Talk to any tradie, and they will often be able to tell you the wonders and joy that can be found either standing on a roof or crawling around in a roof.

In the event that you haven ever brought this up with another tradie, you may be forgiven for not detecting the slight sarcasm in the above comment.

The reality is that climbing onto a roof can be a daunting and often uncomfortable experience, and the same goes for climbing into a roof.

This however does not mean that us, like many other tradesman simply avoid roofs all together.

Every job has parts in which you simply have to suck it up and get the job done.

As such, we spend a tremendous amount of time on top of roofs and crawling around inside roofs.

There are however a few times in which we will not, or can not access the exterior or interior of a roof, they are:

Exteriors of Roofs

  • If the roof is deemed to be structurally unsound, we will not climb onto the roof. We will of course include this within the report itself, as a structurally unsound roof is definitely a point of concern
  • If we deem that our climbing onto the roof will cause damage. This may be because we can see that the tile work is very brittle on the edges, or if we can see that the roof will not withstand the pressure of an individual climbing onto it
  • If the roof is wet, when it has been raining, or if your air conditioner is dumping a lot of water, the roof may become to slippery to be safely scaled, in this situation it will be deemed unsafe to access the exterior of the roof
  • Some 2 storey roofs, this exclusion comes directly from the Australian Building Inspection standard, AS4349-1-2007, 3-2-2 states that if the roof can not be accessed by using a 3.6m ladder, that we are not to climb onto it

If in the event of your inspection we are not able to access the exterior of your roof, extra detail is sourced by having a more thorough inspection from within the roof cavity. This generally allows us to still have a very clear idea of the roofs structural integrity and safety.

Interiors of Roofs

  • Blocked, Locked or Inaccessible Manholes, if your man hole has been permanently sealed, or locked for security, or blocked off from access (by a hot water service for example), then we will not be able to get into the roof cavity. This will of course be noted on your report
  • Notification of Chemical Treatment, if we see that there is a warning notification that a chemical treatment has been used in the roof cavity, we will re-assess if we are able to safely conduct the interior of the roof inspection
  • Improperly installed insulation, if we open the man hole and see that insulation has been improperly installed (you may recall that improperly installed insulation lead to fatalities here in Australia recently), then we will once again not access the roof space, and we will notify you on the report.