What a LeakFREE® Roof Certification is
A LeakFREE® Roof Certification is a formal certificate recording that a specific roof, at a specific address, on a specific date, met the published LeakFREE® criteria. LeakFREE® is our federally registered trademark. Only NRCIA members can issue a LeakFREE® certification.
The certificate is the last step in a defined sequence. An accredited NRCIA member performs a LeakFREE® Check, an inspection covering five zones: interior, attic, exterior, perimeter and rooftop. The findings become the LeakFREE® Roof Inspection Report. When the roof meets the criteria, the certificate follows.
Who issues it, and how it is registered
The certification is issued by the accredited individual who performed the inspection. Never by a company, never by a crew, never by NRCIA itself. NRCIA sets the standard, trains and accredits members, and administers the system. The person who walked the roof signs the certificate.
Every certificate is generated and registered through InspectionPLUS®. A certificate produced outside the platform is not valid, which gives an agent, a buyer or an adjuster something they can verify rather than take on faith.
What a LeakFREE® certification does not do
This is the part worth reading twice. The certificate describes a condition on a date. It does not promise that the roof will never leak. It is not insurance, and it is not a service contract.
Storm damage, acts of God and damage caused by third parties fall outside the standard certification. Those are matters for your property insurance policy and the carrier that wrote it.
How long it lasts
Term is set by what the inspection found, plus the slope, the materials and the condition of the assembly. The maximum is ten years. A newer, simple, well-detailed roof may earn a longer term than a steeper, older, complex one, and the expiration is printed on the certificate as a date so nobody has to interpret it.
A term is never stretched to help close a sale. If a roof does not meet the criteria yet, the report says what would need to change.
What happens if the roof is repaired
Re-inspection is triggered when repairs are performed by anyone other than an NRCIA member. That rule exists because the certificate describes an assembly, and work by an unaccredited crew changes the assembly the certificate is describing.
Across 6,460 member inspections nationwide, more than 66 percent of roofs either qualified for a LeakFREE® certification or could be repaired to qualify. A roof that falls short today is often a short list of corrections away.
Getting one on your roof
Certifications come up most often during a sale, before a listing goes live, at the end of a maintenance cycle, or when a lender or buyer asks for documentation of roof condition. The process starts with an inspection by an accredited member in your area.
Find an accredited NRCIA inspector near you: /member-directory/
LeakFREE®, Forensic ROOF®, Mr. RoofCheck®, InspectionPLUS®, Today’s Inspection… Tomorrow’s Protection®, and Got Leaks?® are registered trademarks of Field Gate FLP, used by permission. RoofGUARD™, ForensicGUARD™, DisasterGUARD™, E3GUARD™, and Think Like a Raindrop™ are trademarks of Field Gate FLP.
