Emergency Tarp and Leak-Stop Visit

Purpose

The deliverable on an emergency call is a stopped water path and a documented condition. It is not a covered hole. A tarp fastened below the point where water actually enters, or left with an open top edge, collects the whole slope's runoff and delivers it into the assembly faster than the damage did - so the customer calls back at 2 am wetter than before, and the shop now owns the escalation.

This procedure fixes two things crews get wrong under pressure: where the top edge of the tarp terminates, and whether anyone should be on that roof at all tonight.

Scope

Covers after-hours and storm-response calls to stop active water entry on residential and light commercial steep-slope roofs, by tarp, by localized sealing, or by interior containment alone. Covers the go or no-go decision, the interior work that happens first, and the scope line drawn with the customer.

Does not cover the permanent repair or the insurance scope, which follow on a separate visit. Does not cover storm damage inspection and evidence collection, owned by that SOP - an emergency visit records condition, it does not run a claim inspection in the dark. Does not cover tree removal, low-slope membrane repair, or water extraction and drying.

Roles and responsibilities

The go or no-go gate

Run this on arrival, out loud, before anything comes off the truck. Any one of these is a no-go for roof access, and a no-go is not a failed call - interior containment alone is a legitimate outcome and it is usually the right one.

• Thunder audible or lightning visible. Nobody on a roof or a ladder, and the wait is 30 minutes past the last thunder, the NOAA convention. Absolute.
• Wind above the shop's limit. A default worth setting is sustained above 25 mph or gusts over 35 - a 20 ft tarp is a sail with two people attached to it.
• Ice, snow or frost on the roof plane. No traction control exists for this.
• Structural compromise. Ridge or rafter sag, a limb still resting on the roof, or deck that gives underfoot. The limb is a tree service's work, the sag is an engineer's call.
• Darkness without adequate lighting and full fall protection. Set a shop default and hold it; ours is no steep-slope access after dark.

Procedure

1. Triage on the phone before the truck rolls. Ask what is happening inside, whether water is near any light fixture, ceiling fan, panel or outlet, whether the ceiling is bulging, who is in the house, and what the roof looks like from the yard. Acceptance: all five answered and written on the dispatch. Wrong looks like a dispatch that says "roof leak, north side". Stop rule: water at an electrical fixture and the caller is told to keep everyone out of that room and turn off the breaker to it before the crew arrives; they do that only from dry footing with dry hands and a dry panel, and if the panel is wet, standing in water, or they are not confident which breaker it is, they turn nothing off, stay out of the room, and the call escalates to an electrician alongside the roofer. Hazard: water plus energized wiring is the one thing on this call that kills someone tonight, and the person standing under it is the customer, not the tech.

2. Run the go or no-go gate on arrival and say the result out loud. Walk the perimeter with a light, check the gate list above, and look for the limb, the sag and the standing water. Acceptance: a spoken go or no-go with the specific reason, entered on the ticket. Wrong looks like a crew that goes up because the customer is upset. Stop rule: any gate item present and roof access is off for tonight - the visit becomes interior containment plus a first-light return, and the customer is told that plainly. Hazard: overhead conductors are down or slack after storms far more often than crews expect; treat every downed or sagging line as energized, keep 10 ft clear per the unqualified-person distance in 29 CFR 1910.333(c)(3), and call the utility before anything is raised.

3. Stop the interior damage before you think about the roof. Move contents, lay plastic and towels, set buckets, and deal with a bulging ceiling: confirm the circuit to that room is off at the breaker and the fixture is dead, clear everyone from under the bulge, then relieve it with a single controlled hole at its low point with a bucket underneath. Acceptance: no standing water held in a ceiling cavity, no contents left under an active drip, and a confirmed-dead fixture in any wet room. Wrong looks like leaving a 2 ft bulge to drain on its own. Stop rule: if the ceiling is already sagging across a joist bay or the drywall is separating, nobody stands under it and the room is closed off. Hazard: a saturated ceiling holds many pounds of water and comes down as one piece with the light fixture in it, so the relief hole is made from the side with a pole or an extended arm, never from directly beneath.

4. Find the top of the water path before the tarp is unrolled. From the ladder and from inside the attic where one exists, trace up-slope from the visible damage looking for a second impact, a split deck seam, a lifted course, or a cracked rafter. Acceptance: the highest point of damage is identified and marked, not assumed to be the hole you can see. Wrong looks like measuring the tarp against the obvious hole. Stop rule: if the highest point cannot be established, the tarp runs over the ridge - there is then no upper limit to guess wrong about. Hazard: in the attic, step on joists rather than ceiling, carry a light, and if the insulation is a loose granular product you cannot identify, treat it as asbestos-containing vermiculite: do not disturb it, do not crawl through it, do not run a fan in that attic, and work the leak from the roof plane instead, because disturbed it goes airborne and no respirator on this truck is issued for it.

5. Set access and fall protection, then re-verify the anchor into sound structure. Run the ladder setup and roof access standard and the fall protection setup SOP as written; the 6 ft construction trigger at 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(13) and the arrest criteria at 1926.502(d) do not lift because the call is after hours. Acceptance: the anchor lands in framing confirmed by probe, and its substrate is checked again given that this roof has just been struck. Wrong looks like an anchor screwed into deck the storm already compromised. Stop rule: no sound framing within reach of the work means no roof access, and the visit reverts to containment. Hazard: storm-loosened shingles slide underfoot without warning, so the first person up tests each course before weighting it.

6. Build the tarp so the top edge terminates above the highest damage. Run it over the ridge and batten on the opposite slope wherever geometry allows; where it does not, slide the top edge under an intact shingle course a few feet above the highest damage and batten there. Roll each edge around a 2x4 so screws pass through wrapped material, at about 12 in on center into the deck. Leave the bottom edge past the drip edge and free to drain. Acceptance: no exposed horizontal top edge, side battens continuous, bottom edge open, no ponding pocket. Wrong looks like a tarp screwed flat on the shingle surface below the entry point, which funnels the slope into the hole. Stop rule: a top edge that cannot get under a course or over the ridge gets a full-width cover strip lapped over it, never a bead of sealant. Hazard: every batten screw is a new penetration, so count and location get recorded for the repair visit rather than discovered later.

7. Verify with water before you leave, with someone inside watching. Run a hose across the tarp and the courses above it for at least 10 minutes while a second person watches the interior entry point with a light. Acceptance: no water at the interior point during the run and for 5 minutes after. Wrong looks like calling it done because the rain stopped. Stop rule: any water and the tarp is extended up-slope and re-tested - do not add sealant to a tarp that is terminating in the wrong place. Hazard: a wet tarp is far more slippery than the roof it covers, so nobody stands on it during or after the test, and the hose runs from above the tarp downward.

8. Draw the scope line with the customer in writing before you leave. Say and write that this visit stopped water and did not repair the roof, that reinforced poly on an exposed slope degrades in weeks to a few months of sun and wind, that the batten screws are penetrations to be closed at repair, and give a specific return date. Acceptance: the customer has a written summary and a date. Wrong looks like a verbal "we'll get you on the schedule". Stop rule: a customer who declines the repair still gets the written condition note, because the tarp is now the roof. Hazard, and it is a commercial one: do not tell a customer what their policy will cover or what an adjuster will approve - describe what you saw and did, and route coverage questions to their carrier.

The record this produces

An emergency visit entry with: arrival time, weather and the gate result with its reason; the triage answers; interior actions including any circuit turned off and any relief hole made; the highest damage point and how it was established; tarp size, termination method at all four edges, batten and screw count with locations; water-test duration and result; photographs before and after; the scope-boundary text given to the customer; and the return date.

The repair crew reads the screw locations so those penetrations get closed. The office reads the gate result and the scope text if the customer later says they were told the roof was fixed.

Worked pass: limb strike, north slope, 5:10 pm arrival

Triage said water at a bedroom ceiling, no fixture involved, ceiling bulging about 18 in across, two adults home. Gate at 5:10 pm: no thunder, wind 12 mph gusting 20, roof dry, limb already on the ground, 90 minutes of usable light. Go.

Step 3: bedroom breaker off and the fixture confirmed dead, contents moved, relief hole made from the side, roughly a bucket and a half drained. Step 4: visible hole is 3 ft across and 2 ft up the slope, centered about 6 ft up-slope from the eave on a 22 ft rafter run, so its top edge sits at 7 ft. Step 5: anchor probed solid into a rafter on the intact south slope. Step 6: first attempt battens the tarp's top edge at 10 ft up-slope, 3 ft above the top of the hole, side battens down to the eave.

Step 7 fails. Four minutes into the hose test the interior spotter reports water at the same ceiling point. The tarp is not extended and no sealant is added; instead the crew re-runs step 4 with a light and finds a split deck seam at about 13 ft up-slope, where the limb first struck before it skidded down and punched through. The second build runs the tarp over the ridge and battens on the south slope, covering the full 22 ft of the north rafter run. The re-test runs 10 minutes with 5 minutes of watching after, dry both times.

Final count: two side battens at 22 ft each and one ridge batten at 20 ft, screws at 12 in on center, which is 64 penetrations recorded by location for the repair visit. Written summary handed over at 7:40 pm with a return date. The lead's note says the giveaway was there in step 4 and got skipped because the visible hole was so obvious - which is the whole reason step 4 exists.

References

• 29 CFR 1910.333(c)(3), minimum approach distance for unqualified persons near overhead lines, which governs the downed-conductor case on a storm call
• 29 CFR 1926.501 and 1926.502(d), fall protection duty and personal fall arrest criteria, which an emergency does not suspend
• NOAA lightning safety guidance for the 30-minute wait after the last thunder
• See related: the fall protection setup SOP, the ladder setup and roof access standard, and the storm damage inspection and documentation SOP, which owns the evidence work this visit deliberately does not do