aluminum vent cannot. A good adjuster walks the whole property checking every soft metal surface: box vents and ridge vents, gutters and downspouts, valley metal, chimney caps, window screens, the fins on your AC condenser, even the mailbox and the garage door panels.

Soft metal does two jobs. It proves size: roughly 3/4 inch hail starts marking AC fins and window screens, 1 inch hail dents box vents and the tops of gutters, and bigger stones leave knuckle-size dents in everything. And it proves direction: dents concentrated on the west faces of vents and downspouts back up a west-facing slope full of bruises.

Photograph the metals the week of the storm. Fins get combed straight at the next AC service, gutters get replaced, and the physical record quietly disappears while the claim is still open.

The damage has to agree with the storm

Hail almost never falls straight down; wind drives it in at an angle. A real event hits one or two slopes hardest, and the collateral damage faces the same way. The adjuster knows the storm's reported direction and hail size before they ever climb your ladder, and they have usually inspected some of your neighbors already.

That cuts both ways. Identical bruising on all four slopes with clean metals looks wrong and invites a denial. But an 8-hit square on the two windward slopes, dented screens on those same elevations, and a neighbor's roof already approved is a claim that closes itself.

Wind damage rides the same inspection

Most hailstorms bring wind, and adjusters scope both while they are up there. On shingles, wind shows up as creases: a horizontal fold line across a tab that lifted, flexed, and laid back down. A creased shingle is functionally broken even when it looks flat from the yard. Adjusters also look for torn or missing tabs and for seal strips popped loose along rakes and ridges. If your event was wind more than hail, read our guide on wind damage versus wear and tear, because carriers draw that line aggressively.

What does not count, no matter who circles it

• Nail pops pushing shingles up from underneath
• Blisters, popped or not
• Scuffs and drag marks from foot traffic
• Uniform granule loss in the water channels and keyways of an aging roof
• Cracking and curling from age or a cooked attic
• Old repairs, exposed nails, and general neglect

A roofer who chalks this stuff is not helping you; they are burning the claim's credibility one circle at a time. Hail granule loss is clustered and paired with bruising. Age granule loss is even, follows the water paths, and shows up on every slope. Adjusters can tell. If most of what your roof shows is on this list, the honest move is not to file at all: our guide on whether to file a roof claim walks that decision, and the insurance claim quiz will tell you in about three minutes.

How do you prepare for the adjuster inspection?

Get your own inspection first. A reputable local contractor on the roof before you ever file tells you whether the damage is real and worth claiming, and it produces the photo set that keeps the adjuster meeting honest. That order of operations, inspect first and file second, is covered start to finish in how roof insurance claims actually work.

Before the adjuster arrives, photograph every elevation of the house, the gutters, downspouts, screens, and AC fins, plus any interior stains with dates. Write down the storm date. Keep your contractor's inspection report and estimate in hand.

Day of: your contractor should be on the roof with the adjuster, carrying chalk, a pitch gauge, and their pre-inspection photos, walking them to every hit they already found. Not because adjusters cheat, but because a scope only includes what someone pointed out. You stay on the ground and handle the interior walk-through if there are leaks.

Afterward, the written scope shows up in a week or two. Compare it to your contractor's estimate line by line. Gaps are normal and fixable, and that process is covered in why the first insurance check is rarely the final number.

What to do next

If a storm just hit and no adjuster is scheduled yet, get one good local roofer on the roof this week and take the quiz before you call anyone's claims line. If the inspection is already on the calendar, call your contractor today and get them committed to being there, then spend twenty minutes photographing your gutters, screens, and AC unit. The evidence is sitting on your property right now. Your job is making sure it is still there, and still visible, when the chalk comes out.