Interior water cleanup after hail and wind: temporary cover, extraction, wet insulation out, and drying with logged readings.
Fastest: call (833) 490-5225. Or send this and we call you back.
Hail and wind break the surface a roof depends on, and the next rain comes through the opening into insulation, ceilings and walls. Storm water damage work covers temporary cover, extraction, removal of soaked insulation and ceiling material, and drying to logged readings before any rebuild.
A hailstorm does its damage twice. The first pass bruises or splits shingles, splits seams, dents vents and flashing, and knocks the granules off the surface that protects the mat underneath. The second pass is the rain that arrives days or weeks later and finds those openings. Many homeowners here first learn their roof was hit when a ceiling stain appears in an upstairs bedroom.
Front Range storms are not a theoretical risk. The 8 May 2017 storm caused roughly $2.3 billion in insured losses, about $1.4 billion of it to homeowners, and was Colorado's first billion-dollar disaster, with damage across Denver and the western suburbs. A September 2014 storm ran to more than $213 million insured. Those are state and regional totals, reported by NOAA storm records and a regional business news report; we do not have a figure for Thornton alone and will not invent one.
Inside the house, the work is water work. Wet blown-in insulation turns heavy and stops insulating, drywall holds the water at the taped joints, and a light fixture or a ceiling fan box can fill with water that is in contact with wiring. The first decisions are about safety and about keeping the next inch of rain outside until a roofer can get to the roof itself.
Stay off a hail-damaged roof and off a wet ladder; loose granules act like ball bearings. Do not touch a ceiling light or fan that holds water, and do not stand under a bulging ceiling to push at it, because a drywall pocket can let go all at once. If water has reached wiring, a fixture box or the panel, shut that circuit off from a dry position and leave it off until an electrician has looked; the state licenses electricians through the Department of Regulatory Agencies and you can verify a licence yourself. Gas appliances that have been rained on indoors are checked before they are run, not after.
Before drying can start, the opening has to be covered. A temporary tarp or patch over the damaged slope, and buckets or a controlled relief hole under a bulging ceiling, keep the loss from growing through the night. A hole cut deliberately in the low point of a bulge is far less damage than the ceiling coming down in one piece.
If water has found a fixture, a fan box or an outlet, that circuit comes off at the panel. A technician checks the attic, the ceiling cavity and the wall tops with a moisture meter and a thermal camera to see how far the water travelled from the entry point, which is almost never directly above the stain.
Water is pulled out of carpet, pad and hard flooring below the leak. Soaked blown-in or batt insulation is bagged and removed, because wet insulation neither dries in place nor insulates. Ceiling drywall that has lost its strength is cut back to sound material and sound framing.
Air movers and dehumidifiers are set so air passes through the open cavity and across the top plates. Readings are taken in the decking, framing, ceiling board and any wall the water ran down, and logged daily. The crew keeps drying until those numbers match dry material in the same assembly.
Photographs from before anything moved, a diagram of the wet area and the daily readings go into a file you keep. The roof repair itself is roofing work, and the city requires a contractor licence before it issues a building permit for construction, alteration or repair work. New drywall, texture and paint are quoted separately once the cavity is dry.
The size of the wet area, how many assemblies the water entered, how much insulation and ceiling board has to come out, and the number of drying days. Height and access change it too, since a vaulted ceiling or a tight attic hatch slows every step. The figure is explained and approved before work begins.
One stained bedroom ceiling with dry framing above it is a small job: open a patch, remove a sheet of board, pull the wet insulation and run equipment for a few days. A storm that opened a slope over a hallway and two rooms wets joists, top plates, the tops of two walls and whatever is below, and every one of those adds material and time.
Interior storm work and the roof repair are separate scopes, which is worth knowing before you compare any two quotes. Restoration covers water removal, demolition of wet material and drying; roofing covers the roof. We publish no dollar figures anywhere on this site, because no government or university source gives Colorado restoration prices and we will not pass along a company's numbers. The cost guide explains the levers instead.
Often, but read the wording. The Colorado Division of Insurance says wind and hail damage is usually covered, frequently with a separate wind and hail deductible shown on the declarations page, and that rain entering through storm damage may be covered depending on the policy.
That separate deductible is the detail that catches people. Division material mentions wind and hail deductibles stated as a percentage, such as one, two or five percent, which is a different calculation from a flat dollar deductible and is worth finding on your own declarations page before you file. Flood is normally excluded and needs a separate National Flood Insurance Program policy, so surface water from the same storm may sit outside the claim entirely.
If you want the full policy, the Division's guidance is that the insurer must provide it within three business days of a request, and any denial has to be explained in writing. The Division does not decide coverage, but it reviews claim handling and takes complaints through its consumer portal. Our part is evidence: dated photographs, a wet-area diagram and the daily moisture log, which is what the hail and interior water guide tells you to collect.
The documented hail events on the Front Range fall in spring and summer; the May 2017 and September 2014 storms are the two with sourced insured-loss totals. We have no reliable local figure for any other year, so treat that window as the pattern rather than a schedule.
Practically, that means a roof here collects impacts over several seasons, and interior leaks tend to show up after whichever rain finds the weakest opening. A ceiling stain in autumn can easily trace to damage done months earlier, which is why the attic check after a storm is useful even when nothing drips.
The other half of the year brings a different mechanism. The freeze window runs long on the north side of the metro, and a storm opening that goes unrepaired through it lets melt water in at the eaves instead of rain through the field of the roof. Water inside a cold assembly dries slowly, so the same opening does more damage in February than in July.
No. Hail-struck roofs are slick with loose granules, the damage is hard to judge from a ladder, and a fall is a far worse outcome than a stain. Look from the ground with binoculars, check gutters for granules, and look inside the attic with a flashlight.
From inside, you are looking for daylight at seams, matted or darkened insulation, wet decking and rust streaks on nail points. Photograph what you find and note the time, because later rain changes the evidence. Keep attic storage away from any wet patch so cardboard does not wick it further.
From the ground, dented gutters, bent vent caps and a dented air conditioner give a good indication that the roof took impacts too. Our phone is answered 24/7 at (833) 490-5225; tell us whether water is still coming in, because an active leak decides what the crew brings. A roofer handles the roof itself, and the city's licensing requirement applies to the contractor who does that repair.
It comes out. Wet blown-in and batt insulation compacts, stops performing and holds water against framing and the back of the ceiling board. Drying it in place is not practical, so it is bagged and removed and the cavity is dried before new insulation goes in.
Removal also lets the technician see the decking and the framing, which is where the real condition of the assembly shows. Dark staining, delamination of the sheathing layers or a soft spot underfoot is information a roofer needs, and it is invisible under a foot of insulation.
Drying an open attic is a different problem from drying a room, because the air volume is large and the hot and cold surfaces move with the sun. Equipment is placed to pull air across the decking and framing rather than to make the space feel dry, and the readings decide when it comes out. How that is measured is the same discipline used everywhere else on a drying job: meter, log, repeat.
The one that surprises people. The storm passes with no interior water, the roof surface is compromised, and the leak begins with the following rain. Because the damage and the water arrive on different days, the attic is worth a look with a flashlight after any serious hail, and the stain inside is usually downhill from the real opening. See roof leak water damage for the leak path itself.
Strong wind pushes rain sideways into places that shed water fine when it falls straight down: window head flashing, siding laps, the top of a door frame, a wall-mounted vent. The giveaway is water that appears only in storms with wind behind them. Drying is the same work, but the entry point is found at the wall rather than the roof.
A ceiling holds water above you in a pocket you cannot see, sitting on top of drywall between two joists. It spreads along the joist line, so the wet area is usually long and narrow rather than round, and it loads the board until a tape joint lets go. This is handled with ceiling water damage repair once the water is stopped.
Heavy rain fills window wells, runs down a grade toward the foundation and overwhelms gutters that hail has dented flat. That water arrives in the basement from the outside rather than from the roof, and it brings soil with it. The cleanup overlaps with basement flooding cleanup, and the insurance treatment of surface water is different again.
The housing stock shapes the damage pattern here. Thornton has roughly 52,250 housing units and 61.6 percent of them are detached houses, most built from the 1970s onward with a large 1990s and 2000s share, which means mile after mile of sloped asphalt roofing of broadly similar age and exposure. When one storm cell crosses that, a whole stretch of streets between 104th and 120th Avenues can be hit in the same quarter hour, and the interior leaks appear over the following weeks rather than that night.
A storm that is regional in the news is local in the paperwork. The May 2017 event spread damage across Denver and the western suburbs and was the state's first billion-dollar disaster at about $2.3 billion insured; the September 2014 storm exceeded $213 million. What that history says to a homeowner in Adams County is simple: hail is a normal hazard to plan for, the wind and hail deductible on the declarations page is worth finding before a storm rather than after, and the interior water that follows is a separate problem from the roof.
Where you are in the city changes what else the storm brings. Along the Big Dry Creek corridor, mapped as floodprone from I-25 to 168th Avenue, and near Brantner Gulch and Grange Hall Creek, heavy rain also means surface water at the foundation, so a technician checks window wells and the grade before deciding the water came from the roof. On the drier flats, the same storm usually leaves only the roof opening to account for.
If it's an emergency, call now. For non-urgent storm and hail water damage, send the form and we'll call you back.
Not sure if you're covered? Check your ZIP code.
Tracing and drying the interior damage a roof leak leaves in attics, ceilings and wall cavities around Thornton.
Drying and controlled removal for stained, sagging or dripping ceilings, with the water source identified first.
Pumping out standing water and drying framing, subfloor and cavities until logged moisture readings reach dry targets.
Cleanup and drying after outside water enters a home, from creek overflow, storm runoff, window wells or saturated ground.
Colorado home policies generally treat a sudden plumbing failure differently from slow seepage, exclude flood unless you hold a separate policy, and need an endorsement for sewer or sump backup.
Hail rarely puts water straight through a roof.
It often is. Hail opens the surface and the next rain uses that opening, so the interior damage dates from a later storm than the impact. Your file is stronger if it shows both: the impact evidence on the roof and the dated photographs of the interior water. Note when you first saw the stain and whether it grew with each rain.
No. This work is the interior: cover the opening temporarily, remove the water, take out soaked insulation and ceiling board, and dry the structure to readings. The roof repair is a roofing scope, and the City of Thornton requires a contractor licence before a building permit issues for that kind of repair. Ask for the credential and verify it yourself before any roof work starts.
Sometimes it can be dried in place. If a ceiling has only been damp briefly, has no sag and the cavity can be opened at the edge for airflow, the board often survives. Board that has sagged, lost strength, blistered its texture or held water along a tape joint is cut out to sound material. The reading and the feel of the board decide it, not the look of the stain.
Contents under the leak are moved out of the way or blocked up off wet flooring before any demolition, and floors on the path in and out get protection. Items already soaked are listed and photographed so you have a record. Cleaning or restoring contents is its own scope, and the crew will tell you what it thinks can be saved.
It is a risk whenever material stays wet, including in a dry climate, because the inside of a ceiling cavity is not a dry place once water is sitting on the board. The state health department's guidance, published through the Colorado Virtual Library, is that some mold is always present and that growth needs action when you can see or smell it. Drying promptly is the prevention, and mold remediation after water damage is the step if growth has already started.
Then there is no restoration work to do, and that is a good outcome. Keep the attic check and the photographs anyway, and have a roofer assess the surface, because the opening that leaks later is the one nobody looked for. This site does not sell roof inspections and will not tell you a roof needs replacing.
Yes, with a different plan. A multi-unit or commercial loss means water crossing units, shared ceilings, and drying that has to be staged around people and operations. Access, power and after-hours work are agreed with whoever manages the building. See commercial water damage restoration for how that is organized.