Roof cleaningin Margate, FL.

A four-point inspection covers the roof, electrical, plumbing and heating and cooling, and Citizens asks for one on homes older than twenty years. In Margate, where the median house was built in 1978, that is most homes. The inspector looks for the roof's age, its covering, and visible damage or wear, and photographs it.

A roof carrying years of black streaks and lichen looks worse in that photo than a clean roof in the same condition. Cleaning does not change the answer about age, and nobody should imply it does. It removes the growth so the photo shows the real tile or shingle, and it lets you see whether anything needs a roofer first. Book the clean a few days before the visit so the roof has dried.

Most of Margate's original homes are one story, with a roof close enough to the ground that the whole eave line is reachable from a short ladder. That makes the application easier to control and keeps foot traffic on the tile to a minimum. It also means the runoff lands close to the house, in the beds and on the walks.

Old concrete tile gets brittle and cracks where it is walked wrong, so it is walked only on the laps and near the ridges, and not at all where it will not take it. Shingle is walked with care and never pressure washed. Plants under the drip line are soaked first and rinsed after. Gutters on a low roof are flushed at the end so nothing is left sitting in them.

Where an older Margate house has had a porch enclosed or a carport added, that section often has a lower slope than the main roof and sometimes a different covering. Low-slope sections hold water longer and grow faster, and they are the first place a leak shows up. They often sit under the main roof's drip line as well, so they catch everything that runs off it. Leaves and seed pods collect on them too.

They get the same no-pressure soft wash with a mix suited to whatever covering is up there. If Michael sees ponding, soft spots or failing seams on a low-slope section, he tells you before cleaning it, because that is a roofer's job first. Carport roofs get the same check.