Hail hit your roof? What Bloemfontein homeowners should do in the first week
Hail damage is quiet. The cracks it leaves show up as ceiling stains weeks later, when the next rain finds them. A first-week checklist.
Bloemfontein is hail country. Most summers at least one cell drops stones big enough to crack tiles, split ridge cement and bruise roof coatings — and the tricky part is that the damage rarely announces itself on the day. It sits quietly until the next hard rain finds the cracks, and then it announces itself through your ceiling.
Week one: what to do
- From the ground, look for dislodged or visibly cracked tiles, dented gutters and downpipes, and mortar fragments or coating granules washed into outlets and onto paving.
- Check ceilings in the days after the storm — new stains, even faint ones, mean water is already inside.
- Do not climb up yourself. Post-storm roofs are slippery, cracked tiles fail underfoot, and the damage that matters is easy to miss without knowing where to look.
- Book an inspection. We walk the full roof and produce a photographed damage schedule — useful for your insurer conversation and as the factual basis of the repair quote.
Why ridges take the worst of it
Ridge cement is rigid and, on most established-suburb roofs, decades old and already brittle from daily thermal cycling. Hail impact finishes it. Cracked ridge bedding lets water in at the very apex of the roof, where it runs along the underlayment and emerges far from the entry point. It is the most common hail damage we find — and the most commonly missed.
Repairing it as a system
Proper hail repair is not a bag of cement and a few spare tiles. Cracked tiles are replaced; ridges are rebuilt with Posi Screed re-bedding and sealed under embedded RidgeSeal reinforcement with three coats of HydroSeal HF; bruised coatings are recoated with UV-stable systems; and metal roofs get every seam and fastener checked before recoating. Done this way, the ridge line that failed in this storm is engineered not to fail in the next one.
Had hail recently — even weeks ago? The inspection is free and the damage does not repair itself. Call BloemGuard on 072 933 0162 or WhatsApp us photos of what you can see from the ground.