Shingles Lose Wind Resistance After 10 Years

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Asphalt shingle roofs only provide full protection against hurricane winds until they are 10 years old, state officials told a panel of lawmakers on Tuesday.

After they hit 10 years, degradation from the sun will weaken the shingles, which are petroleum based, to the point where they offer less and less protection, the officials said at a hearing of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee.

Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky expanded on the topic of asphalt shingle roofs that he first raised late last year when he said that they don’t last for 30 years in the state as some manufacturers claim.

“Maybe it’s time to start writing them out of the plot in Florida,” Yaworsky told the Florida Chamber’s annual Insurance Summit in December.

On Tuesday, Yaworsky revealed that a report completed in June by Applied Research Associates Inc. — citing tests by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety and other organizations — found that the average life of a roof “where it has that real hurricane cat(astrophe) resistance is 10 years.”

He continued, “And then it begins to fall off in its ability to be resilient against catastrophic risk.”

The Applied Research Associates report, based on observations of damage from hurricanes Ian, Michael and Irma, found that “older asphalt shingles exhibit poorer performance compared to relatively new ones.” Nearly half of all shingle roofs exhibited “detectable damage, suggesting minimal advancement in wind resistance since Hurricane Charley in 2004.”

As asphalt shingle roofs age, the report said, they become more susceptible to “cohesion failure” in the underlying sealant, which leaves the roof vulnerable to wind uplift forces. Shingles over six years old “exhibit higher failure probabilities compared to those without the roof aging effect.”

Mike Silvers, director of technical services for the Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association, defended asphalt shingle roofs when contacted by the South Florida Sun Sentinel in December. He said that higher quality asphalt shingles installed under today’s Florida Building Code are more likely to withstand hurricane-force winds with minimal damage.

While asphalt shingle roofs — the least expensive roof type in place on an estimated 65% of Florida homes — will be around for decades, Yaworsky said, “that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be incentivization in moving toward more resilient roof types over the course of generations and decades.”

He said a revised version of the form that spells out home-hardening improvements that can earn Florida homeowner insurance discounts will include a specific discount for metal roofs, considered the strongest and longest lasting of roof options.

That doesn’t mean metal roofs are right for everyone, he said. Homeowners must weigh the economics of making the investment. Typically, metal roofs cost two to three times more than a shingle roof. While they can save homeowners money by lasting 30 to 50 years, they can also offset insurance savings by increasing the total insured value of the home, he said.

Yaworsky said that composite tile roofing materials are entering the market as another option that holds promise. Extensive testing of products that are in the field must be completed to “actually see how they hold up against real-world conditions,” he said. “If there is one good thing in the tragedies that have befallen the state in the past decade with the (hurricane) events we’ve had, it’s given us really, really good data,” he said.

Michael Newman, general counsel for Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, spelled out differing impacts of specific wind speeds on 10-year-old asphalt shingle roofs:

• A 10-year-old roof has a one-in-12 chance of damage from 60 mph winds.
• That chance goes up to 25% against a 90-mph wind.
• Against 100 mph winds, the chance of damage rises to “nearly 100%.”

Those probabilities apply generally to all classes of asphalt shingle roofs and not to those with specific features or construction types, he said.

While sealed roof decks are required for newly constructed homes, “if that is missing, up to nine bathtubs of water can pour into the home from a single inch of rain,” Newman said. Such a flood, he added, would destroy contents, trigger mold remediation, and lead to a “significant insurance claim.”

Testing of resiliency of roof types isn’t intended to separate “good from bad,” he said. Rather, “it’s about what are the appropriate expectations of consumers and insurers about how long particular roof types will last.”

Hurricanes aren’t the only type of catastrophe that metal roofs can help homeowners avoid, said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management.

Guthrie said metal roofs also provide greater protection against wildfires. After the “Chipola Complex” fires in the state’s Big Bend region in March 2022, investigators noticed that homes with metal roofs were less likely to catch fire, providing firefighters with an extra 10 to 30 minutes to respond.

Sen. Rosalind Osgood, a Democrat representing central west Broward County, asked when she should plan to replace her roof.

Yaworsky said that depends because the life of a roof can vary depending on “individually tailored” variables. He said that homeowners should consult their insurance agents and hire a qualified inspector “to look at that roof and see how much life is left in it.”

Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, chairman of the committee, scolded unnamed “roofing supply companies” for marketing dimensional shingles as lasting 30 to 40 years. “In the state of Florida,” he said, “you’re lucky if you get it to last, 12, 13 or 15 years because of the sun. Because it is a petroleum product, it’s melting and disintegrating. I mean, if you’ve ever been on a roof, tearing off old shingles, they basically come off like paper at that point. You can literally tear them.”

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