What to do after a storm: the first 48 hours, in order.

A hail storm crosses a Texas town in twenty minutes. Within the hour the first trucks arrive, and for the next two days your street is a sales floor. Some of the people knocking are good roofers. Some are the reason Texas gets the worst roofers in America every spring: no state license to check, no requirement to carry workers' compensation, and more hail claims than any other state. You cannot tell them apart by the truck.

What you can do is control the order of events. Safety first, evidence second, signatures last, and no decision about a claim until someone has been in your attic and on every slope with a camera. This guide is that order. It is written by a roofing company, so read it knowing that: we would like to be the ones who inspect your roof. We would also rather you used this guide with somebody else than signed at the door with anyone.

If water is coming in, catch it and move what you can. Put a bucket under the drip, pull furniture and electronics out from under a sagging ceiling, and if a ceiling is bulging with water, punch a small hole at the lowest point to let it drain into a bucket rather than let the whole panel come down. Turn off the power to any room where water is near a fitting.

Stay off the roof. Wet shingles, loose granules and a wind that has not finished are how homeowners get hurt after a storm, and there is nothing up there you need to see today. If you can safely see the roof from the ground or a window, look; do not climb.

If a hole is letting rain in, a temporary tarp is a reasonable emergency measure and most insurers expect you to prevent further damage. Have it done by someone with fall protection, keep the receipt, and photograph the damage before it goes on.

Time-stamped photographs are the strongest evidence you will ever have, and the cheapest. Take them before anything is moved, tarped or cleaned up.

• The hail on the ground, next to a coin or a tape measure for scale, with the time visible on your phone.
• Every ceiling stain, wet patch and drip, from far enough back to show the room.
• The yard: broken branches, dented gutters and downspouts, damaged fences, the air-conditioner's fins, patio furniture, the car.
• Window screens, siding, paint, and anything soft or metal that a stone would mark. These "soft metals" date the storm.
• The roof from the ground, from each side of the house, in daylight.

Then stop. Do not start pulling shingles off, do not let anyone "clean up" the roof before it has been inspected, and keep the photos somewhere that survives a lost phone. A shared album or an email to yourself is enough.

Nobody needs your signature to inspect a roof. Read that sentence twice, because within 48 hours someone will hand you a clipboard and tell you it is "just so we can get on the roof" or "just so we can meet the adjuster for you". Some of those forms are exactly that. Some of them are a contract to replace your roof, with a cancellation fee, and a clause that assigns your claim to the contractor.

The rules that protect you are simple:

• Read the whole document before you sign anything, including the small print on the back.
• Take your time. A roofer who cannot wait a day for a decision is telling you something.
• Understand what you are agreeing to. If the word "agreement", "contract", "authorization" or "assignment" appears, it is not a permission slip.
• Get another opinion if you want one. A good roofer is not threatened by that.
• Confirm the person. Call the office number on the company's website, not the number on the card, and ask whether the person at your door works for them.

One more Texas-specific point. A roofer may not act as your insurance adjuster, negotiate your claim with the insurer, or advertise that they will. That is Texas Insurance Code section 4102.163, and a contractor who offers to "handle the claim for you" is either breaking it or does not know it exists. A good roofer documents the damage, meets the adjuster on the roof and explains the scope. The claim is yours.

Texas is the only state where a private employer can choose not to carry workers' compensation insurance. The Texas Department of Insurance calls those employers non-subscribers, and a great many roofing crews are exactly that.

Why it matters to you: if a worker is hurt on your roof and their employer carries no workers' compensation, the injured person's only route to being paid for the injury may be a lawsuit, and your property, your homeowner's policy and your peace of mind can be part of it. Workers' compensation is what makes an injury on your roof the employer's problem and not yours.

A certificate of general liability insurance is not the same thing. General liability covers damage the contractor does to your property. It does not cover the person who fell.

So before the ladder goes up:

1. Ask for the certificate of insurance showing workers' compensation, with your name and address as the certificate holder.
2. Check the dates and the company name against the contract.
3. Verify it. The Texas Department of Insurance publishes an employer coverage verification tool, and the carrier named on the certificate will confirm a policy is in force if you call.

Mammoth carries workers' compensation for every person on your roof, and we show you the certificate before your project begins. Ask every roofer for the same.

You will hear it: "we'll cover your deductible", "we'll waive it", "we'll work with you on it". It sounds like a discount. It is an offer to commit insurance fraud with you, and in Texas it is a crime for the roofer.

Since House Bill 2102 took effect on September 1, 2019, a contractor who pays, waives, absorbs, rebates or otherwise declines to collect your property-insurance deductible commits a Class B misdemeanor (Texas Business and Commerce Code section 27.02). Texas Insurance Code chapter 707 says the policyholder must pay the deductible, requires any contract worth $1,000 or more that will be paid from an insurance claim to carry a printed notice saying so, and lets your insurer ask you for reasonable proof that you paid it before it releases the rest of the claim.

What that means in practice: your deductible is a real cost of a real claim, and the roofer who makes it disappear is either inflating the estimate to hide it, cutting corners on your roof to absorb it, or both. The offer tells you everything about how the rest of the job will go.

Most Texas policies now carry a separate wind and hail deductible written as a percentage of the amount your home is insured for, commonly 1% or 2%. On a home insured for $400,000, a 2% deductible is $8,000 per claim. Know your number before you decide anything; it is on the declarations page of your policy, and it is the first thing we ask when we talk about whether a claim makes sense.

Damage you can see from the ground is the least of it. Hail knocks the granules off an asphalt shingle and, when the stone is big enough, crushes the fibreglass mat underneath. It looks like a dark spot, and it leaks two winters later. Wind breaks the seal strip and folds shingles back; some reseal, some do not. Half the story is in the attic: wet insulation, stained decking, daylight through a nail hole.

The Mammoth Roof Grade is a free inspection that starts in the attic, test-squares every slope, photographs what it finds and writes it up with the storm date attached: 32 inspection points, 75 to 150 photographs, measurements, and a letter grade that tells you where the roof stands. You get the report whether or not you hire us, and it is written so that your insurer, or another roofer, can read it.

If the roof is fine, the report says so. That is the whole point of doing the inspection before the claim.

With the report in hand there are three honest outcomes, and the grade decides which one you are looking at.

• Nothing. Cosmetic marks, no functional damage: no claim, no repair. You keep your claims history clean and your premium alone. We put that in writing.
• Repair, paid by you. A few wind-lifted shingles, a cracked pipe flashing, a damaged vent: a written repair price, often less than a percentage deductible. Filing a claim for a repair that costs less than the deductible gains you nothing and can still count against you.
• A claim. Damage across the slopes that a competent inspector can show the adjuster, with a repair cost well above the deductible. Then the claim is worth filing, and the report is your evidence.

Two things we will never do: recommend a claim the roof does not justify, or talk you out of one it does.

Most homeowners have never filed a roof claim. Here is the whole process, in the order it happens.

1. You file the claim with your insurer, with the report attached: date of loss, the storm record, the photo set.
2. The adjuster meeting. The insurer sends an adjuster to inspect. We meet them on your roof, walk the damage together and explain the scope, the code-required items and the measurements. We do not negotiate your claim; the law and common sense both say that is between you and your insurer.
3. The first payment is the actual cash value of the roof: the replacement cost minus depreciation for age and wear, minus your deductible. The estimate lists what has been held back.
4. The build. Materials on site, the Monumental Installation System, SafeSite protection, the 26-point QualCheck, SweepCheck clean-up. Code upgrades documented as we go.
5. The second payment. We send the completion certificate and final invoice; the insurer releases the held-back depreciation. You pay your deductible and any upgrades you chose.

Texas puts deadlines on the insurer's side of this. According to the Texas Department of Insurance, your company must tell you it received your claim within 15 days, accept or deny it within 15 business days of getting everything it asked for (it can extend that by 45 days with written notice, and the Department can add 15 more after a weather catastrophe), and send payment within five business days of agreeing to pay. If those clocks are being ignored, the Department's consumer help line is the place to say so.