Real examples
A few real examples from real jobs in the Wiregrass, not stock photos from somewhere else. Each case below is a defect documented from more than one angle, the same way it shows up in your report.
This roof had shingles that were loose and no longer sealed down in more than one spot, along with moderate to heavy granule loss across the surface — the bald, dark patches are where the protective mineral coating has worn away to bare asphalt. Once shingles lose their granules and their grip at the same time, that section ages a lot faster than the rest of the roof. It wasn't an emergency, but it was well past due for repair.
A truss web member behind the second-floor air handler had been cut, and a nearby connection was showing a split with visible deflection. Roof trusses are engineered as a complete system — every web and chord is sized for a specific load, and cutting or modifying any part of it without an engineer's review can weaken the whole truss, not just the piece that got changed. This needs a qualified repair, not a patch.
This roof was only four months old, but the moisture meter read 25.6% at the sheathing above the garage, right where the dormer valley ties into the main roof — well into the wet range. A new roof isn't automatically a clean roof; valley and dormer intersections are common failure points if the flashing wasn't detailed correctly the first time. This one needed the installer back out to find the actual entry point, not just a patch.
A recessed light in the attic had insulation packed right against the housing, even though the fixture's own label warns of fire risk if insulation gets within three inches of a non-IC-rated luminaire. The thermal image backs it up: the housing was reading up to 171°F with insulation banked against it. Non-IC fixtures aren't built to shed heat once they're covered, and that's exactly the setup that starts attic fires. It's a simple fix — pull the insulation back to a safe clearance or replace it with an IC-rated fixture — but it's not one to leave alone.
A thermal scan picked up a cool, damp-looking patch on a bathroom ceiling that wasn't visible to the eye at all. Because it sat near where a plumbing vent stack passes through the roof, the first guess was a leak at that roof boot. A moisture meter confirmed the ceiling really was wet — 52% on the meter — but checking the attic told a different story: the moisture was condensation forming on the belly of the HVAC trunk line running right above that spot, not a roof leak at all. Getting the diagnosis right mattered here — one fix means insulating a duct, the other means tearing into a roof. This one was the easy fix.
This Dothan home was built in 1995, right at the tail end of when polybutylene was still being installed. Gray poly-B ran through the crawlspace and up to supply valves at nearly every fixture, identifiable by its dull gray color and semi-rigid feel compared to PEX or CPVC. Polybutylene was pulled from the market in the mid-1990s after widespread failures at its plastic fittings, and it remains something many insurers flag, surcharge, or decline to cover today. Because this home had a crawlspace, replacing the affected lines would cost significantly less than the same repipe in a home built on a slab. For agents and buyers, it's worth checking a home's plumbing type before listing or writing an offer on anything built between 1978 and 1997.
Scattered across this Dothan roof were several nail pops — fasteners that had backed out from the deck over time and worked their way up through the shingle above them. One had pushed far enough to tent the shingle seam right at the tab, exactly the kind of small lift that gives wind and water somewhere to get started. Nail pops are usually a quick, inexpensive fix: reseat or replace the fastener and reseal the tab before it works any looser. Left alone through a few more freeze-thaw and heat cycles, that same movement tends to widen rather than settle down on its own.
Where this roof meets the sidewall, the flashing hadn't been layered correctly — missing the overlap needed to shed water past the trim board below it. Staining and debris had already worked into the gap, and the trim itself was showing early signs of decay. Flashing at a wall transition depends on each piece overlapping the one beneath it and tucking behind the siding; skip that layering and the joint becomes the kind of spot that leaks slowly for years, since the water tends to travel behind the wall rather than showing up as an obvious drip inside.