What Does a Roof Inspection Include?

What a real roof inspection covers, in order: the exterior field and penetrations, flashing, valleys, ridge and vents, fasteners, the attic, and the written report.

A roof inspection covers the exterior field and every penetration, the flashing at chimneys and walls, the valleys, the ridge and its vents, and the fasteners and sealant holding the assembly together, then moves inside to the attic to check for daylight, staining, deck condition, insulation and ventilation, and ends with a written report and dated photographs tied to what was actually found. Gutters get a look too, not as a service, but because what has collected in them tells you what the roof above is shedding. The order is not incidental. A real inspection works outside to inside and finishes on paper, rather than starting with an opinion and looking for evidence to match it.

Here is what that looks like broken into its parts.

The exterior field and every penetration

The field is the broad expanse of the roof itself, and it gets walked or scanned systematically rather than glanced at from the driveway, looking for wear, cracked or slipped material, lifted edges, and anything that has clearly taken an impact. But on a roof that was built correctly, the field itself rarely fails first. Most real leaks start where the roof is interrupted rather than out in the open plane: plumbing stacks, bath vents, skylights, roof-mounted equipment, and any point where the roof meets something that is not more roof. Each penetration is a manufactured seam in a surface that is supposed to be continuous, and it deserves more attention per square foot than the field around it gets.

Flashing at chimneys and walls

Flashing is the metal that manages water at the roof’s hardest transitions, and an inspector checks it for gaps, rust-through, lifted edges, and sealant that has been smeared over a joint instead of a proper piece of metal being installed. At a chimney, that means the step flashing along each side and the counter-flashing or cricket above it, since a chimney wide enough to shed water poorly needs a cricket to split the flow rather than let it dam against the uphill face. At a sidewall, it means checking that step flashing was woven course by course rather than replaced with one long strip of flashing tucked under the siding, which looks tidy and fails quietly. A bead of sealant covering a flashing joint is not a repair. It is usually evidence that one was needed and skipped.

Valleys carry more water than any other part of the roof

A valley is where two slopes drain into one channel, so it carries the combined runoff of both planes during a hard rain, which is more water moving faster than anywhere else on the roof. An inspector checks whether the valley metal or woven material is intact along its full length, whether debris is packing the channel and forcing water sideways under the adjacent courses, and whether the material on either side was cut and lapped correctly rather than just laid close together. A valley that looks fine dry can still be failing, because the problem only shows itself under volume, which is exactly the condition an inspection cannot fully reproduce and has to judge from installation and wear instead.

The ridge and the vents that are supposed to be working

At the top of the roof, an inspector checks the ridge cap or ridge material for lifted or cracked pieces, and separately checks that whatever ventilation lives along the ridge or on the field is actually doing its job. A ridge vent that has been painted over, a turbine that has seized, or a static vent that was installed and then partially blocked during a later re-roof all look fine from the ground and do nothing once you climb up and check them by hand. Ventilation is part of the roof system, not an accessory to it, and a roof that cannot breathe ages a great deal faster than the shingles or panels alone would suggest.

Fasteners and sealant, the small parts nobody notices until they fail

On any roof with exposed or semi-exposed fastening, an inspector checks fastener condition directly: backed-out screws or nails, missing or crushed washers, and corrosion around the fastener head, since a single failed fastener under a panel or shingle course is a small opening with a lot of time to work. Sealant gets the same scrutiny, because sealant has two honest uses, sealing a fastener head and finishing a factory detail, and one dishonest one, covering a flashing or material problem that should have been fixed with metal instead. An inspector who names which use they are looking at is doing the job; one who treats a bead of sealant as proof that something was handled properly is not looking closely enough.

Put together, that is the checklist a real inspection works through on the exterior: field and penetrations, flashing, valleys, ridge and vents, fasteners and sealant, roughly in that order, before anyone climbs down.

Why does an inspector even look at the gutters?

An inspector looks at the gutters not to inspect the gutters, but because what has washed into them is runoff evidence from everything above. Granules pooled in a gutter tell you a shingle roof is shedding surface material faster than expected for its age. Coating flakes or a fine metallic grit tell you something different on a metal roof. Standing water or a sag in a gutter run affects how water leaves the roof edge, which matters to the roof even though the gutter itself is not part of it. None of that makes gutter repair or replacement part of a roof inspection or part of what a roofer’s inspection is scoped to fix. It stays an observation point, read for what it says about the roof above it.

What happens inside, in the attic?

The attic is where an inspection either confirms the exterior findings or turns up something the outside never showed, and skipping it is how an inspection misses an active leak entirely. Inside, an inspector looks for daylight coming through the decking, which means a gap or a failed penetration seal large enough to matter. They check the underside of the sheathing for water staining or tracking, which often shows up several feet from where the water actually entered because it travels along a rafter or the underlayment before dripping. They check the decking itself for soft spots, delamination, or sagging between rafters, look at insulation for matting or discoloration that signals past moisture, and confirm the ventilation path from soffit to ridge is actually open rather than blocked by insulation stuffed too far into the eave. A roof can look sound from a ladder and still be staining the deck underneath, which is exactly why the attic is not optional.

What do you get afterward: the report and the photographs?

You get a written, dated account that itemizes what was found by location, states what it means in plain terms, and is backed by photographs rather than a verbal summary. A usable report separates the field, the penetrations, the flashing, the valleys, the attic, and anything urgent into sections you can read on your own, and the photographs are labeled well enough that you could hand them to a second opinion without a walkthrough to explain them. If a roof came back clean, the report should say so plainly. A clean inspection with dated photographs is a record worth having, not a wasted visit, because it is the baseline you would want the next time you have a reason to check the roof again.

How is a roofer’s inspection different from a general home inspector’s look?

A general home inspector is surveying an entire house in a few hours, and the roof gets a share of that time proportional to everything else on the list, not a system-level review. They will note the obvious from the ground or a ladder and move on. A roofer’s inspection is scoped to the roof alone, walks the surface where it can safely be walked, and goes into the details above because that is the entire assignment rather than one item on a longer one. If you are weighing this specifically around a home purchase, a roof-specific inspection during a real-estate transaction is its own decision with its own timing, and it is covered separately.

How is a roofer’s inspection different from an insurance adjuster’s visit?

An adjuster is evaluating a specific claim against a specific policy, not producing a general condition report on your roof. Their visit is scoped to whatever event triggered the claim, their findings are written for the carrier, and a roof can pass an adjuster’s visit with no payout and still have real, unrelated issues an adjuster was never asked to look for. If the reason you are thinking about an inspection is a recent storm rather than general condition, what a real post-hail inspection has to cover is the more useful read, since a hail-specific visit follows a different method built around that one question.

What should you do with the findings once you have them?

Read the report before you act on it, and if it recommends work, get a second set of eyes on anything you are not sure about rather than approving from a single visit. How to read a roofing proposal when two bids are far apart is worth pairing with an inspection report for exactly that reason, since the report tells you what is wrong and the proposal is where a wide gap between contractors usually gets explained or exposed. The Honest Roofer’s process starts by reviewing the roof itself before any conversation about scope or materials, for the same reason this article is organized outside in. If you want that review scheduled, request a consultation and start from what is actually on the roof rather than a guess about it.