By Craig Stevens, Property Claims Specialist

Oh, Hail again! It seems many of us have used this term often in the past few years. It’s true, Colorado has seen a significant amount of damaging hail storms recently. Last May’s Coverage Line article included details about a rebate available to members who install Class 4, IR (Impact Resistant) shingles. This rebate is currently available on the Malarkey Legacy Class 4 Polymer Modified shingle.

For 2019, Malarkey Roofing Products has agreed to a $5 per square (100 square feet) of shingles rebate. If any CIRSA member purchases these shingles to repair hail claim related roofing damage, Malarkey will provide the $5/square rebate payment directly to the member.  There are of course, other companies manufacturing polymer modified shingles, but to date, Malarkey is the only company providing this rebate.

In a year of this rebate’s existence, we have had a strong response with positive feedback. So far four CIRSA members have installed the Malarkey Legacy shingles and collected rebates with a combined total of $12,114.00. Four additional members are in the early stages of planning and contracting repairs.

If you’d like to read about how polymer modified IR shingles performed, The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety’s study is attached. The study concluded that these shingles performed up to 50% better than traditional IR shingles. A copy of their report is available here (a summary of the findings is found on page 15 of the report).

Here’s a case study. One of our members replaced their previously hail damaged roofs with polymer modified shingles in the Spring of 2018, then experienced damaging hail again in the Summer of 2018. The hail included golf-ball (1.7-inch diameter), and up to about tennis ball (2.6-inch diameter) stones.

The shingles hit by tennis ball sized hail required full roof replacement due to impact damage. This is not surprising, as most asphalt shingles will not withstand that sort of impact energy. But the shingles exposed to golf ball size hail sustained some minor damage that included individual spot replacement of only a few select shingles. A full roof replacement wasn’t required, and the repairs cost less than 15% of a full roof replacement. Thus, it appears that for golf ball sized hail and smaller, one could expect little to no hail damage to the Class 4 polymer modified shingles. Once you get over 2-inch diameter hail, a full roof replacement appears likely. We generally consider quarter sized hail to be the threshold for expecting hail damage to standard asphalt shingles (such as 3-tabs or even dimensional shingles).

If you would like additional information regarding the requirements to obtain the rebate from Malarkey, or would like to discuss it in further detail, please give Craig Stevens a call at 800.228.7136.