A complete cleaning up after roofing repair is absolutely necessary for safety reasons and to make your property tidy again. A professional who does the repair for you should perform this service as part of the contract. You should sign off on their work only after you have inspected your yard to make sure they did a thorough job. It’s not unreasonable for you to ask them to check the yard one more time for nails before they leave.

What about DIY Roofing?

If the repair is a do-it-yourself project, you’ll need to really know what to look for when you do the cleanup. Loose shingles and packing materials are the easy things to spot and pickup. 

Look on top of the roof too. Some items such as tools or leftover materials might be left in places where they can subsequently be moved by wind and rain. These can damage the repair job that you just completed. In addition they can clog or damage your gutter system. Speaking of which, remember to check the gutters. Nails can easily find their way there during construction or repair work. From there they can end up near downspouts on the lawn below.

Check for nails on the lawn anywhere near the edge of the roof. Most will fall within a few feet of the edge, but you need to look six to ten feet out to make sure. This is especially true for a multiple story home. If there are slopes in the landscape or paving, then loose items can travel even further. Any leftover materials strewn out on the grass can damage your lawn equipment. Nails can also turn into dangerous projectiles if you hit them with a mower or weedeater.

You can usually purchase or rent a magnetic sweep from a home improvement store. This tool will help you locate nails more easily and effectively than searching visually.

Related posts:

1. How To Avoid Roofing Repair Scams
2. Roof Flashing Maintenance & Repair
3. Metal Roofing
4. Recycled Roofing Materials
5. Fall Leaf Clean-Up

Tags: Roofing

This entry was posted on Friday, November 26th, 2010 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Roofing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.