Safety verdict policy

Most roofing content on the internet answers “how do I fix my roof” with a numbered list. Some of those lists will get someone killed.

Falls from roofs are a leading cause of fatal injury in home improvement. A homeowner on a steep roof, a wet roof, or a roof whose decking has been quietly rotting for six years is at genuine risk of dying, and no amount of engagement justifies pretending otherwise. So every page here that touches a physical action carries a verdict, in the same place, in the same three words, every time.

This page publishes the criteria. It is here so you can check our work, and so we cannot move the line later without it being visible.

The three verdicts

Safe from the ground

Anything doable from the ground, from a properly set ladder, or from inside the house:

• Inspecting the attic for daylight, staining or damp insulation
• Spotting damage with binoculars or a zoom lens from the yard
• Documenting damage for an insurance claim
• Checking ceilings and walls for interior stains
• Clearing a downspout
• Clearing gutters from a ladder set at the correct angle on level ground
• Measuring pitch from inside the attic against a rafter
• Using a roof rake from the ground

Caution — fall risk

Low-slope, single-storey, dry-condition tasks that a competent do-it-yourselfer may attempt with fall protection:

• Minor sealant repair on an accessible low-slope section
• Tarping a small area
• Replacing a single shingle

A caution verdict is not permission. It means the task is within reach of a careful, equipped person on a shallow, dry, single-storey roof, and that every one of those conditions has to hold.

Do not go on the roof

Absolute. No procedural steps, no tools list, no HowTo markup, no exceptions:

• Steep-slope work
• Anything on a wet, icy, snow-covered or damaged deck
• Structural repair of any kind
• Full replacement, and any covering installation
• Any work above one storey
• Any work on a roof the homeowner cannot verify is structurally sound

On these pages we explain the hazard honestly, then what a professional actually does and what it should cost — so you can tell a fair bid from a bad one without going up there to find out.

How the verdict is assigned

A first pass is made programmatically from the question itself, in scripts/05-safety-verdict.mjs. It looks for slope and height language, surface-condition language, whole-system work, and the specific coverings that break or slide underfoot. An editor can raise a verdict; the build refuses to let anyone silently lower one.

Two rules govern the default, and both push the same direction.

When slope, height and deck condition are unknown, the verdict is pro-only. Most questions do not state any of the three. We do not get to assume the roof is a dry single-storey 4:12 with sound decking just because that would make for a more useful page.

Pro-only wins every overlap. If a question matches both a caution pattern and a pro-only pattern, it is pro-only.

Cost, insurance, definition and comparison questions carry no verdict and render no badge. A question about what a roof costs is not a question about climbing one, and a badge that appears on every page stops being read.

How it is displayed

The verdict sits directly under the page heading, before the answer, so it cannot be missed by someone who reads the first line and stops.

It never conveys its state by colour alone. Every instance carries an icon, an explicit text label, and a colour, and a screen reader announces “Safety verdict” and the label before the answer text.

Red is used on this site for exactly one thing: the pro-only verdict. It is not a brand colour, not a heading colour, and not a call-to-action colour. In a vertical where red means “call now”, using it only to mean “do not go on the roof” is deliberate.

What the build enforces

These are quality gates, not conventions. Any one of them fails the build:

1. A pro-only page containing numbered procedural steps, a tools list, or HowTo schema
2. A page with a safety verdict that is missing its badge above the direct answer
3. A badge conveying its state by colour alone
4. An affiliate link on a pro-only page, anywhere in the insurance section, or on any fall-protection product
5. A page predicting whether an insurance claim will be approved

If you think we got one wrong

Both directions matter. A verdict that is too cautious sends someone to pay for a job they could safely do; a verdict that is not cautious enough is far worse. If you think a page is wrong in either direction, tell us through the contact page and say which way.