Documenting pre-existing wear is about conditions that were there before you arrived and will be blamed on you if nobody writes them down. Weather, age, the previous owner's neglect.
This is the sharper version of that. Not wear — work. Somebody came out here before you and did something. There is a patch, a run of new sealant, a replaced vent, a section of shingle that does not match. You did not do it, you were not there, and you are now standing over it with a camera and a customer listening.
It is one of the few moments in an inspection where what you say has consequences beyond the building, and the discipline is different from everywhere else on the roof.
Why this is not an ordinary finding
Three things are true at once and they pull against each other.
The customer is going to ask you whether the repair was any good. They will ask directly, on the recording, and they are entitled to an answer of some kind.
You cannot actually know. You did not see the condition underneath, you do not know what the scope was, you do not know what the customer asked for or what they paid for, and a repair that looks crude may have been the right call on a roof that was getting replaced in eighteen months anyway.
And whatever you say is recorded, kept, and potentially watched by somebody other than the person standing in the driveway.
So the discipline that holds is the one this cluster keeps arriving at: describe, do not grade. Descriptions travel. Verdicts do not.
Describe the work, not the worker
Practically, on camera, that sounds like this.
Say what is physically there. "There is a patch about two feet by three feet on the south slope, five courses up. The shingles are a different colour and a slightly different profile from the surrounding field."
Say how it was done, where you can see it. "It has been face-nailed along the top edge and the nail heads are sealed. There is sealant along the left side, about a quarter-inch bead."
Say the observable condition of it now. "The sealant is cracked along its length. Two of the nail heads are exposed." That is a condition, checkable by anyone who looks at the same footage.
Say what you cannot tell. "I cannot tell from up here what is under this or whether the deck was replaced. I would have to pull it to know." That sentence protects everybody and it is the single most useful thing on the list.
What none of that does is say the word "bad." You have described a patch precisely enough that any competent person watching can form their own view, which is a stronger document than your adjective.
The question you will get, and the answer
"Was that done properly?"
The answer I use is some version of:
"I can tell you what is there and what shape it is in now. I cannot tell you whether it was the right repair, because I do not know what was underneath it or what they were asked to do. What I can see is that the sealant has cracked and two nails are exposed, and that is going to need attention regardless of who did it."
That is not evasion. It is an accurate statement of what an inspection can establish, and it moves the conversation onto the thing that matters — the current condition and what to do about it — instead of onto somebody who is not present to explain themselves.
Customers accept it. In my experience they are relieved by it, because the alternative answer sounds like a sales pitch and they can hear that.
Say when you arrived
Timestamps do more work on this kind of finding than anywhere else on the building.
You are recording that a repair existed, in this state, on this date, before you touched anything. Six months from now the question may be whether a condition predates your work, and the recording is the answer. It is the same argument as timestamps that hold up, applied to the one situation where somebody else's work and yours could get confused.
Two habits make it stick. Get a wide shot that puts the patch on the building, not just a close-up of the patch — a close-up of grey shingles could be any roof. And say out loud, on the recording, that this was present on arrival and you have not worked on it.
Watch the tone, because the microphone is on
An honest warning about something easy to do without meaning to.
Standing on a roof with a customer watching, looking at work you would not have done that way, there is a pull toward the small editorial noise. A sigh. "Well." "Somebody had a go at this." Half a laugh.
All of that is on the recording, and none of it is a finding. It reads as a verdict without carrying any of the information a verdict would need, and it is the part that gets replayed if the situation ever becomes a dispute between the customer and whoever did the work. You do not want to be a character in that.
Say what is there. Say what you cannot tell. Move to the next thing.
Why the live version helps here
This is a finding that benefits enormously from the customer watching in real time, because the honest answer — "here is what I can establish and here is what I cannot" — is much easier to accept when they are looking at the patch while you say it.
Delivered in a report three days later, "unable to determine" reads as a dodge. Delivered live, with the camera on the cracked sealant, it reads as care. Explaining findings without jargon is about the wording; this is the case where the timing carries as much as the words.
If the customer wants to understand what they are watching before you get there, what a good inspection sounds like is written for them and puts "describes rather than concludes" on the list of good signs, which is a useful frame to have arrived in advance of you. The how it works page covers the setup.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.