Roof inspection report template

A roof inspection report is written on the roof. The spot the seam opened, the width of the split, the fact that the blister goes soft under a boot: all of it is gone by the time you are back at the truck typing from memory, and what comes out instead is a page of cautious sentences nobody can act on.

So the format below is built to be filled standing up, one finding at a time, with a phone in one hand.

The header decides whether anyone can rely on what follows

The last two rows are the ones people leave off, and they decide whether the report survives a disagreement. A roof report silent about what it skipped reads as though it covered everything.

Split the roof into planes and number them before you walk

Draw the outline first. Two minutes with a finger on a phone screen is enough: the outline, the drains, the units, the hatch, the corners.

On a low slope roof, split by drainage area, or by expansion joint where there is one. On a sloped roof, split by elevation and plane: south slope, north slope, the dormer cheeks, each valley. Keep the numbers for the life of the roof, so next spring's report can be read against this one.

Every finding then points at a plane, and the sketch is the map. Without it, whoever gets sent up for item 7 goes hunting.

Locate off something that will still be there

A roof has almost no landmarks, and a photograph of a membrane looks identical taken anywhere on the building. Locate off the permanent objects instead: drains, roof top units, curbs, vents, pitch pans, parapet corners.

"Approximately 12 feet north of RTU-3, at the base flashing behind the curb" can be walked to by a stranger. "North end of the roof" cannot.

Nine fields per finding, and no free notes box

The water column earns its place on a roof and nowhere else. Water standing when you looked, a tide mark from water that has gone, and a dry defect are three different pieces of evidence, and by the afternoon nobody can tell which one you saw.

The measurement column is what makes next year's report comparable. "Seam open approximately 30 inches, edge lifting a quarter inch" is a finding. "Open seam" is a note to yourself. Ponding gets a depth and a footprint, blisters get a diameter, backed out fasteners get a count rather than the word "several".

The close shot and the standing shot do different jobs

The close one shows the defect with something in frame for scale, a tape or a pen or anything of a known size. Somebody will ask how wide the split was, and the picture should answer before the text does.

The standing one is taken from several paces back with a unit, a drain or a parapet corner in frame, so the defect can be found again. Both carry the date, which on a roof is often the whole point: the question arriving later is whether the condition predated the storm.

Immediate, significant, monitor, and nothing in between

Immediate: water is getting in now, or there is a safety issue. An open seam over occupied space, coping loose at height.

Significant: the assembly is not doing its job and it will get worse. Base flashing debonded, a pitch pan open, a split that has not tracked through yet.

Monitor: real, recorded, not urgent. Light weathering, granule loss in the normal range for the age, an isolated firm blister.

A filled example, from a building that does not exist

Property: 4100 Brannon Street, Building B, upper roof. Inspected September 17, 2026, 8:40 AM, by D. Alvarez. Clear, about 1.2 inches of rain two days prior. Access by interior hatch. Assembly: 60 mil TPO, mechanically fastened, installed 2014 per the owner. Approximately 18,000 square feet, planes 1 to 4 per sketch. The east mechanical enclosure roof was not inspected: no safe access without a lift.

Entry 4 says investigate rather than repair on purpose. Ponding at a low point is a slope problem or a deck deflection problem, and instructing a repair before anyone knows which is an expensive guess.

Keep recommendations separate, and say what you could not see

A finding is what you saw. A recommendation is what should happen next. Mix them and one disputed recommendation drags a good observation down with it, so keep two short lists at the end, cross referenced by ref number: repairs to schedule now, items to recheck next visit.

Then say what the weather and the access allowed, and what was covered by equipment, snow, water or stored material. A visual inspection finds conditions rather than leak paths, and tracing an active leak is a different scope. That is not hedging. It is the difference between a document that says what you did and one that implies you did more.

Sitewise covers the capture on iPhone and iPad: both photographs, a dictated observation that transcribes on the device, and a sketch when an arrow on the photo is the only honest way to point at a lap. Every capture is timestamped and, with location on, carries a GPS pin. On a Pro iPhone or iPad with a LiDAR scanner, two taps in the camera give a dimension drawn on the photo and printed in the report, which is how a split gets a length without a tape on a windy roof. It works with no signal and syncs later, and the inspection exports as a PDF or DOCX before you leave. It does not schedule the repair, price it, or collect a signature.

For a roof read as one system inside a whole house, the home inspection report template covers the report around it. When the roof is under warranty and the finding has to be raised against somebody's work, the defect report template is the form that holds up.

The reports that get acted on are rarely the long ones. They are the ones where every finding carried a plane, a measurement and two photographs, so somebody at a desk could see the roof without going up.