Trade Secrets Inspections Podcast

TSI Season 3 Podcast #1: Why Your Roof, Doors & Windows Control Your FL Insurance

• Rick Kooyman • Season 3 • Episode 1

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 57:16

Send us Fan Mail

Sergio DeCesare and Rick Kooyman discuss the complexities of insurance requirements in Florida, particularly the wind mitigation process. They highlight the My Safe Florida Home program, which encourages homeowners to upgrade their homes to newer building codes for insurance discounts. Rick explains the four-point inspection process, which assesses roof, electric, plumbing, and AC systems. He notes that the program is currently on hold due to legislative issues. They also discuss the impact of roof slope, the importance of following manufacturer's instructions, and the challenges of verifying compliance, especially with new products like spray foam insulation. Rick emphasizes the need for homeowners to understand these nuances to ensure proper insurance coverage and discounts.

Support the show

Sergio DeCesare:

Sergio here, Max Business Profits once again with my good friend and home inspector extraordinaire, amongst other things, Rick Kooyman from Trade Secrets Inspections. Today we have an interesting conversation. We're going to be talking about insurance requirements here in the state of Florida, and if you don't know already, insurance is a big deal here in the state. A lot of people are opting out, if possible. If you don't have a mortgage, you can do that. But other people are kind of locked into these prices that are that are still high. They haven't really gone down that much. I can tell you from personal experience. You know, I've gotten windows and a new roof, and my my rate went down for a little bit, and then kind of went back up, and it's kind of bouncing back in between. But Rick's going to deliver some information to us on what's going on in the state of Florida as far as insurance is concerned, and it should be very interesting. So Rick, go ahead, start us off.

Rick Kooyman:

Awesome to be with you again, Sergio. So yeah, this is a great time to come back to this topic that we joined into once before on basically the wind mitigation process is what we're going to discuss today. And as far as what kind of updates are going on, they did update the four point process a little bit, but mostly what you're dealing with when it comes to your insurance rates is predicated on this discount program of the wind mitigation stuff. So the four point is their risk assessment of the four fundamental systems: roof, electric, plumbing, AC, and and they go through and that process is getting updated and kind of like everything in the world today, the world of AI is making its presence in the insurance industry and in the spectrum industry, and of course, in the documenting of things. So, this is primarily what is feeding the changes of stuff, and it's interesting to see how the two systems are developing together, and then we, as homeowners and customers, get stuck in the means of paying the madness of what? What are we doing here?

Sergio DeCesare:

Right. So on the four point, or rather the winmit, just for people who are listening, clarify what that is and what the requirement is before they can get a policy.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, so basically the wind mitigation process it comes as part of the My Safe Florida Home program, which was developed basically in the beginning of the 2000 era, and it was essentially trying to get the older construction homes brought up to the newer building codes by encouraging the policyholders to see a financial benefit from doing the the retrofits and the updates and the doors and windows and the roof attachments and stuff like that to try to make the homes more resilient to the high wind situation, so that the insurance industry stops writing so many large checks, and then in turn can reduce the rates for you know the customers.

Sergio DeCesare:

Incidentally, that program is on hold right now. It is not being funded at the moment because the Florida legislature has decided they have some other things they're trying to work out first. I'm lucky enough to slid in under the wire and actually had my windows done. And you know, it was a 20, it was an $18,000 bill for windows, which I find absolutely incredible. It's

Rick Kooyman:

not a big one in the world. Yeah,

Sergio DeCesare:

or it's not. But you know, and I didn't even get my front door done, which is steel, and my back French door, which I'm replacing with a with a slider eventually. But the point is, they they paid out$10,000 on that $18,000 bill. So, and I tried. That was it's been two years, right? And and the my

Rick Kooyman:

safe my the my safe Florida home pro project has been intermittent since its inception. Yeah, and you know, there's a various list of reasons of why it comes and goes, and money runs out, and then politics, and they pull it and put it back, and the insurance industry, you know, they they they're behind the decisions of most things in our world. Ultimately, writing the laws and the rules, and the politicians get to be part of that because you know the financial interest of things, but yeah, they they've gone through and amended the wind mitigation form officially. So originally there was a 2001 form, which was you know when the building code, the self well, what was. The Florida Building Code became a thing, which you know it originated out of South Florida and Miami Dade and Broward counties. They implemented it in the late '90s, and that was a

Sergio DeCesare:

result of Hurricane Andrew. Correct?

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, right. Andrew was the big hit that that changed the the insurance industry in Florida essentially. So, in the late '90s, they went to the South Florida Building Code, which this whole thing about building codes and dates and it gets really confusing because they they refer to a year building code like the 2001 Florida Building Code, which we call the FBC, you know, it it didn't get enacted until 2003, and then they updated that in 2004, and they called it the 2005 or six version, and now they're calling it the 2007 because in 2006 they updated it again, and now they finally brought it to the form. So the wind mitigation form went from the 2001 protocol, which you know the industry introduced, and the the homeowners were told that they had to have it done, and it was going to be at their expense to basically not have a collusion, I guess, within the insurance industry, so that there was a third party involved, and there's this whole discussion of who should pay for these things and why does the homeowner get to pay for them, and it's important to understand because there's always this question of how much does it cost, right? How much is your winment? How much are your four points? And and in the world of business, you know, the competing price game comes in, and ultimately, there's always going to be those players that want the quantity and go. You know, originally they were $50 inspections for a winment, and then you know it's a $75 inspection,

Sergio DeCesare:

right? Right. And

Rick Kooyman:

then the 2001 updates came out, and well, I should say the 2012 update came out because that's when they changed all the building codes in the early 2000s, and then in 2012 they finally updated the Winmit form again, and took out. That was a big change because they were talking about wall construction types and masonry and reinforcements and gable end reinforcements and you know wood construction methods and all these other things because they were worried about gable walls. Essentially, was the big big loser from Andrew. If you had a gable, which is a triangle shaped roof, right? That that wall system is a weak system, a weak point, and we had a lot of houses with those gables getting blown out. And once that happens, the house kind of just comes apart. The roof flies away, and then every well in relation to

Sergio DeCesare:

a hip roof, the the gable. If I'm if I'm remembering correctly, because if I'm wondering about, I'm sure somebody else is too. The gables were just these higher points. They were high points where where the trusses met. Correct. Yeah.

Rick Kooyman:

No. That's that's the ridge line officially. So what you're talking about the top point where the two slopes meet together?

Sergio DeCesare:

Not not the top point, but like like if you have a garage, you may have a gable.

Rick Kooyman:

Well, yes, but a the the hip roof doesn't have any gables,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

So the easiest way to think about is the

Sergio DeCesare:

edges around that whole roof are the same level, right?

Rick Kooyman:

So if you go to the perimeter, your walls or your house, and you're looking up at the roof, if you're looking at the edge of a roof shingle or a roof tile and not the bottom, when you look up at the roof, that's a gable.

Sergio DeCesare:

Okay, that's

Rick Kooyman:

the easiest way to think of it. So if you look up and see an edge of a roofing product going down a perimeter wall or a rake or whatever it is, it's going to be rake. It's it is a gable portion, and then we have these clipped hips or Dutch gables or whatever term you want to call them by where it's a composite of the two systems, and it gets really confusing on when it counts and when it doesn't. And there's all kind of different architectural drawings of roof systems out there, but ultimately it came down to the insurance industry found through the calculations of the losses That the gable typical roof system was the the loser of the bunch. So in any way they could encourage the building industry to go to a full hip roof system, which is you know like a pyramid instead of having a triangle on a wall. The whole roof is a pyramid. And ultimately slopes downward, so you don't have those big wind surfaces. And then this gets even a little more into this conversation here. We're going to go to shortly as far as the pitch goes and and the steepness of the roofs, because that's where they that this is one of the new changes in the forms. Those tend

Sergio DeCesare:

to be steeper, right? To have steeper angles, it can

Rick Kooyman:

be, but it's it's really we're skipping ahead a little bit here. But let's go ahead and talk about it because we're talking about hips and gables. So in in the form in the document, it went from seven sections to nine, but in in the document is still the roof geometry, as it's called, section, and they didn't actually change it a whole lot, but what they did change is they they put in this new section called roof slope that wasn't there before. So now they're talking about how steep is the roof pitch, and they ask this specific question, and it says if two thirds of the main roof area is determined to be greater than a 612 pitch or less than, and that just means if you go six inches horizontally, the roof goes up. If you if you go 12 inches horizontally, the roof goes up six inches.

Sergio DeCesare:

Inches, correct.

Rick Kooyman:

So that's where the pitch number goes. So this the first number is how far up gain do you get for every 12 inches of length, right? So if you have an 812 pitch roof, it's a steeper roof. Right. If you have a 312, it's a lower slope

Sergio DeCesare:

roof. Right.

Rick Kooyman:

Right. And so the testing and dynamics of roof systems showed that ultimately a flat roof was the first one to blow off. Really, basically because of low pressure uplift. Right. It's kind of like you know you pick up, and you blow across the paper. The paper lifts up,

Sergio DeCesare:

ripples, yeah,

Rick Kooyman:

right, and it actually lifts the paper up. And this is how airplanes fly, right? The wind

Unknown:

over

Rick Kooyman:

the top of the wing is moving faster than the wind under the wing, and it creates a low pressure on top of the wing, and therefore the thing in between gets pulled upwards, right? And in this case, the thing in between is the roof. So your roof is a wing, yeah. And and it turned out that the well both this the combination of the material types and assembly, and the pitch resulted in flat roof systems coming apart first, and then thereafter, if you had a gable and a low slope, there was the problem with how was the truss attached, and the whole roof would lift off, trusses and all, because the truss system wasn't attached to the wall necessarily solidly or through a total load connection, all the way down to foundation. So that's where the building code comes in. So the old building code didn't require you to use mechanical clips, metal, you know, hangers and brackets. And when we built houses forever, you know, for 30 years I built houses and we toenailed trusses down. So you just put a nail in on either side at an angle, and you drove it into the top plate,

Sergio DeCesare:

yeah,

Rick Kooyman:

and and away you went.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right. Well, those

Rick Kooyman:

are you can imagine you can easily probably pull that apart, and and that's what the high winds did is they pulled that apart, and the whole roof blew off in a big assembled unit, and it was pretty amazing to watch, but it did happen. So then they come along and say,"Well, actually, as the roof gets steeper, it starts to become a bad thing too. And more importantly, as we go to real steep pitch roofs, we tend to have gables. They tend to be the gable roof types, where there's just two roof slopes that come together, and they might be very highly pitched, but on the ends you have these giant triangles, these giant gables.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right.

Rick Kooyman:

Right. So they didn't like that. So now you had a wall separation and a roof line separation occurring. So the gable system had kind of two weaknesses, but which but this

goes back to this whole:

why are we doing this, and are we doing it correctly when we change things? And honestly, it's not clear. And this goes to the whole point of man, they change this stuff, and it's going to affect everybody because if you're doing these things, if your insurance calls you today and says you need to update your policy, you have to use this new wind mitigation form. Beginning of the first of April, the old form is no longer acceptable. So if you know your building contract. Whoever's filling it out for you, and I say that particular because those type of trades, the contractors, the architects, and engineers, they're kind of excluded from the need to be recertified. They're just told they're allowed to do it, and then they get the form, and they don't understand it any more than anybody else would, and that ultimately gets done incorrectly because it's not clear to begin with. But like in this roof slope thing, the question simply

asks:

Ultimately, is the slope greater than or equal to 612, or is it less than 612? And I laugh at that because they're looking at giving a credit one way or another, the industry hasn't decided which way they're going to give the credit. They've changed. Are we talking about giving

Sergio DeCesare:

a credit? Are we talking about penalizing? Because they're they're probably quicker to penalize.

Rick Kooyman:

No, they're gonna. They've already penalized you. They've already gone to the highest risk. We're going into the game and now we're penalized. Yeah. So now we're trying to work backwards with these forms and these inspections. So you could not have it done, and they're just going to give you the highest risk numbers they have, right? But you don't want to pay that much. So okay, let's see how we can reduce it. Kind of conversation. So they've updated this form in several ways in this regard, but when they changed it from seven sections to nine sections for you know since 2012. Anyways, the industry's been operating pretty standardized. That you know there was a known amount of credit available for each section. So like say if you were built to the Florida Building Code, it was generally like a 30% rate reduction, which you know that's a pretty good chunk of money. So there goes your rate comes down a pretty good amount if you were built after the 2001 Florida Building Code was enacted, which ultimately you know was like a 2003 year home. Again, the numbers and the names are really out of whack, right? But now they've changed all these definitions and sections, and they literally told us that they haven't come up with what the credits are going to be, and what's going to be a credit and what's not going to be a credit. So, like this roof slopes link, where it asks, is it more than 612 or less than 612? Well, the wind study showed that the best roof performance was, you know, between like 412 and 712. You know, once you got up over 812 and got to steeper roof sections, then there was another problem starting to develop, and the roofs got weaker again. But they didn't ask the question that way now. So, the sweet spot is kind of a 612 roof. If you have a 412 or a 512 roof, it's still better than a flat roof, and it's better than a 1012 roof.

Unknown:

Right.

Rick Kooyman:

But that doesn't matter.

Sergio DeCesare:

Well, how much variation is there in the pitches of roofs these days? Because we don't really see that much variation when they drive around and

Rick Kooyman:

no, and that's because the insurance has been given this credit for so long and been saying, "Hey, what we really want you to do is build a a hip roof with a pitch between 412 and not over 712, and then they went and asked this question right in the middle of 612. Are we at 612, higher or lower? And oftentimes, there you know I go in and now we have to check the roof slope with this gage, this angle gage, and this is not anything new to the industry to measure this stuff, but it's not uncommon to have a five, a three and a half, you know, whatever the architect drew drew up that the truss engineers built to create and match the picture to. So you end up with these weird numbers. But again, it is kind of out there in space of what are we doing here, right? So we don't know what that's going to mean, right? But again, who does these inspections and how this form gets filled out? Even though they haven't quite even gotten it clear in their own minds what what they're going to do with it, these things get filled out wrong so often. I can't even describe it to you. How often I I ask people all the time. Well, do you have your old windmit? I'd like to see what was previously marked on the form. And you know, a good 50% of the time it changes, and it's not because the form changed. It's the same form. It's just another person doing it. I'm like, well, they gave you a credit that didn't apply to you because they didn't understand what they were being asked, and they marked the form wrong, and so all along you've had a false policy. Well, that matters because in when you go to get a payout on a claim, liberals are either in favor of or not, and in the in in the case. Of a storm where there's a lot of payouts happening, they put up the no sign, right? And everything gets declined. It's always a no from the start, and you got to fight to get the yes. Well, now if you got these forms completed and they can go, well, your policy was written on predicated documents that were false or incorrect, so we're not even going to honor the policy. Well, that goes back to how much did you pay and who did the form, and you know the $50, $75 guy versus you know where we are now, where this thing takes a good amount of time to go through. It takes a lot of studying to understand how to do it right. So it's no longer 100 or $150 inspection. We're up more at you know $200 worth of time for this windmill thing, you know. So who does it is always a question, and why does it matter? And in the world, when we go to buy insurance, we're always like, "What's the cheapest? Right. So you always get sent to the lowest guy to fill the form out the worst to get the lowest policy right. Summer's really considering

Sergio DeCesare:

who's filling it out. It's really a. I'm just curious. Does has anybody ever been litigated against for filling out the form incorrectly, like an inspector or a contractor? I mean, well, here's listen. On one hand, you can't blame the homeowner because they're not the one filling it out, and they don't know anything about it. And on the other hand, you can't blame the insurance company because they're like, "Well, we thought we were insuring this A, and we're actually insuring B.

Rick Kooyman:

Okay, so this is a fantastic question and a great point to start this, and this is a real turnoff of the specifics of the form, and goes to what in the hell is going on? Well, the answer to your question is is is a little long, but it goes like this. So the storms came and damaged a bunch of stuff. So like maybe it was Andrew, maybe it was Irma, maybe it was Ian, whatever, and there's all this devastation out there, and the industry wants to find correlations. You know, after you know it's all said and done, five years later they want to look back at what they just went through and figure out how to not put themselves in that position again. So they didn't have records. There was nothing to go back to to make a correlation from. They had asked for all these documents, but they're all kind of out there in independent world through you know whoever policy or agent sold it to you, and they're not readily available to go back and kind of and analyze. Let alone were they taking account of the heirs and who was making or repeatedly filling the form out incorrectly, or committing fraud or whatever it was? But it was there was no way there was no sound place where all the data was being put in the insurance. No

Sergio DeCesare:

central location.

Rick Kooyman:

Right. So now we are here today with the new greatest assistant in the world. Now, when

Sergio DeCesare:

you're talking about the data, you're talking about the actual mitigation forms when they're filled out. They're not. They're not being held by. I'm

Rick Kooyman:

talking about the whole picture, whether it be the construction plans, the documents that the insurance industry that were filled out for these winmits and four points and who filled them out-they are-they revamped this whole system to answer that specific question. This whole thing is going down because of this new AI ability. So now all these documents are all being sent to one central location for the data be collected, and now they're going to be able to say,"I want to know on such and such street how many houses had gables, and it'll just pop them up, and then they want to know,"I want to know in this town how many inspections were performed by said inspector or contractor, and then correlate how they're doing their job and what errors are being you know pushed into the system from where, and now it's all going to be correlated. So it's it's weird because citizens, in particular, if you were an insurance agent and you submit a policy for underwriting, every agent out there, if you were sending it or are sending it to citizens, you can only make three errors in a year, or they will not allow you to submit documents to them.

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah. So

Rick Kooyman:

as an as an insurance office, that covers all your employees out there selling policies. So the the underwriter gets anything wrong with the application. Three times that whole office is shunned from Smith is

Sergio DeCesare:

discriminated against, not just the one.

Rick Kooyman:

And it's a rolling time period. It never like it resets at the end of the year. It's it's a rolling thing. So so what do they go down there for three years?

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah. So are they providing the education to these agents to help them? No, of course not.

Rick Kooyman:

No, they they provide the educations to the agents on how to do the document from their side. But again, this is hilarious because in the inspection world, we get sent to these trainings all the time, and we hear all this stuff from manufacturers and underwriters and whatnot. And ultimately, the question is always, well, where is the trade being educated on this? Where you know, whether it be a plumbing or an electrician or a roofer, when are they brought in and brought up to speed? And it just goes back to the GC or the the original license holder, and they have to renew occasionally, and then it just goes to what updates were there, and did you remember them, and did you put them? You know, can you pass the renewal test?

Sergio DeCesare:

So the insurance companies are training them to be discriminatory, but not training the tradespeople to do it correctly.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, in the world of the trades, like an electrician doesn't understand, generally speaking, what a non-insurable panel is because they're not selling insurance. They'll come in and look at a challenger panel and say, "I don't see anything wrong with it. There's nothing going on here to warrant replacing it, except the insurance industry sees it as not a properly functioning system, and they don't want to write policies for it, right? So there's kind of two different perspectives. It's

Sergio DeCesare:

based on the fact that Challenger has had problems in the past, and there's a history of of failure, whatever,

Rick Kooyman:

right?

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah,

Rick Kooyman:

and and this gets so bizarre because now there are actually challenger, there are underwriters writing policies for challenger panels again, even though you know for 14 years. I mean, could that be

Sergio DeCesare:

based on the fact that the product has been improved?

Rick Kooyman:

No, it's the same old ass panel they're writing the policy for. All

Sergio DeCesare:

right, somebody somebody got slipped a little bit of green.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah. So ultimately, we're doing all these exercises to help the insurance industry understand how it can make more money and hold other people responsible. Essentially, all the way down to us filling out the forms, so that they can root out the evils and make the world a glorious butterfly. So,

Sergio DeCesare:

how does that translate to Joe Schmo or Sergio, who's sitting here going, "Okay, it's time to renew my policy, and they're jacking me about 700 bucks a year.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, right. So, what the this is why we want to talk about this today because it's important as a homeowner to have an understanding of what they are looking for, and know what those goals are. One, so that you can either plan to meet them in the future, or if in fact you're doing something to your house that may otherwise either be a detriment in that regard, or just make it not available to be inspected again. And in particular, the big one that comes to mind is spray foam insulation, right? So this is a great conversation. Of I see a lot of addicts getting spray foamed, especially in a new construction house. Well, you know, three or four sections of these these documents have to do with what you just covered up with spray foam and can no longer be recorded, and now you just don't know. So you're not available. You don't get the option to have those discounts anymore. Are they there? Yeah. Can we prove it? No. And there's end of the question. So you know, spray foam roofing has been a real thorn in the side for a long time because one, it hides how is the roof deck nailed? What are the nails? Can we see the flaws? Are the trusses attached to the wall with brackets, and how many nails or screws are put in them? And now that they changed all these forms, gotten specific on those questions in in a lot of ways, especially on roof attachment stuff, and they're they're getting very granular in checking things, and they're including language that says you know stuff like installed according to manufacturer's instructions. Well, in specific to a manufacturer instruction, let's say Simpson Strong Ties is a manufacturer of truss brackets and fasteners and stuff. But they're going to manufacture a bracket, and then they're going to manufacture the fasteners to be used with that bracket, because they're going to engineer and test it in accordance to those products, and then they're going to sell you their screws and their nails and their brackets. Well, the manufacturer instruction says what you have to install it with a Simpson strong tie screw or nail,

Sergio DeCesare:

or it's

Rick Kooyman:

got to be this specific screw that's used in this specific hole, and then the installer goes, "Well, I got tapcons in the van, right? And they're the same damn thing, but they're made by Tapcon and not Simpson. Well, according to the form, that's not okay. There's no difference in the material. I

Sergio DeCesare:

ran out of your brand. I had to finish the job, so I grabbed a bunch of these.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, right. I knew my

Sergio DeCesare:

neck goes.

Rick Kooyman:

Now there's going to be people out there who are like, well, those brackets are not installed properly. Right. It's covered up. Can't verify it. If I can't verify it, I can't give you the benefit of the doubt, right? But the picture of the bracket with the screw head ultimately doesn't correlate together because they're two different names, right? And they're not asking, is it a four and three quarter inch screw? They're asking does it follow manufacturer's instructions, right? Right. So now we fall in this rabbit hole of, well, we can litigate that all day and find a way out of everything,

Sergio DeCesare:

because

Rick Kooyman:

you know ultimately an attorney will find a word to make things turn left when it was everybody was going right. Yeah. So this is what's happening in this world with the winmit forms, and and it's not making it better; it's making it worse. It's it's essentially trying to collect more data is the goal, and hold people more accountable and make the system better. And again, you ask the government to make it better, and how's it go?

Sergio DeCesare:

So what I'm hearing you say too, what it boils down to is a lot of it is your choice of the inspector, whoever's doing that particular inspection, because it's either a question of, you know, do they have the competency, do they have the integrity, do they have the will to make it right,

Rick Kooyman:

and in particular to your roof system, the roofers aren't being told these things, so they're the ones who are doing the the renailing and putting this stuff on, but they don't know they're doing it from their point of view of install and whatever. It's fire and it doesn't leak or it's not going anywhere. That's not what expeditions at

Sergio DeCesare:

the moment.

Rick Kooyman:

That's not what underwriting's asking them, yeah, right. So ultimately, the the expert in the field isn't being told the update in its entirety to have an understanding of why it mattered to do A and not B, and B was always what they were doing anyways, and they just continue to do B, so yes, it matters greatly who does it, and and it's very you know from my perspective, I'm gonna always try to be correct. I'm gonna ask for more money for my my time, and I'll take the time to educate my customer and whoever I'm talking to, and why this is correct and that's not correct, and and that's in your interest when you go to file the claim because of the escape points, right? So when do we want to pay more, and who do we get to trust? It gets very tough to make that choice as a homeowner, right? Because you're not going to call around and ask for the most expensive guy to come do your insurance documents

Sergio DeCesare:

for you. But if you don't know the difference, right? I mean, you're never going to know. Well, yeah, and you and I have talked about this in the past on a different level, where you know if if they don't know the difference between apples and oranges-it's all apples. The only the only difference is is price.

Rick Kooyman:

Yes, which

Sergio DeCesare:

is not the case at all.

Rick Kooyman:

Right, absolutely, right. So you know the the great example is metal roof systems. You know I hear all the time it's an 80 year roof product. I have never seen an insurance policy written on a roof that old.

Sergio DeCesare:

Give them eight.

Rick Kooyman:

I mean, and ultimately, the question always comes back to who gets to decide when that roof system is no longer performing its function properly and it's time to be replaced, especially in a metal roof system, because say it looks fine and it's 50 years old. When do we get to say that roof's timed out, and what are we talking about when we are? And a lot of times, when it comes to insurance, what they're looking at is the water resistance layer, which they consider to be the under. Layman at this point, so those underlayment products are generally 20-year products, right? So

Sergio DeCesare:

generally,

Rick Kooyman:

yeah. Who gets to say when the metal roofs expired? The insurance industry does, and we get to we get to make the the form fill out thing. And when we do that, and we're asked, well, how long does a tile roof last? Well, we get a chart, and the chart says, well, if you're in South Florida, the expected life integrity of that product is 35 years max, which

Sergio DeCesare:

is all built on actuary tables and nothing on real data.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah. So again, it gets it's very murky to say that you know you're ever gonna buy a 50 year roof product,

Sergio DeCesare:

right? Well, look at my roof as an example, right? And and we've talked about this where my roof was actually very well maintained, and you know I had aftermarket products applied to the roof to keep it, but it didn't matter because it was reaching its its, you know, whatever that deadline is on age. Yeah, they're like, yeah, it could look wonderful, but we already know it's it's a seven year roof. You know, yeah, year seven, and yeah, and we're we're still going to charge you for it. Why did I spend three grand a year putting all kinds of oils on my asphalt shingle to keep them pliable and keep the media on it and everything else when I didn't get any credit for it?

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, for sure.

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah, for sure.

Rick Kooyman:

And in particular to those those those lubricant products, those roof conditioners, there there's actually one out there that is Florida product approved for increasing roof age,

Sergio DeCesare:

but they won't acknowledge. I've been

Rick Kooyman:

told over and over again by so many different underwriters that they don't give anything for that.

Sergio DeCesare:

I know, I know, I know the product because it's the product I used,

Rick Kooyman:

and here we are.

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah, here we are.

Rick Kooyman:

And here we are. 3000,

Sergio DeCesare:

$3,000 later, and finding out, you know. Well, now, I mean, I had a new roof put on, you know. But, but at the time, it's like you know, you and I. I was, I was like at my wit's end. I was like, I don't understand. I spent three grand, you know, keeping this roof in prime condition. You know, I've had no no trees around me dropping all kinds of branches and stuff, and and they're like, yeah, no, it's a seven year roof or eight year roof or 10 year roof, whatever. Sorry, we want it replaced. You want it replaced? Well, let me just drop 1516, 18 grand.

Rick Kooyman:

Yep, and then you know, in the roof world, you know, this form comes in a big deal because in that world of underlayment in Florida, everything has to have what's called a secondary water resistance layer, which is a misnomer because I just said secondary when they consider

Sergio DeCesare:

it to be the primary

Rick Kooyman:

waterproof layer. You know, so it's a very bizarre gray world of who and where and when. And now they've made it more complicated by trying to allow more things like you don't have to put peel and stick on the entire roof. Now you can only you could get away with just doing the seams. You can use seam tape, which is you know three and a half inch wide roll of the peel and stick, and just run it across all the seams.

Sergio DeCesare:

And then what do you put on the rest of the room?

Rick Kooyman:

Vertical, and well, at that point it's up to you. You can put felt on it or synthetic or whatever, but that's considered the the secondary water resistance layer now what we're calling the primary water resistance layer now

Sergio DeCesare:

yeah so what's the primary the the plywood

Rick Kooyman:

no it's still going to be the tile

Sergio DeCesare:

the the canary

Rick Kooyman:

calling it the wrong name

Sergio DeCesare:

yeah but they're

Rick Kooyman:

always going to come back to the underlayment and now they're saying there's other ways of doing it, and and again we come to spray foam because this is a huge confusion. They put spray foam on the form. It says spray foam products. Spray foam must be installed along rafter deck intersections, all panel joints, etc. Check here if the entire roof deck underside covered. Well, what the hell? So what we're talking about is there's two kinds of foam in the world. There's adhesive foam, and then there's insulating foam. Correct. Ultimately, everybody thinks about what is insulating foam? It's an open cell spray foam, and you can you can put your finger in it. It's soft. Right,

Sergio DeCesare:

right. That's

Rick Kooyman:

insulating material, and that's play that's sprayed on the entire surface. So therein goes. Check here if the entire roof deck underside covered, and I say. That because that's how it's written. Like it's not even good grammar, but that's how it's written.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right, right.

Rick Kooyman:

And then we're asking this in a question about is there a secondary water resistance layer because they want to give the credit to spray foam, but that credit applies to adhesive spray foam.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right, which is the only way you'll get it to stick to the bottom of. It's

Rick Kooyman:

applied to the truss and the roof decking. Yeah, and you know, four inches down the truss and four inches across the roof deck, and the triangle filled in in the middle, and then you see the roof deck, and then you see the next truss with the side, and then you spray a little bit across where the middle seam is. So it's this grid pattern of spray foam.

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah,

Rick Kooyman:

that's what they're going to qualify as the secondary water resistance layer. Well, it's not stated that way for sure. Let's just begin there. How many people out there actually understand the difference between the two foams? They didn't ask that. They did kind of by asking as the entire underside covered, but they didn't say why they're asking that and is that a disqualifier or qualifier? Right, they're not saying they're just collecting data, is what they say. They're like, we don't know yet. We're just collecting the data, and it's like the 612 roof thing. Well, you're asking a silly question, like, "Hey, but what are we going to do with it? I don't know yet. So here we are. Things have gotten more complicated a lot. It's gotten more difficult, and they're allowing more newer products, which was the goal. But again, you know, how do you prove it down the road? And that's why I say, from the homeowner standpoint, it's it's kind of imperative that you understand what it is they're asking and looking for so that you can hold the documents over the ownership of the house and be like, no, I have this is what it was put together with. So, like an example, a roof truss attached to a wall in the past has always been put in with a metal bracket of some kind,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

And it's attached to the truss, or it loops over it next to the wall, or it's in the bomb beam.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right,

Rick Kooyman:

and in the world of retrofits forever, the industry's been asking, well, they want us to update these things, but that's a really hard thing to update on an on an already existing structure to go in and put these brackets in. So the industry came up with truss screws, which is just a really long screw.

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah, you can put it

Rick Kooyman:

in from the bottom or from the top, but you're putting it into the wall plate up into the truss, or from the truss down into the wall plate. You can never see that again. Once the screw's in there and the wall's covered and the roof's decked, and you look at it, you don't see a damn thing, right? But there's a screw in there. Well, you told me to show you a photo proving there was a screw in there. Well, how do we do that? Well, you could cut a hole in the wall and look for the screw head is one of their answers, and you can put a little access door in your wall so that you can open it up in the future and show the you know it's right there. Ultimately, from our my standpoint, I'm like, well, we had an engineered accepted stamped plan that the city mandated we have to build the house. The city sent out a county employer-employed inspector to verify that that was done. They're not holding responsibility on compliance, even though they're the the authority having jurisdiction, and they're saying, "Well, we're not sure if documents is alone enough for us to use as proof, because we all know there's a lot of shady work going on out there, and things aren't in particular being done, or they're not being done according to manufacturer's instructions, so we want the third-party aftermarket to go out there and verify down the road that it was done correctly,

Sergio DeCesare:

right? And that'll be on the homeowner's dime.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, and again, how do you prove the screws there?

Sergio DeCesare:

Right,

Rick Kooyman:

right, and then they say stuff like, "Well, can I use provided pictures from the homeowner? No, they have to be from the contractor with a geotag on them. You're kidding me! Like you're you're serious right now? Yeah, yeah. That's I mean it's it's crazy. But

Sergio DeCesare:

complicated and convoluted,

Rick Kooyman:

yeah. So um, so to

Sergio DeCesare:

wrap it up, I mean, you you got more, or is there?

Rick Kooyman:

Oh, I we could go on about this for you know an hour. It's not worth it. It's just it's worth understanding from a homeowner standpoint that maybe it's in your interest to spend a little bit of time on these little nuanced details, especially if you're doing updates, like you did doors and windows at your house, but you didn't do the doors, you did the windows, and then after the fact, you found out that they still weren't going to give you a discount. No, they gave me very little. They gave me a

Sergio DeCesare:

$30 discount.

Rick Kooyman:

They gave you they gave you 10 grand to put to update the house. You didn't get the full story,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

And guess what? You saved 30 bucks and you spent 18,000. Right? How do I get to the discount? Well, the devil's in the details,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, right. And then, and then, and

Sergio DeCesare:

I'm not going to replace my front door because it's a steel front door, and I actually no reason to replace that door.

Rick Kooyman:

And I

Sergio DeCesare:

don't know what I would replace it with anyway that would make it any better.

Rick Kooyman:

And here, here goes the importance of why we're talking about this, because you know what it comes down to, and why you would replace that door, because the new door has a compliance sticker on it,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

A sticker, a compliance,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

That's the difference,

Sergio DeCesare:

right?

Rick Kooyman:

Now there is other differences to it. The door got tested differently. It might be manufactured a little bit differently. In particular, to steel doors, I like to give people the understanding of why they won't give you the credit for your outswing steel door as being, you know, impact resistant. How are you going to open it in? Is your question right? Like you could shoot two by fours at it until it goes through it, but it's still not going to happen. Or well, it will ultimately because the new door has a manufacturer install instructions that says you have to install it with this size bolt on this spacing around the door frame, and the door frame was assembled differently, and your old door was put in with you know a couple of wood screws or a couple of you know 16 penny nails and wood shims, and that ultimately is its biggest weakness. So the door might not get damaged, but the whole door might come out of the house, meaning the frame and all might.

Sergio DeCesare:

So it's not really a question of the door; it's a question of the frame holding the door.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, because it's a whole unit, and again, it goes back to this whole thing where they've added these little words like manufacturer's instructions, which is a small statement, but a big, a big thing,

Sergio DeCesare:

yeah, right. So

Rick Kooyman:

that's where it comes in. So as my when I come over your house and I say, well, I understand, Sergio. It's an an outswing steel door, but the thing is, is I got to show a picture of it, and it's pretty obvious that it's an older door, pre-dating when they did the testing. So there's no there's no way it can comply. There's no way it was tested to comply. Even if it does comply, there's no proof of it, and where is your homeowner weakness or exposure at the frame and the install of the whole door? You know, so that sort of makes it relevant to you, but it makes it relevant to you when you buy the new door to make sure that whoever's putting it in understands why the manufacturer's instructions are important because they're just going to put the door back in the way they've always put doors in. Right. Nobody's gone out and told the contractor, "Hey, you got to take a three-hour class on how to install a door. Right. Yeah, I don't think so. Right. You got to get a real job, dude. I got shit to do. Well, I

Sergio DeCesare:

mean, it does kind of make sense. I mean, it does kind of make sense in that respect, but you know, and I imagine that's why, you know, you're paying seven to $10,000 for a door, you know, because I guess all that crap that goes along with it.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, for real. So yeah, it gets really sticky on these things. In particular, you know, especially doors and windows. Windows, in particular, yeah, impact the impact rating on you know what what the industry calls penetrations, which are holes in your structure where you put a window or a door.

Sergio DeCesare:

Well, yeah, and I'm happy I got the windows. I mean, look. I mean, I had builder grade windows, and this house is built in '92. So, you know, and for years I was a storm. It was plywood and and you know tapcons. You know, so and isn't it funny?

Rick Kooyman:

Those it's on the forum still. What's it exterior? Opening protections, wood structural panels meeting FBC 2007, meaning plywood shutters is still on the form as pretty acceptable. There is a spec in the building code that tells you how the fasteners are supposed to be spaced, where they're supposed to be put, which ones are up. Right,

Sergio DeCesare:

right,

Rick Kooyman:

and you can do all of that, and guess what? There hasn't been, and there will not be a discount applied to wood structural panels. But yet, it's on the form. But the industry, the underwriters, they they'll blatantly tell you, yeah, there not, there won't be, there hasn't been, and there never probably will be, a discount applied to that. So we just put it in there so that if you have them, you feel like they got accounted for, right? They call them legacy items. Like, why are they still on the document? Well, we just still want them there.

Sergio DeCesare:

Well, and I'm sure you go to certain communities that are a little bit older, and a lot of them are still probably using it.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, and occasionally, on a rare occasion that they are properly put together and set up, at least the homeowner thinks that they're getting it documented, right? So they they left it on the form as a legacy item,

Sergio DeCesare:

right? Right? Right? They're

Rick Kooyman:

not. There's still no credit for it. So, you know, and and if you have aluminum shutters from the late '90s, you know, especially accordion shutters are big for this. They're very heavy aluminum shutters. They're very strong. They're adequate all day long. What are they missing? The sticker.

Sergio DeCesare:

the sticker,

Rick Kooyman:

the sticker. The Florida product approval number is what it comes out, and yeah, right. So if you're putting a new door or a window in, they all have stickers on them nowadays. They all will fall off like any other sticker always has, and more importantly, they'll get painted over, and ultimately that can and will remove the credit because it's not documentable. Like I can't, I can't prove the sticker, right? So I don't know. Garage doors are a great one. The garage door comes to the installer without the sticker on it, the installer literally applies the sticker. The sticker has a list of like 789, 10 different manufacturer numbers, Florida product numbers. Some are impact risked, some are wind resistant, and the installer takes a marker and puts a black.in one box, and there's no way to correlate what's written on that sticker to what's on the label on the side of the door. So in order to get it confirmed, you have to call the manufacturer and have them send you the spec sheets for the specific door at that specific address, not you know like where in the world are we going with this stuff? And it goes back to well, if I could take a picture of that label with the box black dotted, they're still accepting that as proof. But that was literally applied by the guy who put the door in, and I see more often than not not marked. Like they'll put the sticker on,

Sergio DeCesare:

but

Rick Kooyman:

the put the sticker on has no idea what the hell that sticker means, and there's no give and tell on the side of the door to say, "Oh well, yeah, it's it's it's this manufacturer number right here.

Sergio DeCesare:

Yeah, Jose was just told to put it on when you're done with the job.

Rick Kooyman:

Yep, and it matters because that's one of the doors in your system, so that could be a disqualifier when you have everything else in the house, and it could still be a compliant product. But what are we missing? The label

Sergio DeCesare:

sticker, the sticker, the

Rick Kooyman:

sticker. Well,

Sergio DeCesare:

okay, so we've gone a little long, but that's okay because there was some really good information here. But I mean, the bottom line for for the homeowner, to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, I see two things. Number one, they should probably know some of this stuff to begin with, but they don't really need to know some of this stuff if they know somebody like you.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, and you ultimately, as a homeowner, you need to know to ask a lot of questions, and don't get. But if you don't,

Sergio DeCesare:

if you can't discern what the answers are,

Rick Kooyman:

right? Yeah, and don't assume that, in particular, a contractor, an installer, has the newest pertinent information to what goal you're trying to meet? Like they're trying to install a door or window, you're trying to get an insurance discount.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right.

Rick Kooyman:

We're talking about two different things.

Sergio DeCesare:

Same way, B. Yeah,

Rick Kooyman:

yeah. So you need to ask a lot of questions and. And make sure you're asking it from the proper place to get the answer you're looking for, which it doesn't make it easier, but it is the way it is, and that's all I can say about it. Like, just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean that's not what we're doing.

Sergio DeCesare:

Right. Well, we just call you and ask you a bunch of questions. Yeah,

Rick Kooyman:

you go right ahead. That's fine. That's what I'm here for. All right. Well, Rick, give

Sergio DeCesare:

us your contact information as usual.

Rick Kooyman:

Yeah, the phone all the time. 239-537-1186. You can get me on email at rick at trade secretsinspections.com with the S's on secrets and inspections, and you can text the phone number if you like to. But yeah, please reach out because, like I said, ask the questions, get the right answers, is ultimately where you're at. And yeah, it's going to be a good.

Sergio DeCesare:

I should probably go to your website because you've got some very good information on your website as well as our previous podcasts like this, and I happen to like your site quite a bit. So why don't you tell everybody what that

Rick Kooyman:

is? Yeah, it's it's just tradesecretsinspections.com. There's definitely a lot of info on there for you. We like to keep it up to date and post it. And interesting enough, I just for the fun of it asked ChatGPT this morning to tell me what's the differences in the new wind mitigation program, and it had no idea what I was asking it.

Sergio DeCesare:

Well, you just made Chat GPT very happy because now it has something to answer somebody else with.

Rick Kooyman:

There you go. All right, my

Sergio DeCesare:

friend. Always good talking to you, and looking forward to the next topic.

Rick Kooyman:

Awesome. Good talk. We'll we'll do it again.

Sergio DeCesare:

Be well.