Our clay tile roof was installed a year ago and came with a 7-year warranty with the following condition: “All warranties require free annual maintenance inspections, in order to maintain validity throughout the duration.” During this year’s inspection, done by drone because the roof was slightly wet and clay is extremely slippery/hazardous when wet, a cracked tile was discovered.
The roofer has to fix this at no charge? Email from the roofer: “Clay tiles will not crack like concrete tiles since they aren’t absorbing water and would only crack from impact of some kind.”
There haven’t been any real wind storms here in the past year (the last “major hurricane” in Palm Beach County was in 1949). The cracked tile isn’t near a coconut palm that could have dropped a heavy nut onto it. I uploaded the photo to my warranty analyst (ChatGPT):
The crack looks more like a structural/installation crack than a classic impact break. It is a fairly clean, narrow crack running longitudinally through the tile, without an obvious crater, chip, crushed spot, or radiating fracture pattern where something struck it. Impact from something substantial—fallen branch, tool, golf ball, worker stepping hard on an unsupported portion—often leaves some evidence at the point of contact.
On a one-year-old roof, plausible non-impact causes include a hairline crack present when installed that subsequently opened up; a tile stressed by its nail/screw/clip or adhesive; inadequate support beneath part of the tile; somebody walking on it during installation or later work; or occasionally a manufacturing defect.
(I’m pretty sure that we’ll still have to pay the roofer to fix the problem that his crew created, or maybe that the tile manufacturer (Verea in Spain (maybe they’re too busy freeing “Palestine” to go the last kilometer in quality control?)) created, but at least now we know that we’re being cheated!)
Also at the intersection of AI and Florida homeownership, I asked ChatGPT about what stain to use for the front door, beginning to look a bit shabby. Absent AI, I would have tried to buy Sikkens, making stain in the Netherlands since pre-Islamic times (1792). ChatGPT had a different perspective:
I bounced the question to Grok and Claude and learned… that Sikkens in the U.S. is marketed as “PPG”. The AI was still useful, though, potentially, because it calculated how many quarts are needed and that there is a specific stain for doors as opposed to siding.
Why not go and fight the good fight for the rest of us. Sure, you can afford to be scammed by them but the working class cannot. In the sense that you are retired, my retired grandfather would also write (futile, but nonetheless he tried) letters to manufacturers he thought were scamming the people.
I had a metal roof installed on my FL home in 2018 (8 squares + an over-sized, detached 2-car garage: $17,500, including 3 inches of insulation board under the metal). Comes with a full 10-yr parts and labor warranty, plus 50-yr warranty on the metal. For whatever that’s worth.
> Email from the roofer:
At least they are still around to deny your claim. Seems like a priority repair, since there is only one course of tiles above the underlayment. My guess for replacement cost? $1500, the going number they pull out of nowhere these days for any small home repair, no detailed cost breakdown. I wonder if they could use 2-part epoxy to repair the tile?