Red Flag Home Inspection

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Quincy Jones

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Publish Date: June 22, 2022

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Red Flag Home Inspection June 22, 2022 9:58 pm

Our insurance inspection services seek to confirm what building-related efforts were made in the building of your home to make it resistant to high winds, like those experienced in a hurricane. Some o... View MoreOur insurance inspection services seek to confirm what building-related efforts were made in the building of your home to make it resistant to high winds, like those experienced in a hurricane. Some of those features are "hip" roofs (which you can read more about here). The inspector will assess and list construction/configuration features that are included with the structure of your house which will help to protect against the damages caused by passing storms. The Florida Department of Financial Services, the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Floridas Trust, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, and Florida Safe Homes Alliance, all endorse and apply the same scientific/research-based guidelines and recommendations for alerting and warning the general public regarding these storm-saving, safety-protecting building items. The results of this guidance have culminated in a "Unified Disaster Mitigation Checklist" that you may submit to your insurer to consider in order for them to provide you with a substantial discount. Florida Statue 627.0629 requires that insurance companies provide "discounts, credits, or other rate differences to the residents of the State of Florida..." for building techniques proven to lessen wind damage caused by hurricanes and other tropical storms. Features mentioned in this report should be verified by a licensed inspector. Some ways an inspector may verify these components are by permit numbers, bills, installation date records, and engineering approval numbers for materials. Photographs showing that various criteria are met should also be included with this report to allow acceptance and review. It is important to note that neither the Inspector nor the Homeowner has any say or input regarding a decision made by the Insurance Company of your choice regarding whether or not a discount is offered or considered as part of this report. In some cases, you may be presented with opportunities to obtain further discounts for adding missing materials/components, such as storm windows. It has been our experience that most of our customers receive discounts because you are entitled to receive every discount, but are ineligible for others. The reports gained are valid over 5 years, and may be provided to other insurance companies for quote purposes if you are shopping around (provided that the reports are no older than 5 years). We have observed and been informed of substantial discounts on customer premiums of hundreds to thousands. So, what is an examiner looking for?. Your inspector will be recording your application for building permits, checking if it is from / post 9/11/94 (Miami-Dade and Broward; High Winds) or from / post 3/1/2002 for the rest of the state. This is because those buildings were built according to either the South Florida Building Code (SFBC-94) or Florida Building Code (known as Florida Building Code, 2001, or FBC). On March 1, 2002, the Florida Building Code was established as the overriding code for all other local building codes within the state of Florida. Buildings built before those dates may not use the same construction standards, since building codes are standards contractors are required to pass to build their projects. Building codes have become stricter over time, and they are improving how we build our buildings. We have learned from our mistakes, and have tightened our standards every time a revision is passed, which happens in Florida every 3 years. To help your inspector, do not hesitate to gather any permit dates, occupancy certificates, or other building documents showing the time of the homes construction. Here, too, an inspector will be documenting the date of installation, but for the roof itself (not the whole house). Obviously, if the whole building meets that criteria, the roof will too. Often, though, a roof may have met this criterion, but the building did not, because the roof materials were replaced later on (and did so according to the most current Building Regulations). Roof installations following those dates, then, show they were permitted/installed under FBC. This means the materials were evaluated, the type/spacing of the fasteners, number of fasteners per shingle/tile, etc. Similar to building construction dates, you may assist the inspector by compiling any receipts or documents reflecting installation dates (of your roofing). When it comes to wind mitigation reports, the Roof geometry section is the important one. As you are probably aware, most home roof systems are dependent on evaporation suppression (not water sealing) to keep water from getting into our homes. This is typically accomplished by the roof surfaces being slanted in order to create a continuous draining route for water. For a good, thorough write-up of the subject, please see here (which you may want to read at a later date, rather than right now). So, those shingles, cement, or perhaps clay tiles that are on your roof are there to wick the water away and absorb the effects of harmful UV (not for water protection). Now, imagine that wind is blowing over those two similar buildings. Which one do you think will do a better job?. Do you have any suggestions for which would be better. Do you have any suggestions for the best. If you did, you were correct. Let us take a look at how winds act upon the building. In the following graphic, you will see lines representing the patterns of the wind. As wind flows towards the building, it gets blocked, and has to bend upwards in order to get to and above the roof. The wind changing direction causes a sucking (upward) force on the windward part of the roof. As the wind returns to the roof, this suction force is released. Now, you are probably asking yourself why the suction force exists. Okay, well, if you were to ask, I would say that it works in the same way as the wings of a plane. Imagine that there is a bunch of air hitting the front of a building underneath, part of that is hitting a wall and going up/over, some is going down along the sides of a building. But all the air (the air going up/over and the sidewall air) meets again in the rear of the building, where it exists. So think about the following graph. The air on the Gable End of the Building hits the Wall, is reflected up, which causes the suction of this part, and comes down again on the Roof, and is angled down again on B. Now, suppose that air, in the scenario above, has traveled 100 feet in real world distance total (as if you were to straighten that wonky line), and has done so within 1 second. That means that the air going up/over is going at a speed of 100 feet per second (fps), or 68.2 miles per hour. So, for kicks, now consider the air just going up the sides of a building (see the picture below). Since that took a much more efficient route, this air traveled a total of 60 feet. Now, once again, the entire air starting from A and ending from B started from A simultaneously, and ended from B simultaneously. This is a rather complicated explanation, so you can just believe me on this one (it is the concept on which aerodynamics and engineering are built). Anyway, so because that air has to make contact with its partner (the air taking the longest path above), the two make contact within a second. So, in the below scenario, air travels 60 feet in 1 second (60 feet/second). That is equivalent to about 41 miles per hour. Do you ever find that you are just talking and talking, not really remembering where you are going with a story. The sucking power of the suction force (that is where we are going). So air traveling over a rooftop has a longer journey to take the same time it takes the air to go over a side. The air moves more quickly, and the upswing in air causes the suction effect. There are tons of interesting experiments that you can try with your kids here. My personal favorite is a floating Ping-Pong ball trick. You get a ping-pong ball and you blow underneath it using a straw. It "sticks" in the air, only falling down once you stop blowing. You can do the same with a blow dryer. It will "stick" to one source of air, as it will move quickly one way, while moving very little/no air the other way as it starts to drift one way. This generates a suction force, pulling it towards the air source, keeping it balanced (as long as air is flowing). Do this with your kids, they will be blown away by how well a Ping Pong ball balances in air on top of a straw!. I am not going to cut this part, the Ping Pong Experiment might be my favorite part of this blog so far. I will admit, I got carried away. So, now that we know about the way that the air movement impacts a roof, it is easy to see how the least-obstructed, most-gradual of all the slanted hip roofs will do much better than a gable-roof one (it "flexes" or moves the air around a lot less; there is less suction). So, when buying a home, if you see a hip-shaped roof, award this home a bonus point. It can be worth a ton of money. Again, you can read more about the roof geometry in my previous post here (for lighter reading at a later date). The weakest link in any system is one that could lead to failures of others that are designed too well, and are far stronger. In the case of the roof deck, a roof is only as strong as the connection it makes to a building (and a completed roof product is only as strong as the connection it makes to the deck). In this part of the wind mitigation report, you get a substantial discount for having a concrete roof deck. These are not actually very common in typical homebuilding, but they are definitely available. Youare also in the running for rebates when youare using a plywood decking that is 7/16-inch thick, or an Oriented Strand Board (OSB) decking, provided that it has 6-D or 8-D fasteners, and a 24-inch on-center truss.

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