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best ways to void your roof warranty

7 Surprising Ways to Void Your Roof Warranty: What Homeowners Need to Know

By: Victors Home Solutions

A roof warranty is a valuable protection for your home investment. But what does it really cover, and more importantly, what actions can void it? Let’s explore seven common mistakes that could nullify your roof warranty.

Most roof warranties protect against:

  1. Manufacturing defects
  2. Installer errors

However, they don’t cover damage from homeowner negligence or improper maintenance.

7 Ways to Accidentally Void Your Roof Warranty

1. Improper Installation

If you try to save a few dollars by hiring a low-bidding roofer, handyman service, or storm-chasing roofer to install your home’s roof, you will pay a huge price for all of those “savings.”

If a roofing material manufacturer provides detailed instructions on proper installation techniques, offers factory training to roofing technicians, and even prints information on the materials themselves, the manufacturer expects professional installation.

Shoddy installation, cut corners, or incorrect methods will void the warranty. Leave roofing work to trained, skilled professionals like your local residential roofer. Avoid handyman services, roofers offering bargains, or roofers with no local physical address.

2. Improper Ventilation

Though a roof is not alive, it must breathe. That is, it must draw in air from its eaves and exhaust air from its ridge. The constant circulation of air helps to maintain attic air temperatures and humidity levels which protect your roof. If the air inside the attic space gets too hot or humid, damage to your roof can void your roof warranty.

3. Improper Insulation

Overstuffing your attic space with insulation may seem like a great way to save energy and money, but too much insulation can cause your attic to become too hot. Too hot a roof can constitute improper installation, resulting in a voided roof warranty.

Combine inadequate ventilation with improperly installed insulation, and your roof could literally bake from beneath, shortening the lifespan of sheathing, underlayment, and the roofing material.

4. Two Roofs

Some Michigan municipalities may permit the installation of a new roof over an old one, but most do not. Most roofers with good reputations do not perform this, either. Two roofs put a tremendous strain on your house rafters. They also work against each other, with the original roof often deceiving roofers searching for roof leaks.

Roofing materials manufacturers also explicitly ban this practice in their warranty details. You may think you are saving a few dollars on carting costs to remove the old roof, but you are short-changing yourself by voiding your roof warranty.

5. Pressure Washing

While roofs are sturdy, they are not impenetrable. Blasting a stream of water against shingles, tiles, metal, or low-slope roofing materials can punch holes in even the sturdiest roofing materials.

Using a pressure washer to clean a roof is a bad idea for several reasons:

  1. The roof becomes even slipperier and more dangerous with the added water.
  2. Shingles can be torn, cracked, or uplifted and ruined by the water stream.
  3. You can start a roof leak which will continue through every storm and downpour.
  4. The roofing warranty can be voided by the use of a pressure washer
  5. Small problems can be literally blasted open, becoming massive headaches.

6. Antennae and Satellite Dishes

After-market products added to your roof by inexperienced, third-party technicians can unintentionally void your roof warranty. A satellite dish installer has little or no regard for the preservation of your roof when drilling into your roof and sheathing.

Carriage bolts and a dab of caulk may be all the satellite technician uses to hold the equipment in place. Roofing materials manufacturers frown on anyone but professional roofers working on their products.

7. Solar Panels and Skylights

Only skilled, trained roofers should be installing skylights through your roof. Solar panel installers often work with roofers to ensure their work complies with the roof warranty. Choose your installers wisely, and make sure they help you maintain the warranty, no matter what they attach to your roof.

Contact us today at Victors Home Solutions for superior roofing services throughout Midwest. We offer a complete range of roofing services, from partial roof replacement to roof repair to complete roof replacement.

Locations in:

  • Canton, MI
  • Saginaw, MI
  • Grand Rapids, MI
  • Toledo, OH
  • Cleveland, OH
  • Cincinnati, OH
  • Chicago, IL
  • Philadelphia, PA