How to check your roof for damage after a storm, from the ground

The best time to check is the morning after, in daylight, once the gusts have eased. Loose tiles and chimney pots can still fall in the tail end of a storm, so keep clear of the walls and do not stand directly under the eaves. A quick tour of the garden first tells you a lot. Tile fragments, bits of lead, felt or ridge cement on the lawn or the path point to the part of the roof they came from.

Do not go up a ladder or onto the roof for a closer look. A wet slope after a storm is slippery, and damaged tiles can slide without warning. Everything you need to see can be seen from below. Take someone with you if you can, so one person watches the roof and the other watches where you are walking. If the pavement runs alongside the house, put something across it if debris is hanging above.

Start with the main slopes and scan row by row. A gap in the pattern where a tile used to sit shows as a darker patch or a visible line of batten (the strip of timber the tiles hang from). Slipped tiles sit crooked, with their lower edge hanging below the row beneath. Cracked or chipped ones may show a pale break. On slate roofs, look for slates that have dropped down, leaving a gap and a small tail of nails.

Then follow the ridge, the line of rounded capping tiles running along the peak, and the hips, the sloping ridges at the corners, if the roof has them. Ridge tiles that have shifted, gaps in the mortar and any tile that sits at an angle are all worth noting. At the verge, which is the angled edge where a gable wall meets the roof, check that the edge tiles are in line and not lifting. Look at flat roofs and porch roofs as well, where a torn or lifted edge shows as a flap or a ripple in the covering. Our page on tiles blown off in a storm explains how they fail.

The chimney is the next place to check. Look for a stack that leans, bricks that have shifted or a pot that has moved, and any crack in the mortar between the stack and the roof. The lead flashing around the base, which seals the join, should lie flat against the brickwork. If it is lifted, curled or missing, rain can enter even when the tiles are fine.

Then look along the gutters. A gutter pulled away from the fascia, sagging in the middle or hanging from one bracket has been damaged, and it may have taken a few tiles with it. Check that downpipes are still attached and that no blocked outlet will overflow in the next downpour. Look at the fascia boards and soffits too, the boards under the eaves. If a ceiling downstairs shows a new stain, or you find a damp patch in the loft, our guide to checking the loft for a leak is the next step.

Photograph everything you find before anything moves. If the storm caused the damage, an insurer will ask for evidence, and Which? says damaged items should be kept unless they are dangerous. Take wide shots first that show where on the house the problem sits, then closer ones using the zoom on your phone from the ground rather than getting nearer.

Write down the date and time, the weather and what you saw. Keep any fallen pieces somewhere dry, and note roughly where each one landed, since that helps a roofer work out which part of the roof it came from. If something needs an emergency repair before the insurer responds, the receipts for it matter later. We cannot predict what an insurer will decide, but a tidy set of dated pictures makes the discussion simpler. Our guide to photos of roof damage goes through what to capture.

A walk-round finds the obvious, but it will not find everything. Lead that has lifted out of sight, cracks in a valley, nail fixings that have loosened and underlay that has torn all sit where you cannot see them. If you have any sign of damage, or if the roof is old and the storm was a bad one, a proper survey is worth having. A roofer goes up, photographs each fault and gives you a plain verdict on the size of job needed.

If water is already coming in, say so when you ring, because a leak gets a temporary cover before anything else. Afterwards you get a price in writing, one sum, for the repair the photographs justify. Most storm repairs turn out to be local patches rather than whole roofs, which is why the survey comes first. For the bigger picture, see our emergency roof repairs page, and our guide to what to do with a storm damaged roof for the steps that follow.