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After a Melbourne storm, photograph the roof from the ground and the ceilings from inside. Record each pitch, any missing tiles you can see, branches, lifted edges and the stain that appeared. Stay off the wet roof. That photo set is the checklist. Roof Revival Melbourne uses it to scope storm damage, then quotes the repair the storm actually caused.
The list is a record, not a climb. You are not looking for every cracked unit. You are giving a crew, and if you need one, an assessor, a dated picture of the house before anyone walks on it. The money page is Storm Damage Roof Melbourne. Wind lift, a branch through the pitch, and a valley that could not take the dump are the jobs on that page. Leaf sitting in a gutter after the same night is a line on the checklist, and it is often maintenance rather than a storm repair.
Wait until you can stand in the yard without being under a limb that is still moving. Use the phone you already have. Keep each shot wide enough that a stranger can see what part of the house it is. Then work through this list. If an item is not there, skip it. Do not invent a close-up by climbing.
That is the outside half. It is enough to book an inspection. A blurred pitch from the footpath beats a sharp photo from a ladder on wet concrete tile. Glen Waverley hips and two-storey Doncaster roofs show their street face honestly from the driveway. The rear pitch may need a photo from the back lawn. If a fence or a neighbour’s tree blocks one face, photograph the block and say so. Do not go onto the roof to clear the view.
The indoor half is what the storm did to the rooms, which the ground shots cannot show.
Do not step onto the battens. Do not punch a dry ceiling to see what is above it. If the plaster is bulging, stay out from under it. Catch a drip in a bucket only when you can do that from the floor. Write which rain it was, in a sentence: “Northerly, Thursday night, stain appeared in the rear bedroom.” Wind direction is something you felt at the back door. It belongs in the note beside the photos.
A stain that was already brown last month is still worth a photo, labelled as old. A stain that appeared on the storm night is labelled as new. Mixing those two labels is how a maintenance mark gets described as impact, and how a real opening gets lost in a vague “the ceiling has always been a bit marked.”
Roof Revival Melbourne reads the set before we are on the roof, then confirms it when the surface is safe. The wide pitch shots tell us which face to start on. The ceiling shots tell us whether water arrived, and in which room. The branch shot tells us to bring the right access. The date ties the record to the weather you actually had, not to a storm that hit another suburb.
If the roof is open and water is still coming in, make-safe can happen before a perfect checklist. Photograph what you can from shelter, then call. A temporary cover is not the rebuild, and it is not a reason to skip the photos you can still take of the rooms and the street. When the cover is on, photograph the cover from the ground as well, so the “after make-safe” state is as clear as the damage.
Close photos on the roof are our work, once the surface is safe. Yours are the ground and the rooms, sent with suburb and storeys.
Melbourne storms fill gutters with gum leaves, seed and broken twigs. Photograph the overflow stain on the wall if you can see it from the ground. Then keep that photo in its own sentence. A gutter that could not cope because it was already packed is often maintenance. A gutter torn off the fascia, a downpipe split by impact, or a valley tray that has opened is storm damage to the building. Roof Revival Melbourne will say which after we look. We will not turn a leaf line into a re-roof, and we will not ignore a lifted sheet because the gutters are also dirty.
This checklist is not a cleaning guide. Do not treat it as instructions to empty the gutter, wash the tiles, or blow the valley out. If the only thing you can see from the ground is debris in an otherwise intact gutter, say that in the note. If you can see missing tiles or a hole, say that too. The two facts can be true on the same night. They are not the same repair.
If ice fell as well as wind, a ground photo of a marked car or flue supports that. It does not prove every old ceiling mark is new. Dirt on a south pitch is not a line on this checklist.
Stay off the wet roof. That includes a quick look, a tile you think you can nudge back, a branch you think you can lift, and a closer photo of a ridge. Wet tile, wet metal and wet lichen do not care that you have lived in the house for years. A fall from a single-storey eave is still a fall. Two-storey stock in the east is worse. Leave limbs where they lie until someone equipped for them can deal with the roof underneath.
Do not seal what you find. Silicone, tar and chemical mixes are not on this checklist. They hide the detail, they fail, and they make the permanent repair harder to warrant. Do not pull a slipped tile off and throw it away before it is in a photo. If a piece is already on the ground, photograph it where it fell, then move it only so nobody steps on it.
If you cannot see a face from the yard or an upstairs window you already use, leave it for the inspection and say it was out of sight.
The checklist does not set the price. The inspection does. A local repair is not automatically a $4,000–$12,000 restore or a $20,000+ replacement. Those bands are for a full restoration system and for many re-roofs, after the roof itself has been seen. A storm might have taken six tiles on a sound Preston bungalow. That is a repair. It might have opened a valley and a ridge on a tired concrete roof. That can be a larger repair, and sometimes the start of a restore conversation, because the mortar was already finished. It might have written off a pitch. We will say which, in writing, with the photos attached to the scope.
Bring the ground set even if you think it is incomplete. A missing rear-pitch photo is a gap we can fill. No photos at all means we start colder. If you are also talking to an insurer, keep this set untouched: do not filter it down to the worst frame and delete the wide shots. Wide shots are how a single hole stays a single hole, instead of becoming a storey about the whole roof.
Send the ground set, suburb and storeys. Roof Revival Melbourne — 0426 516 883 · info@roofrevivalmelbourne.com.au
