The first 72 hours after a hail storm is about getting conditions on record before anything changes: before the tarps go on, before the crew starts, before memory softens. This one takes that idea and points it at the property next door, which is the one nobody thinks to document until it is too late.
Every re-roof I have run for the last several years starts the same way. The morning before the dumpster arrives, I walk the neighbor's side of the line with the homeowner on a live link and my phone pointed at their driveway. Not our customer's driveway. The neighbor's. The one the roll-off truck is going to back across, and the one somebody is going to look at in week three and find a crack in.
The conversation this walk is for
It goes like this. The job is done, the dumpster is gone, and the neighbor knocks on our customer's door. There is a crack in the driveway apron, or a bent fence post, or a chip in the siding on the side of the house that faces the job. It was not there before. Or maybe it was. Nobody can say, because nobody looked.
Now our customer, who liked us an hour ago, is standing between us and their neighbor with no way to know who is right. Every version of that conversation is long and every version of it costs goodwill, whether or not we did anything.
A dated walk of the neighbor's driveway before the dumpster arrives makes it short. Either the crack is on the recording from Monday, or it is not. The rest of the conversation follows from that and takes about two minutes.
Walking the neighbor's driveway before the dumpster arrives
I walk it with the homeowner on the link, watching from wherever they are, because I want the record to be something they saw made, not something I hand them later. The same link goes to the neighbor if they want it, more on that below.
The route, in order:
- The shared driveway and the apron. Whole length, both edges, slow. Existing cracks get a still with my boot in frame for scale, and I say out loud where they are: "About four feet from the garage door, running toward the seam."
- The sidewalk and curb the truck will cross. Roll-off trucks are heavy and the curb cut is where they cross it. Every existing chip and spall, narrated.
- The fence along the line. Each post, the rails, any lean. A fence is the thing most likely to catch a ladder or a bundle.
- The neighbor's siding and windows on the side facing the job. This is where a dropped bundle or a bounced shingle lands. Dents, chips, the condition of the screens.
- The neighbor's gutters and downspouts on the near side. Debris lands here and so do ladders.
- Wherever the dumpster is going to sit. Lawn, pavers, or driveway, the exact spot.
- Their car, if it is parked in the line of fire. Ask them to move it, and if they cannot, document it.
Fifteen minutes, all of it narrated, with full resolution stills at every existing mark. The stills stay attached to the inspection with the recording and the timestamp for when it started.
Ask the neighbor, and mean it
I do not walk onto a neighbor's property to film it without asking. I knock the day before, explain that we are roofing next door, that a dumpster is coming, and that I would like to take a short video of their driveway and the side of their house so that if anything gets damaged there is no argument about what it looked like first. Most people say yes immediately, because it protects them too.
If they want the link, they get it. Up to five people can watch one inspection at once, so the homeowner, the neighbor and the neighbor's spouse at work can all be on it. If they do not want the link, they get told plainly that it is being recorded and that they can have a copy.
If they say no to the walk, I stay on our customer's side of the line and on the public sidewalk, and I document what I can see from there. I do not push. A neighbor who feels pushed is a neighbor who is going to be looking hard at their driveway in week three.
The date is the whole point
The value of this walk is entirely in when it happened. The recording starts when the inspection goes live, and the event history in the dashboard shows when it started, when viewers joined, and when it ended. Timestamps a phone clock cannot explain away is the longer version of why that matters more than the pictures do.
Then do the walk again the day the dumpster leaves. Same route, same order, same stills. Making before and after photos actually comparable is the discipline: the second set is only useful if it lines up with the first.
Recordings land in the company dashboard, not on my phone, and they are private, reached through short-lived signed links rather than a public URL. That matters when the subject is somebody else's house. The security page has the specifics.
What the recording does not settle
It shows what the driveway looked like on Monday. If a crack appears that was not there, it does not show who made it, or whether it was the roll-off truck, the material delivery, or the neighbor's own brother-in-law's trailer on Saturday. It is a record of a condition on a date, and that is all I ever say it is.
It also does not show what the camera did not see. I cannot film the underside of a fence or the back of a downspout, and I do not go into the neighbor's back yard unless invited.
And it is not a substitute for being decent. A note on the door with my cell number, the dumpster placed where I said it would be, and a crew that picks up its nails still do more for the week-three conversation than any recording. The walk is there for the times all of that was done and somebody still finds a crack.
This is one of the live inspection use cases that passes the test cleanly: a decision that is coming, and a homeowner who will not be standing on the neighbor's driveway when it does.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.