The last post in this series was the progress walk before the draw, where the person who needs to see the work is the owner. This one is the last of the moments the live video for construction inspections pillar listed, and the person who needs to see the work is somebody most crews never meet in person: the manufacturer rep.
Some roofing and siding systems come with an installation spec that the manufacturer wants verified by their own person. Underlayment laps, flashing details at the penetrations and the walls, fastener type and pattern, the starter course, the sealant at the terminations. The rep is supposed to see some of that before it gets covered. Our rep covers four states. The install takes two days. The parts she needs to see are exposed for about ninety minutes of those two days, and they are not the same ninety minutes on any two houses.
The manufacturer rep's problem is timing, not distance
Distance is the obvious problem and it is the smaller one. She can drive. What she cannot do is arrive in the forty minutes between the underlayment going down and the first course going over it, on a Tuesday, in a town three hours from the last one.
So what usually happens is one of two things. She comes out at the end, looks at a finished roof, and asks me what is under it. Or I send photos, twenty of them, unlabeled, taken by whichever guy had a free hand, and she asks me which wall that is.
Neither is her fault. Both leave her signing off on a description of the install rather than the install.
Put the rep on the link for the ninety minutes that matter
The fix on our side took one conversation. I asked her which details she needs to see, in what order, and she gave me a short list. Now on install day I text her a link before the first of those details happens. She taps it and watches in her browser, from her truck or her kitchen. No app, no account, nothing to install on her phone.
Then the lead on the roof narrates the sequence as it goes in. Not the whole install. The list.
- Underlayment: the lap width, held against a tape, at the eave and at the sidewall. Which product, said out loud, with the roll label in the frame.
- Ice and water at the eaves and valleys: how far up the slope it runs, the overlap onto the drip edge.
- Flashing: step flashing at each wall, the counter flashing, the pipe boots, the kick-out at the bottom of every sidewall. The penetrations are where it leaks is why I spend the most time here, and the rep has never once asked me to hurry through it.
- Fastening: the nail line on one course, the count per shingle, the gun depth checked on a pulled nail. The fastener box in the frame with the label readable.
- Starter and the first course, the ridge cap, the terminations at the rakes.
The lead captures a full-resolution still at each of those, and the stills stay attached to the inspection. The rep watches the sequence live, and she watches the covering happen too, which is the point. She saw the underlayment, and then she saw it go under.
She cannot talk to the roof, and that is fine
The viewer side is watch-only. No microphone, no chat, no camera on her end. She cannot say "hold that nail up" through the product.
What she can do is tap "I have a question about this," which saves the frame she was looking at, with a note if she wants, and shows it to the lead on his phone while he is still standing on that course. Last install it was "which side of the line is the nail on," and he moved the camera in and said it. For anything longer than that, she calls after the inspection ends, and I return the call from the driveway. Taking a call during the walk suspends the stream on an iPhone, so the call waits.
If a detail needs a real back and forth, we have run the phone on speaker next to the stream, with the lead narrating and the rep asking on the call. It works. It is also a sign the detail should have been settled before the crew was on the roof.
What is on record afterward
Recording starts on its own when the inspection goes live and lands with my company in the dashboard, not on the lead's phone. For a two-day install we stop and restart the recording at each detail on the list, which gives separate clips rather than one six-hour file, and the rep stays connected across the gaps. Timestamps that hold up covers why the time on that recording is worth more than the time on a photo, and the dashboard also keeps the event history: when the inspection started, when the rep joined, when it ended. So the record says not just what was installed and when, but that she was watching while it went in.
That is all the record says, and it is enough. What she does with it is her process and her company's.
If she wants to review a clip, she gets a short-lived signed link. Recordings are private, never a public URL, and how long they stay available runs from 90 days to three years by plan. The security page has the specifics.
What the rep did not see
Say it plainly, on the recording. If she joined after the ice and water was down, the record shows what she watched and what she did not, and the lead says so out loud: "the rep came on at the sidewall flashing, eave underlayment was already covered." An honest gap on the record is better than a recording that implies she saw everything.
Video also does not show her everything a hand does. Whether the sealant has skinned, whether a nail is proud by a sixteenth, whether the underlayment is stuck to the deck or bridging a low spot. She knows that. She still comes out for the sample of houses she chooses to come out for, and this walk decides which houses that sample includes rather than replacing it.
Where it fits
This is the narrowest of the construction inspection moments and it might be the one with the least friction, because the rep already wants to see the install and already cannot be there for it. Ask your rep for her list. Text the link before the first item on it. The viewer side, and why her phone never asks for camera permission, is on the how it works page.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.