Storm Damage Repair with Larson Home Services

With the recent (and first ever) tornado in February, Andrew talks about storm damage to roofing and gutters.

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Chip Pank Smile, Come on tuningup Human NATO five thirteen ten WIBA and
ask the experts. Joined this morningby Andrew Larson. Andrew comes to us
from Larsen Home Services. The websiteLarson L A R. S O.
N. Home Services dot com.That's Larsenhomeservices dot com. The telephone number

(00:27):
six oh eight five three five fortythree forty three. That's five three,
five forty three forty three. AndI know this week, generally for folks,
makes a lot of sense to takevacation because it's generally a pretty quiet
week, especially in the industry asfar as uh roof repair and other things,
because it's mostly all scheduled people.You know, You've got your guys

(00:48):
out working, Andrew, and theyare on the schedule and everything's good,
and then out of the blue,we get a nasty, nasty storm tornado
as a matter of fact, rollingthrough mid February, and that just kind
of kind of gets your guys outthere. How you doing this morning,
Andrew, I'm doing fantastic. Iheard you guys are supposed to get snow
back home. That's why I left. Yes, yes, we are a
chance for snow and a little bitof everything for sure. Real quick,

(01:14):
I want to ask you about justabout the right up the road from my
house to matter of fact, thereare a couple of homes that literally lost
their parts of their roof and andpretty devastating obviously entire roofs. That that's
a big, big project. Iknow. Obviously if that happens, there's
definitely houses adjacent to that area thathave damage to their roof. Maybe not

(01:38):
all that evident, but definitely somethingto be inspected. Let's talk real quick
just about what you're able to doat LUR Storm Services and why it's important.
I know there's crews that travel aroundthe country that'll knock on doors and
other things. It's important to makesure you know who's doing that work,
isn't it It is? It is. You know, there's a lot of
companies out there that'll move into townafter we get a big storm and start

(02:02):
knocking doors and get some work done. And I'm not here to say that
they're all bad, because that's definitelynot the case. But I will say
that when we typically hear about astorm restoration project going going sideways, it's
from somebody not local because they cameinto town got a bunch of work,
got a bunch of work done.And after the work is done, they
leave. And if there's problems orstuff wasn't done up to code, like,

(02:23):
they just don't care because they're notfrom around here. They leave,
they change their name, and they'reout. We have storm damage experts all
over the state. I mean,I think I put a little message out
on social media last week. Imean offices in Lacrosse, Madison, Milwaukee,
Green Bay, Appleton, wastaf StevensPoint and experts in all of those

(02:49):
offices that know how to handle thisstuff. So we're pretty much local anywhere
that you are in the entire state. And you know, one of the
approaches that we take to what wedo is, you know, there's a
lot of storm roofers out there orpeople just doing roofs in general, that
want to put a shingle on cheapestway they can looks great. The problem
is is that when storm these stormsbere becoming more frequent, right severe weather

(03:14):
pattern, weather patterns of changing,kind of the storm belt is moving north
a little bit. It used tobe like Colorado to Kansas City up into
Iowa, and it's kind of startingto move further north, and insurance companies
are getting smart to that as well. And I've got some inside inside info
on insurance work and agents are straightup that more and more homeowners insurance companies

(03:38):
are just pulling out of Wisconsin andMinnesota because they've been they've been undersold for
so many years, meaning relatively cheaphomeowners insurance. Where we live. Most
people are paying twelve hundred dollars ayear if you think about that, So
you've been paying that for ten tofifteen years, and you get a storm
and you got to put a twentythirty thousand dollars roof on, all the

(04:00):
money's wiped out. So they're raisingrates, they're pulling out of the state.
A lot of different things are happening. So one approach that we take
is we take a lot of pridein trying to sell class fur impact rated
shingles. We want shingles that ifa storm comes through with hail, they're
not gonna get damaged. You're notgonna have to worry about it. They're

(04:23):
actually made to take the impact ofhail and high winds. Now, you
have an F two or an Fthree tornado roll down your road like hey,
that's a whole different story. Butwith the hail that's associated with it,
the f wave shingle. I mean, I've laid that thing down on
carpet and I've smashed it with ahammer, did nothing to it. I've

(04:45):
laid our Class four impact rated armorshield shingles down on carpet, smashed them
with a hammer, nothing happened tothem. They have a rubberized membrane in
them that allows them to flex.So that's what happens when that hail hits
a normal shingle is if smashes downon it, there's give to the roof
and it actually breaks the matting andthen all the granules start to fall off.
Now all we have is fiberglass mattingand eventually they start to leak.

(05:08):
But with Class four impact rated shingles, yes they cost more, but if
the storm comes through, most likelynot going to have anything to worry about.
And that's peace of mind for you, because I can tell you this
talking to people over an Economo walk. They had a big hailstorm go through
last year. A whole bunch ofroofs got replaced. Great, there might
have been some happy people they gotnew roofs. Maybe they needed one.

(05:30):
Guess what they just had hal gothrough again. You know how excited they
are now, not excited because deductiblesare going to go up. People are
going to start getting dropped by theirinsurance company. Now they have to go
through the whole headache and mess gettinga new roof all over again. Now,
if they had impacts impact rated shingles, that's something that they're not going
to have to worry about. Youknow, the best way to deal with

(05:53):
an insurance company is to never haveto deal with them. And that is
the honest to goodness truth. Whetherit's your car insurance, your health insurance,
your homeowner's insurance, if you neverhave to deal with those people,
life is good. And unfortunately thingshappen. The great thing is you mentioned
the F wave F wave shingles,and I've seen I've seen samples of them,
and you know, we've talked aboutthem in the past. They look

(06:14):
beautiful. You mentioned all the greatfeatures to them. Just imagine never having
to worry about about storms and hailand you know, having those things and
never render to worry about calling anddealing with an insurance adjuster or anything like
that. I know you guys dowork for homeowners that do have damage,
and you guys work very closely withthe insurance companies to make sure that homeowners
are getting every benefit that they've thatthey've paid for and making sure that things

(06:38):
are being done right. It's importantthough, as we as we're kind of
recovering from some bizarre storms, whetherit's hail, whether it's wind damage,
other things, that you're having yourroof inspector. And let's talk about how
that works with Larson Home Services.You know, we mentioned people going door
to door. People will change states, change names, those kind of things,
and they're really hard to track down. One of the things I always

(07:00):
loved about talking with you, Andrew, is the company name. It's Larson
Home Services. It's your name.You are a guy here in Wisconsin.
Folks know you, people know yourfamily, know your name, know exactly
all about you. You are committedto this area. When it comes to
having your house checked out inspected forstorm damage. You want something like that,
and let's talk about how how LarsStorme Services does those home inspections for

(07:24):
folks. Here's the thing. You'reexactly right, you know, I was
born and raised in Wisconsin. Igrew up at or further north, but
moved to Madison area about fifteen yearsago to start the company and I've been
here ever since. My family livesin Lodi, My kids go to school
in Lodi, Like this is wherewe are, and we put and eventually
put my name on the company.So it's very very important to us.

(07:46):
And when we do a roof inspection, we take a roof inspection very seriously.
First of all, we're not doingroof inspections looking for hale because we're
not a storm company. Yes,we know how to look for hale.
It's typically pretty easy to find.But when we we do a roof inspection,
we have a sixteen point roof inspectionand there's sixteen different areas that we're
looking for. And we're looking atridge caps, we're looking at a ridge

(08:07):
event, We're looking at softa ventilation, We're looking at the granular breakdown of
the shingle. Are we starting tolose a lot of granules? I mean
sometimes roofs don't have to be thatold and they get baked, they start
to lose granules. Once that startshappening, it doesn't stop, and your
roof is going to prematurely be readyto be replaced. We're checking around chimneys,
we're checking around skylight, we're checkingflashing. So we're going through the

(08:31):
roof with a fine tooth comb.We're using we're using microscopes, we're using
moisture meters, we use a wholebunch of different tools and data to let
a homeowner no. Now, Honestly, most of the time when we do
a roof inspection, it's just free. When we're doing maybe we're doing a
gutter estimate, we're doing a gutterestment. We're doing a roof inspection every
single time, and most of thetime the roof is good. Most of

(08:54):
the time it is. But sometimesthere are key areas. I cannot tell
you how many times we go ona roof and it's five years old and
it's leaking, and there's just somany roofers out there that are going to
want to come out and say,hey, yeah, it's leaking, we
need to replace. That's just basthe case. It's always typically one of
those key areas because if the shinglesare in great shape it's leaking, that

(09:20):
just means that some of the memberI always talk about the most important stuff,
it's underneath you see the stuff youdon't see. We can usually fix
that stuff. Now, if you'vehad a roof over, meaning you've got
a one or two layers of shinglesand you put new shingles over it,
and your roof is five years oldand it's breaking, sorry, there's nothing
we can do. That all needsto come off and it needs to be
done properly. But nine times outof ten that's not the case. It's

(09:41):
just flashings that weren't done properly.People having skylights on the roof, and
I'm not replacing the skylights. Thoseare key late leak areas. Why with
us, if you've got skylights andyou need a new roof, you have
to replace the skylights. And honestly, sometimes we lose jobs because of that
because it's expensive work to do theskylights. But it's just a standard that
we have because I know that ifwe don't replace them, they're gonna leak.

(10:05):
Ask me how I know, becausewe used to do it without replacing
them and end up leaking. Andyou know, you can tell somebody,
hey, we're not gonna cover yourskylight if they leak. But that's a
really sickening feeling when you get acall in the middle of the night during
a storm and someone's skylights are leak, it's a very helpless feeling. So
that's just something we have to do. So sixteen point inspection, checking all

(10:26):
the key areas and the actual makeupof the shingles, we can give a
home owner a really good idea ofhow those shingles are doing. Also,
if you've had a storm, we'regonna come and we're gonna lift shingles to
make sure you didn't have a wholebunch of seal failure. Once those seals
pussed up from a hot, strongwind like a tornado or a straight line,
they're not gonna steal back down.And typically they've folded over, which

(10:48):
means they've creased and they've broke,which is almost the same thing as a
hail damage because where that shingle creasedor it broke, now all the granules
are gonna start falling off right thereand it's never gonna steal down again.
That's the type of situation where,uh, you're gonna need a you're gonna
need a roof replacement. So whetherit's storm damage or it's just regular inspection,
we take it very seriously. It'san important day to have that conversation.

(11:13):
And of course, let the folksfrom our storm services take a look
at your house again. Roof inspection, gutter inspection. Uh. We could
do an entire show on flashing,by the way, I could. That
was what I talk about, howimpressed I was with the work that you
guys did on the Preble household.The one one of the areas that that
again is thanks to talking with youover the years, I've learned to appreciate

(11:33):
is we've got on our house,the front of our house, We've got
a very large three flu chimney onthe front of the house brick, and
all of a sudden I noticed,And it wasn't until you had said about
flashing. I looked up there.I said, look at that that flash
like it's it's into the It's actuallylike again, we could do a whole
show on it. It's the back. Yeah. I can't tell you how

(11:56):
many times we get up there andwe see shame those that are in phenomenal
shape. And then we get wherewe closely inspect the chimney and all the
flashing that's on the chimney. It'sliterally just for looks like it just goes
up the chimney and then someone's justcocked it to the chimney. Well,
I can tell you that that willnot last. No. And if somebody

(12:18):
can imagine a piece of metal goingup the side of a chimney six to
eight inches and it's just cock.Now that cocking starts to break loose because
it's a very uneven surface, whetherit's brick or it's stone. And all
that water that hits the chimney nowit's rolling right down the chimney. The
only thing stopping it from going behindthat flashing and right under your shingles,

(12:39):
right down into the roof, intothe attic. It is a piece of
calking that's stuck to brick or stone. It's not going to work. No,
those are the details, some ofthe little things. That's other cool
thing too is when you work withthe team at Largstone Services. I love
it because they educate you on onexactly what makes a good roof good and

(13:03):
what makes the best roofs the best, and they want to do that for
you at Larsenome Services. Get youthe best roof today is today pick up
phone, give them a call ifyou are listening to us right now you
probably experienced those storms. You mayhave had hail. We at hal By
US we had a tornado not toofar from us as well. Heavy wins.
That stuff can really do damage andstuff sometimes you don't even notice on
your roof. Have them come outfor a roof inspection. Check out your

(13:24):
gutters as well from Lars Storm Services. All I got to just pick up
phone this morning, give them acall six so eight five three five forty
three forty three that's five three fivefour three four three for Larsen Home Services.
The website larsenhomes Services dot com.That's l A R. S O
N Home Services dot com. Savetravels Andrew, we'll talk real soon,
my friend, I will see you. Kevin ham hams Arborcare joins US from

(13:48):
Mexico next year on thirteen ten,wuib a