The 19-Point Inspection: How a Campfire Conversation Changed the Way We Roof

You can’t get on your own roof — so how do you really know it was done right?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about hiring a roofer: your roof is one of the biggest investments you’ll ever make in your home, and you’ll almost never see the finished work with your own eyes. You can’t climb up there. You’re standing in the driveway, looking at a crew you met a few days ago, trusting that everything 20 feet over your head was done exactly right.

That’s a lot of trust to hand over. And in an industry where the Better Business Bureau logs thousands of roofing complaints every year, it’s fair to be a little nervous about it.

At Advantage Roofing, we’ve spent more than two decades building a process specifically designed to remove that worry — so you don’t have to become a roofing expert or hover in the yard to know the job was done right. The centerpiece of that process is something we call the 19-point inspection — part of our roof replacement on every home. And the story of where it came from tells you a lot about how we think.

Where the 19-point inspection came from: a campfire and an airplane mechanic

Right around the time owner Tim Mallory was starting Advantage Roofing, he was sitting around a campfire at a buddy’s house one night, having a cold beer. His friend was an airplane mechanic.

“I was just talking,” Tim recalls, “and I said, man, you guys are under a lot of pressure, because if you do one thing wrong inside that engine, it can be devastating. And I said, how do you guys do that?”

The answer stuck with him. His friend explained that aviation runs on checks and balances. Anything the mechanic did inside an engine, somebody came back behind him with a checklist and verified every single step. A second set of eyes on the work. Nothing signed off by the same person who performed it.

“A light bulb just went off in my head,” Tim says. “Like, man, if that’s good enough for the airplane industry, that’s probably going to work for my company.” (It’s the same conviction behind why a seized engine changed how we roof.)

So that’s exactly what he built. After every job is finished — even though our crews have installed hundreds and hundreds of roofs, and they’re the same experienced guys every time — a fresh set of eyes goes over the work. Our production manager walks the completed roof with a checklist of 19 items, the same way that airplane mechanic’s work got checked. Not the crew that did the install. A separate person, whose entire job is to make sure it’s done exactly the way we want it done, every single time.

What the 19-point inspection actually covers

The inspection is a top-to-bottom verification of the workmanship on your roof. While the full checklist runs 19 items, here are some of the things we’re specifically looking for — the details most homeowners never think about, but that quietly determine whether a roof lasts 15 years or 50.

Nail patterns and nail depth

Our manager lifts the shingles and checks that the nail pattern is correct. He also makes sure none of the nails are overdriven into the shingle. This is a big one: an overdriven nail breaks the seal and integrity of the shingle, and it can cause wind lift later on — where shingles start to peel up in a storm. It’s invisible from the ground and easy to miss in a rush, which is exactly why we check for it deliberately.

Sealed plumbing pipe fasteners

Plumbing pipes that come through the roof get fastened down, and then those fasteners need to be sealed. If a crew moves fast and forgets to seal them, you’ve got a potential leak point. “The guys forgot to do that, Jeff catches it, takes care of it right then and there, and it’s not an issue down the road.”

Gutters and drainage

Sometimes there’s a small gutter on the backside of the roof — maybe only three or four feet long — that didn’t get cleaned out. Left alone, it overflows with the next rain. “Jeff catches those kinds of little things, clears the gutter, and makes sure everything is running smooth on that job.”

Flashing

Flashing is where your roof meets walls, chimneys, and valleys — and it’s where a huge percentage of roof leaks actually start. The inspection confirms flashing is installed and sitting correctly so water goes where it’s supposed to go.

The cleanup — checked twice

This one deserves its own spotlight, because it’s where Advantage is famously particular.

Why we’re fanatical about cleanup (and what that has to do with your roof)

There’s a personal reason Tim is a stickler about the ground. When he broke into roofing in 1984 — going into his senior year of high school, looking for a way to earn college money his family didn’t have — his very first day did not go well. His brother had gotten him on with a small company. First house, first day, not even a steep slope. Tim bear-crawled to the peak and sat there until lunch, frozen. Nobody said a word to him. At lunch, the gruff old owner walked over, grabbed his arm, and helped him back down the ladder.

“I said, man, I’m not cut out for this. And he just said, oh man, just come back tomorrow. You’ll get used to it.” What the owner was really thinking, Tim laughs now, was you’re my new ground guy.

“So I’ve literally started from the ground up. And I’m very particular and very picky about the cleanup on the ground.”

That’s not just a nice story — it’s a quality signal. Because here’s the thing: since you can’t get on the roof to judge the work, the cleanliness of your yard is the best proxy you have. “If the ground’s clean, they probably did a good job up there. If the ground’s messy, they maybe did a messy job up there.”

So the cleanup on an Advantage job is relentless:

• Before the crew leaves, all seven or eight guys walk the property.
• We run four different nail magnets on the site — small handheld ones for the bushes and landscaping, and three-foot-wide wheeled magnets we drag across the driveway and grass.
• We clean debris off the exterior window sills.
• We protect your landscaping up front: on bigger projects we build plywood over top of the shrubs and beds, and we run a net system around the perimeter of the house so falling debris never reaches your plants.
• Everything — tarps, nets, plywood — goes into our dump trailer, and we run the magnets through that too, in case any nails came off the tarps.

And then Jeff comes back and does the cleanup check again as part of the 19-point inspection, running his own nail magnet over the property a second time.

Checks and balances: the human reason it works

There’s a subtle psychology to this system that Tim loves. Because the crew knows Jeff is coming back to inspect their work, they hold themselves to a higher standard in the first place.

“The cool part about the checks and balances — the crew knows Jeff’s coming back to look at it, so they don’t want egg on their face. They’re trying their best to get it right every single time, so there’s not an issue.”— Tim Mallory, Owner, Advantage Roofing

Quality stops being something we hope for and becomes something the process guarantees. Two sets of eyes, every roof, no exceptions.

The second checkpoint: your roof’s one-year “birthday inspection”

The 19-point inspection is the first time we double-check a roof. It isn’t the last. Most homeowners don’t realize that the most crucial period in a new roof’s life is its first year. As the seasons cycle, materials expand and contract at different rates — the plywood, the shingles, the brick, the siding are all moving slightly. Meanwhile, shingles are thermodynamic: the sun activates a sealant strip that literally glues each shingle to the one below it. After a full year of seasons, “you basically got one big sheet of shingle that’s all glued together.”

So one year after your install, Tim comes back personally. You’ll get a birthday card in the mail, the office sets up a time, and Tim shows up — often with an actual birthday cake — to put his own eyes on the roof one more time. He’ll lift shingles to confirm the seals took, check the flashings for any winter buckling, and look over the gutters. It’s a free service we call the one-year Birthday Inspection.

“People are shocked that we do that, and they’re shocked that it’s a free service. They’ll say, I’ve never heard of a contractor coming out a year later to check on his own work.”— Tim Mallory, Owner, Advantage Roofing

After that one-year look, Tim says, “I’m pretty confident that roof is going to be trouble-free now for the next 30, 40, 50 years” — which is exactly the kind of longevity our Forever Roof Guarantee is built to protect.

You don’t pay until the inspection is done

Here’s how much we stand behind this: we don’t collect final payment until the 19-point inspection is complete.

If we finish your roof on a Friday and can’t get to the inspection until Monday, you don’t pay until Monday. Once Jeff puts his final stamp of approval on it — yes, this roof is installed exactly how we want it installed — we take a photo of the completed checklist, log it in our system, and give you a copy if you’d like one. Then, and only then, do we ask for the final check.

Get the full “Before the Ladder Comes Down” checklist The exact 19-point list we verify on every roof. Enter your info and we’ll send you the PDF.