Roof Inspections: Why You Need One and What Your Options Are (Southern California Facilities Expo 2025)

Roofs don’t last forever, and at some point, you’re going to have to bring in an inspector. Maybe you’re trying to figure out how much useful life your roof has left so you can budget for a replacement—or maybe you have a persistent leak and you need to get to the bottom of it. Whatever your reasons, it’s important to know your options.

In his Wednesday morning educational session at the 2025 Southern California Facilities Expo, Russ Nyblod, West Coast regional manager for Simon Roofing, explained the differences between different types of inspections—plus how technology is changing the way inspections are conducted and the implications for facility professionals.

Why Do I Need a Roof Inspection?

There are many reasons to inspect roofs, from proving you’re taking care of a leased building to understanding your repair timeline, but all of them boil down to one common factor—you need to know more about the roof you have on your building. You need to understand what you’re working with in order to make informed decisions about the future of the roof and the building as a whole.

“There are a lot of options out on the market,” Nyblod said. “You might be talking to one contractor who has one option. There are others who have 15 or 20 for your situation. It’s difficult to compare apples to apples if you don’t have all the information.”

What Does a Basic Roof Inspection Entail?

The first level of roof inspection is a basic visual observation, Nyblod said. This may or may not cost you money, depending on the depth of the inspection. This simple evaluation should be performed twice a year—preferably in spring and fall, or after significant weather events. They may contain maps, photos, the type of roof you have, and high- and low-impact defects or anomalies. These defects may range from simple debris clogging drains to bigger issues, such as punctures, open laps, or shrinking pitch pans that encourage ponding water.

Some issues captured in the report won’t be immediate emergencies, but these regular inspections can give you an idea of what to watch for in future inspections.

“Ridging, for example, wouldn’t be a repair I’d do right away, but I would keep an eye on it. It’s nice to have it documented,” Nyblod said. “Maybe you’re coming in a year later, and instead of 100 linear feet of ridging, we see 200 linear feet. They’ll crack along the seams, and there will be leaks. I definitely want to keep an eye on those.”

When to Pursue More Detailed Roof Condition Reports

At the next level is a detailed condition report, which will include photos, measurements, and a rating or scale designation of the roof’s condition, broken down by roof section. Inspectors will take a more scientific approach and will typically do a thermal scan of your roof to look at the insulation above the roof deck.

“When you get to this level, now that we’re digging deeper in this roof, we’re eliminating assumptions,” Nyblod explained. “Those assumptions might be the number of layers on the roof, or whether you do or don’t have wet insulation that needs to be taken care of before a repair or long-term solution is put together.” Roofing professionals will need to know the type of insulation you have, its thickness, and the taper. The existence of tapered insulation is particularly important because it could take 45 to 60 days to procure a replacement, Nyblod said.

Your inspection team may also do core samples, in which a section of the roof is removed for testing. These aren’t the 2-inch plugs that you may think of when you think about core samples—they’ll often be larger slices that can give the testers more information about the deck, insulation, and other factors. This detailed reporting step is when you can find out whether your roof materials contain asbestos or other suspect materials that could cause an issue during repairs or replacements.

Mapping ponding water is another important area to cover in a more detailed report. “Ponding water affects all roof systems in different and varying ways,” Nyblod said. “If five years later, we perform an evaluation and we’re mapping the ponding water and it changes, that’s an indication that we might have structural concerns or compression of the insulation that’s present. If I’m putting a new roof on, I want to make sure I address that.”

What Are My Roof Inspection Options?

Replacing a roof is a huge investment, so it’s important to have all the information you can get when it comes to your options and how much time you might have left on your current roof. There are two main categories of membrane testing that you can have done to your current roof: mechanical testing and chemical testing. All of them contribute to a better picture of how your current roof is doing and where it is in its lifecycle.

1. Mechanical testing involves looking at things like tensile strength and elongation. “These roofs are moving, swelling, contracting, shifting. Over time they break down,” Nyblod said. “If they’re not able to swell and contract and shift and move as well anymore, they’re going to start pulling apart.”
2. Chemical testing is an umbrella term for several types of tests. First, testers will establish a baseline by determining which manufacturer made your roof membrane and roughly when they made it. Then, they can compare your roof’s current performance to the original performance metrics.

Taken together, these tests can help you understand the roof’s remaining useful life.

“Say I put a new roof on that costs me $200,000. It’s going to last 20 years, so that’s $10,000 a year. At what point does it not make sense to be doing repairs anymore? When it starts costing more than $10,000 a year,” Nyblod said. “Every situation’s different, but when there are remaining useful life predictions, you understand how much life you have [left], and it allows you to make decisions about when it makes sense to do repairs any further.”

What Roof Technologies Are on the Horizon?

New technologies are changing the way roofs are inspected, Nyblod said. Some of the most promising ones include:

• Drones. These are especially useful in remote areas and hard-to-reach situations. Drones can now do thermal infrared scans, as well as capturing areas quickly and mapping ponding water. However, there are still certain applications where you need boots on the ground—for example, core sampling or finding small punctures and open laps. Drones are also less effective on congested roofs with a lot of equipment.
• Artificial intelligence. Like many other industries, AI has found a home in roofing—especially when it comes to weather modeling and estimating.
• Roofing robotics. Robots are helpful for work in hard-to-reach or unsafe areas, data collection, doing minor repairs, and gathering closer detail than a drone can manage.

There are more than 40 types of commercial roofs on the market, Nyblod concluded, which means that whatever issues you have with your current roof, there are many potential solutions. This underscores the importance of gathering all the data you can.

“When we try to understand and compare apples to apples, it’s not an easy job,” Nyblod said. “More information helps you, and it arms you to make better decisions.”