Emergency Roof Repair near you

A make-safe is a defined, limited job: cover the opening, secure whatever is loose enough to move again tonight, clear what is holding water, and stop more of it getting inside. It is priced and documented as temporary work. If a quote for the first visit reads like a re-roof, someone has skipped a step, because nobody can specify a permanent repair while the roof is wet and half of it is under a tarpaulin.

Record the damage before anything is touched. Photograph from ground level, from several angles, including the debris and the water inside, and note the time. Once the cover is on, the evidence of what the storm did is underneath it, and the photographs are what your insurer and any later dispute will work from.

Do not go up to look. SafeWork NSW is blunt about the numbers: falls from heights is the number one cause of death on NSW construction sites, and the most serious and fatal falls are from roofs, ladders and scaffolds, and from a height of under four metres. A storm-loosened sheet, wet coated steel and cracked tile are the exact surfaces that produce those falls.

When someone approaches you unasked and sells you something, the Australian Consumer Law calls it an unsolicited consumer agreement and gives you a cooling-off period of ten business days, starting the first business day after you sign or receive the agreement document. During that period the seller normally cannot supply any services and cannot take payment. That is the protection most people vaguely know about.

Here is the catch that matters after a storm. The ACCC sets out that the restriction on supplying services and taking payment during the cooling-off period does not apply to electricity, gas or emergency repairs. A roof leaking into a bedroom is an emergency repair. So the one situation in which a door-knocker may lawfully start work and take your money on the spot is exactly the situation you are in, which is why storm-affected streets attract them.

The rest of the rules still bind them, and they are worth knowing by heart. Door-to-door salespeople may only call on weekdays between 9 am and 6 pm and Saturdays between 9 am and 5 pm, and not on Sundays or public holidays. They must give their name, the name and address of the business they represent, and say why they are there. You must receive a written agreement with the full terms and conditions, the total cost, the salesperson's contact details and the business's address and registration numbers.

Step one is triage and documentation. Step two is the assessment, done in daylight and dry conditions by someone who will write down what failed and why, not just what is visible. Step three is the scope and the quote for the permanent repair, which should name each defect and what is being done about it. Step four is the work, and step five is the photographic record of it.

Insist that the make-safe and the permanent repair are separate line items, even from the same contractor. They are different products with different risk, different duration and different pricing logic, and bundling them is how a temporary tarpaulin quietly becomes the most expensive part of the job.

If an insurance claim is running, ask who is instructing the contractor: you, or the insurer. That single question decides who you complain to when the work is wrong, and it is easier to settle on day two than on day sixty.

Storm work is still licensed work. In New South Wales, roof plumbing covers fixing, installing, renovating, altering, repairing and maintaining guttering, downpipes, roof flashing and roof coverings on any building or structure, and a contractor licence is needed for residential work above the value threshold in the Home Building Act. In Queensland a QBCC licence is required for building work above the state threshold and for plumbing and drainage work regardless of what it is worth.

Building Commission NSW asks homeowners to verify a trade licence through the government's own verification service before engaging anyone to assess damage, and to ask for references and examples of prior work, to clarify the contract terms and whether subcontractors are involved, and to confirm what insurance is held beyond the mandatory cover. None of that takes long on a phone, and it is the only step in an emergency that is entirely within your control.

New South Wales caps the deposit at ten per cent of the contract price, and that applies to both small jobs contracts and contracts for large jobs. A demand for a large cash payment before any work starts is therefore not simply unwise; on a residential job in that state it is outside the rules. Large jobs contracts must also set out a cooling-off period of five clear business days, which is a different and separate thing from the unsolicited sales cooling-off period.

Underneath all of it, the consumer guarantees the ACCC enforces still apply to emergency work: the service must be carried out with an acceptable level of care and skill, it must be fit for the purpose you made known, and where no timeframe was agreed it must be supplied within a reasonable time. Saying out loud, in writing, that the purpose is to keep water out until the permanent repair is done is worth the thirty seconds it takes.

Keep everything in one place: the SES job reference if you got one, the photographs with their timestamps, the make-safe scope, the assessment, the quote, the contract, the licence number you checked and the insurer's claim number. A storm claim is decided on paper months after the water has dried.