Hail & Stormproof
Roofing Services
Built to Take Hail and High Winds
Hail & Stormproof Roofing South Africa – Industrial & Commercial Solutions
A roof's ability to survive hail comes down to three things: the thickness of the sheeting, the profile it is rolled into, and how closely it is supported underneath. A thin sheet on widely spaced purlins dents where a heavier sheet on closer supports does not. No roof is genuinely hail-proof, but the difference between one specification and another is substantial.
Sicon Group specifies and installs roofing built to resist Highveld hail and high wind on industrial, commercial and retail buildings across South Africa, and repairs the roofs that did not. After a storm that means an assessment and a photographed damage report an insurer can work from, followed by repair or replacement of what has actually been damaged.
Call now on 083 345 4649 to receive your FREE roof inspection, which includes a full photographic analysis and a problem identification report, accompanied by a no-obligation FREE quotation tailored to suit your specific requirements and budgetary needs.
Where Does Hail Damage a Roof First?
Not evenly. Hail finds the flat pans between the ribs of a sheet, where the metal is least supported, and it marks translucent panels long before it touches the steel around them. Gutters, ridge caps and flashings take it next. A roof that looks intact from the ground is often already damaged in those four places.
What Does Hail & Stormproof Roofing Include?
Hail resistance is built into a roof rather than applied to it afterwards. These are the five things that make the difference.
- Heavier-Gauge Sheeting: A thicker sheet in a profile suited to the span, which is the single biggest factor in how a roof handles hail.
- Closer Purlin Spacing: Reducing the unsupported width of each pan, so the sheet has less room to deform when it is struck.
- Impact-Resistant Rooflights: Replacing brittle translucent panels with sheeting rated for impact, since rooflights fail long before the steel around them does.
- Reinforced Flashings and Fixings: Ridge caps, barge details and fasteners upgraded, because wind takes a roof apart at its edges rather than its middle.
- Emergency Storm Repairs: Rapid response to make a damaged roof watertight before the assessment and the permanent repair.
Why Choose Sicon Group for Storm-Damaged Roofs?
After a storm the roof is only half the problem. The other half is the claim, and both are easier with the same contractor.
- 25+ Years on Industrial Roofs: Storm work informed by decades of building and repairing the roofs in question.
- Rapid Response After a Storm: Temporary cover first, so the building stops taking water while the claim is being assessed.
- Photographic Damage Reports: Dated, itemised records of what the storm damaged, in a form an assessor can work from.
- Repair or Replace, Honestly Assessed: Not every dented sheet needs replacing, and saying so is what keeps a claim credible.
- National Coverage: Branches from the Vaal Triangle to the Garden Route, so a storm anywhere in the country can be answered.
What Can Be Done to an Existing Roof?
Gutter Hail Guards:
Mesh and guards fitted over gutters so hail and stripped debris cannot block the drainage at the moment it is most needed.
Elastomeric Coatings:
Flexible coatings that move with the sheet rather than cracking, applied where the substrate underneath is still sound.
Upgraded Fixings and Flashings:
Fasteners, ridge caps and barge details renewed at the roof's edges, which is where wind damage begins and spreads inward from.
Rooflight Replacement:
Old brittle translucent panels swapped for impact-rated sheeting. On most roofs this is the cheapest single improvement available.
Maintenance Timed to the Season:
Inspection and repair scheduled ahead of the wet months rather than after the first storm has found the weak points.
What Should You Do Before Storm Season?
Three things, and none of them are expensive. Clear the gutters and outlets so a sudden volume of water has somewhere to go. Check the rooflights and the edge fixings, because both fail first. And book the repairs while contractors are available, rather than in the week after a storm when everyone is calling at once.
There is a fourth worth knowing about. Have the roof photographed and dated before the season starts. Insurers routinely question whether damage was pre-existing, and a dated condition record from before the storm settles that argument in your favour rather than theirs.
Request a Free Roof Inspection
Sicon Group will assess the roof as it stands and set out what is worth doing before the weather arrives.
What Happens During a Stormproofing Upgrade?
Roof Condition Assessment
Every job starts with the roof as it stands. Sheeting, laps, fasteners, flashings, rooflights, gutters and the supporting purlins are inspected and photographed, and existing damage is separated from ordinary wear. Clients arrive at this point by one of two routes: planning ahead of the season, or standing under a roof that has just been hit. The assessment is much the same either way, but the report differs. A storm assessment itemises what the weather did; a planning assessment ranks what is most likely to fail next.
Reinforcement of Roofing Materials
Damaged and corroded sheets are replaced rather than patched, in a gauge and profile chosen for the span they have to cross. The decision rule is remaining life: a sheet with years left in it is repaired, a sheet that will fail in the next storm is replaced, and a roof where most sheets fall into the second category is a re-sheet rather than a repair. Fixings are upgraded at the same time, because a stronger sheet on old fasteners still lifts.
Protective Coatings
A coating goes on where the sheet beneath it is sound. Elastomeric systems flex with the metal instead of cracking, seal fine surface damage and slow corrosion, and they work well on a roof that has been dented but not holed. What a coating cannot do is restore a sheet that hail has punctured or a fixing that has pulled through, and a contractor offering one instead of those repairs is selling paint.
Securing Flashings and Details
Edges are where storms start. Ridge caps, barge details, valley flashings, gutter fixings and the first row of fasteners take the highest wind uplift on any roof, and once one lifts the rest tend to follow along the sheet. Sicon Group works these details before the open field of the roof, renewing sealant, replacing tired trims and refixing edges at the correct spacing. It is unglamorous work, and it decides whether a storm takes a corner or a section.
Final Check and Maintenance Planning
The completed work is inspected and photographed, and the client receives a record of what was replaced, what was coated and what was left as found. That document closes out the work and becomes the dated condition record that makes the next storm claim straightforward. An inspection interval is then set ahead of the wet season, because a stormproofing programme is only worth having if it is checked before the weather rather than after it. Roofing work carries a guarantee of up to 20 years depending on the system.
What Does a Roof Actually Have to Resist?
Hail Impact
Hail damages a roof by delivering a lot of energy to a small area very quickly. How much damage results depends on how far the sheet can deform before it reaches its limit, and that is set by the thickness of the metal and the distance between the supports beneath it. It is why hail dents the flat pans and leaves the ribs alone, and why one storm can mark a building lightly and hole the one across the road.
Wind Uplift
Wind does not push a roof down, it lifts it. Air moving across the surface creates suction, strongest at edges, ridges and corners, and that force pulls on the fasteners rather than on the sheet itself. A roof fails at its perimeter and unzips inward, which is why edge fixing spacing matters more than anything happening in the middle of the roof. Most storm damage that looks catastrophic began at one loose trim.
Water Volume
A Highveld storm can drop more water in twenty minutes than a roof sees in an ordinary month. What fails then is usually not the waterproofing but the drainage: gutters and outlets sized for average rainfall overflow, and water backs up above the line the roof was designed to shed at. It then enters at laps and flashings that never leak in normal rain, which is why some buildings only leak in the heaviest storms.
Thermal Movement
Steel expands and contracts every day, and a long sheet moves measurably between a cold morning and a hot afternoon. Over years that movement works at the fixings, gradually elongating the holes they sit in and loosening the roof without anything visibly failing. A roof that has never been maintained is often not so much damaged as loose, and a storm is what reveals it. This is slow, invisible, and entirely preventable.
Corrosion Over Time
Corrosion is the slow force, and it decides how the other four end. It starts at cut edges, laps and fixings where the protective coating is broken, and it thins the metal exactly where the loads concentrate. Storms very rarely destroy a healthy roof. They find what rust had already weakened, which is why storm resilience is mostly a maintenance question answered years in advance.
Hail & Stormproof Roofing Projects Across South Africa
These are hail and storm projects carried out by Sicon Group on industrial, commercial and retail buildings. They show hail guards fitted over drainage outlets, impact damage to sheeting, hail accumulating where it blocks drainage, and completed installations. Click any image to open it full size.
Hail & Stormproof Roofing FAQs
How soon after a storm should the roof be inspected?
Within days rather than weeks, for two reasons. Damage that has not leaked yet will leak in the next rain, and the sooner it is covered the less water gets into the building. Second, a claim is far easier to support when the damage is documented close to the event, before further weather muddies the question of what caused what. If the building is already taking water, a temporary cover can go on ahead of the full assessment.
Does hail damage always cause leaks?
No, and that is exactly what makes it easy to ignore. A dent that has not broken through the sheet will not leak, but the metal has been stretched and the protective coating cracked on both faces. Corrosion begins at those cracks, works from the inside where nobody looks, and produces a leak two or three years later that nobody connects back to the storm. Hail damage is usually a corrosion problem well before it becomes a water problem.
Can dented sheets be repaired, or do they have to be replaced?
It depends on whether the sheet has been holed and how much of the roof is affected. Isolated dents with the coating still intact can often be treated and coated. Sheets that are punctured, split at a fixing, or dented across a large proportion of their area are replaced, because the metal has already been weakened where it will be loaded again. Where most of the roof is in that condition, a re-sheet costs less than repairing it twice.
Will my insurance cover hail damage to the roof?
That depends entirely on the policy, and the storm damage clause is worth reading before you need it rather than after. What helps any claim is evidence: a dated, photographed record of the damage, an itemised scope of what it will take to put right, and ideally a record of the roof's condition beforehand. Sicon Group produces the first two as part of a storm assessment. Whether a claim succeeds sits between you and the assessor, but a well-documented one is much harder to dispute.
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