The adjuster is coming Thursday. The tarp has been on the roof since the storm, you have forty photos on your phone, and you are not sure what he is going to want to see. This site connects you by phone with an independent local roofing contractor who documents roof damage in Collier County. This site is not an insurer, not a public adjuster, and not a law firm, so treat nothing on it as legal advice.
In a claim, what the contractor contributes is a documented record. They walk the roof and photograph each slope, count damaged tiles or shingles, mark where underlayment is torn, and note whether the plywood is wet. They separate what the storm did from what was already worn. From that they build a scope with every line itemized, covering the materials and their quantities, the labor, the permit, and whatever has to be removed to reach the damaged work.
On tile roofs they add the details that decide repair versus replace: the profile, the manufacturer if it can be read, how the tile was set, and whether a matching tile exists. Plenty of Collier County contractors will climb up with the adjuster so both of them are seeing the same slope at the same time.
Shoot photos of the damage, indoors and on the roof from the ground, before a single thing gets moved. Have the roof tarped and file the receipt: your policy obligates you to stop further damage, and emergency protection is normally a covered part of the claim. Then phone your insurer and come away with a claim number.
Next, pull the declarations page from your policy and check three items on it. First, the hurricane deductible, typically 2 to 5 percent of dwelling coverage when a named storm is involved. Second, the deadline for giving notice of a claim. Third, whether the roof is insured at replacement cost or at actual cash value. A roof over a certain age on an actual-cash-value schedule pays out less, and that is worth knowing before Thursday.
How much your policy pays out is not something anyone here can tell you. Broadly speaking, a Florida homeowner policy is built to respond to the sudden damage a storm's wind does to a roof. Wear, age, worn-out underlayment, and leaks that have been running for months are usually treated as maintenance and excluded. Matching a discontinued tile can go either way, and Florida has rules about matching that your adjuster knows and you may not.
Once the insurer issues its decision, the repair is a storm damage or replacement job with a permit pulled through the county or city. A disputed claim is a job for a licensed public adjuster or an attorney, not a roofer.
Florida rewrote its property insurance law in December 2022, three months after Ian. Three changes matter for a roof claim. The window for reporting a new claim shrank from two years to one year after the date of loss, and a supplemental claim now has to be filed within 18 months. Assignment of benefits, where a contractor takes over your claim, is no longer allowed on residential policies issued on or after January 1, 2023, so the claim stays in your name. And as of May 2022, roof age by itself is no longer grounds for a carrier to decline renewal on a roof under 15 years old, or on any roof where an inspection shows five or more years of life remaining.
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation publishes the wind-mitigation form (OIR-B1-1802) that carriers use to price the wind portion of a premium, and a new roof documented on that form is often the thing that changes a renewal quote. Many Collier County homes that lost private coverage after Irma and Ian ended up with Citizens Property Insurance, the state-backed carrier, which has its own roof-age and inspection rules at renewal.
Nothing helps a Collier County claim more than a roof inspection report dated before the storm, since it shows the adjuster exactly what condition the roof was in the week before.
Have your address, the date of the storm, your claim number, the date the adjuster is due if one is set, and the declarations page from your policy. Mention whether a tarp is on the roof and whether anyone is living in the house right now. Call (239) 341-5474.
Taking requestsDescribe the roof in plain words. The call is routed to an independent local roofing contractor who works tile, metal, and shingle roofs in your part of Collier County.
A slipped tile, a lifted shingle, a cracked pipe boot, or a valley that leaks in every afternoon storm, found and fixed before the next one.
Tear-off to the deck, new underlayment, and a new tile, metal, or shingle roof permitted through Collier County or the city.
Tarping, photos, and repair after wind, a fallen palm, or a named storm opens the roof.