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Published Sunday, March 29, 2009 in Local

Roofing crews do booming business after recent storms

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Newnan Times-Herald

Nearly six weeks after February's hail storm and tornadoes, roofers are doing a booming business in Coweta.

Roofing crews are all over northern Coweta, and plenty of homes have stacks of shingles and rollaway containers waiting on crews or the right weather.

In March, the Coweta County Building Department has issued 172 permits in the home repair, alteration, and addition category, with the vast majority of those for storm damage, including roofing, siding, and windows, said Patricia Palmer, Coweta's public information officer. That's up from 17 in February.

Roof damage can take a while to show up, which is one reason the work is peaking so long after the storm. Another is the weather itself.

"It's got to be dry," said Greg Carter of Carter Consulting and Innovation, a roofing company based in Newnan. Roofing contractors watch the weather religiously. "I've got weather on my phone, weather in my office," Carter said. "It's tricky. It's a roll of the dice sometimes."

The rainy weather has been a curse for those with leaky roofs waiting on approval from their insurance adjusters; but it has also revealed leaks that could have stayed hidden for months.

Sometimes, it takes a lot of water to work its way down through the attic to show up on the ceiling. Or the roof won't start leaking until the wind and rain hit it at just the right angle.

Most damage will likely have shown up by now, but for homeowners in areas where there is a lot of storm damage who haven't done so already, "the right thing to do is go ahead and call a contractor," Carter said. Most roofing companies do free damage inspections and estimates. "It's better to be safe than sorry," he said. "Just get an opinion from a professional roofing contractor and then you'll know."

Carter said every home he has looked at so far has had insurance, and the insurance companies are usually paying to replace the entire roof. Patching to fix roof damage from hail would be tough, Carter said, because the damage is usually spread evenly over the roof.

Though the storms of Feb. 18 were very negative for many people, they have been a boon for roofing contractors and their employees, hit hard by the housing crisis.

"I hate it for the aggravation and inconvenience for homeowners, and all that some of them are going through with the damage to their homes," Carter said. "But oh my God, it couldn't have come at a better time. I am looking at it as a true blessing."

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