AVON and NOBLESVILLE — Homeowners across Central Indiana are frustrated with shingles flying off of their homes.
They reached out to Call 6 Investigates for help in addressing the problems with their houses, built by Atlanta-based Beazer Homes.
The day after a May thunderstorm, Rob Rhinehart saw a familiar sight.
“You can see I’m missing shingles right at the top of the roof,” Rhinehart said. “It’s scary because you don’t know what’s getting underneath the shingles, if it’s causing damage or wood rot or getting into the attic. It’s especially scary with kids because of mold and things like that.”
Rhinehart lives in Avon’s Enclave of Winton Meadows, and has lived in his home for five years.
“I’ve had to fix my roof five times,” Rhinehart said. “We are frustrated.”
Rhinehart’s neighbor David Heleine took video after a March storm showing home after home in the Avon neighborhood with missing shingles.
“We had probably 50 to 60 mile an hour winds,” Heleine said. ”The shingles looked like checkerboards, just flapping up and down.”
Thirty miles away, homeowners in another Beazer community, Noblesville’s Lochaven neighborhood, are banding together after experiencing similar shingle problems.
As RTV6 drove around Lochaven, the newsroom saw shingles missing from homes and tarps covering some roofs.
Lochaven resident Stephanie Boehm said she’s filed multiple claims with Beazer as a result of shingles flying off her roof.
Boehm has lived in her home since it was built five years ago.
“Within the first year, we started having problems,” Boehm said. “They came out and they fix it and patch it or whatever, but it’s nine times now that its’ been patched.”
Boehm said neighbors have been discussing the issue on Next Door and other social media sites.
“The whole neighborhood is in the same situation,” said Boehm. “It’s a headache, a total headache. You have to take time off from work, and who has time for that?”
Some homeowners have filed insurance claims or reached into their own pockets to hire their own contractors to fix their roofs.
"Beazer's done it a few times, but there's also times you can't wait because you don't want it to flood and have a worse problem,” Jeff Lindholm, a Lochaven resident, said. “Every year we’ve been here we’ve replaced shingles on the roof. I’ve spent a couple of grand fixing it.”
Lochaven homeowner Chuck Gross said he’s spent more than a thousand dollars to fix his roof, and has lost confidence in Beazer to correct the problem.
“We buy our homes and we pay a lot of money for them,” said Gross. “Our expectation is we buy a quality product that we don’t have to constantly repair based on workmanship. As a result, it takes our time and in my case our cash to fix a problem that shouldn’t exist.”
The homes in Lochaven are in the $400,000 to $500,000 range and homes in the Enclave of Winton Meadows are valued in the $200,000 to $300,000 range.
Homeowners in both neighborhoods want Beazer to replace the entire roofs, saying the shingles weren’t installed properly when the homes were built.
“We just need to get a new roof and we need to get this taken care of,” said Boehm. “I can’t believe it’s happening to so many houses.”
Homeowners in both neighborhoods contacted Call 6 Investigates for help in resolving their shingle issues.
RTV6 exposed the same roof problems in 2016 in Avon’s Lochaven and Noblesville’s Enclave of Winton Meadows.
PREVIOUS | Beazer homes says roofs can’t stand up to strong wind | Hundreds of complaints flood in about shingles and siding
That same year, Atlanta-based Beazer announced it would extend shingle warranties from one year to four years.
WATCH | Beazer extends shingle warranties in 2016
The Indiana Attorney General’s office reached an agreement with Beazer in 2018 stemming from the 2016 consumer complaints, however the agreement applies only to certain consumers including people that filed storm-related shingle complaints in 2016.
The Attorney General’s office said it investigated the roof shingle complaints and believed improper nailing patterns may have been used during construction.
Beazer denied improper nailing patterns were to blame, but agreed to honor the shingle manufacturer IKO’s warranty claims under certain conditions.
Under the agreement, if the homeowner’s IKO warranty claim is denied due solely to improperly installed shingles, Beazer will honor the terms of the IKO warranty claim.
“Homeowners meeting this criteria should submit their warranty claim, including IKO’s warranty denial, directly to Beazer,” read a statement from the Office of the Attorney General. “Any questions on the Agreement can be directed to Deputy Attorney General Jacob Murray. As the agreement is limited to certain covered consumers, any consumers suffering damage to their Beazer-constructed home after April 2016 should submit a consumer complaint to the Office at www.IndianaConsumer.com.”
Call 6 Investigates sent Beazer specific information about the problems in Lochaven and the Enclave of Winton Meadows and asked the company what they’re doing about it.
David Goldberg, Vice President of Treasurer and Investor Relations at Beazer Homes Corporate Office, provided a statement to Call 6 Investigates.
“We understand and regret that some of our homeowners have been frustrated that shingles have blown off their roofs during extreme wind events beginning in early 2016,” said Goldberg in an emailed statement. “As with any warranty issue, however, Beazer Homes has quickly and completely responded to our homeowners’ claims. Our warranty requires us to correct any present defect during the time period in which it is warranted.”
For homes that are less than four years old and still covered by the roofing-system portion of Beazer’s warranty, the company says it will continue to respond to each claim by replacing any displaced shingles.
“Under the terms of our warranty, we do this completely at Beazer’s own expense and at zero cost to our homeowners,” said Goldberg. “Additionally, we long ago made a further commitment to our homeowners by adopting a policy that, if a homeowner made a shingles claim during the four-year roofing-system warranty period, Beazer will continue to respond to any shingles claims made by that homeowner beyond the four-year warranty period. When these issues first arose, and still today, Beazer has not delayed the resolution process by placing blame on extreme wind events, the manufacturer, or the installer; instead, we have responded quickly to our homeowners concerns and replaced the displaced shingles.”
Goldberg said if homeowners experience shingle blow-offs or any other issues that they believe may be covered under their Beazer limited warranty, they should call 888-623-2937 to make a claim.
You can also visit https://www.beazer.com/warranty.
Call 6 Investigates also reached out to shingle manufacturer IKO.
“Improper installation (either in the form of inaccurate or high nailing or lack of manual sealing of shingles in cold weather installations) is a common cause of blown off shingles,” said Derek Fee, IKO’s Corporate Communications Manager, in an email to RTV6. “Proper installation is an important factor in product performance, and all manufacturers in this industry require adherence to application instructions to ensure that the product performs as intended.”
Fee said IKO was contacted in spring 2016 by Beazer about the blow offs, and the manufacturer helped with repairs as a “goodwill gesture to support the builder and consumers.”
“At no time, then or since, have we been presented with any evidence that supported the notion of a manufacturing cause for the reported conditions,” said Fee.
More than 160 complaints have been filed with the Attorney General against Beazer since 2009, most of them alleging poor workmanship and failure to honor warranties.
Rhinehart filed a complaint with the Attorney General and other homeowners plan to do the same.
“It’s scary, so we need a resolution,” said Rhinehart.
Every time the wind blows hard, homeowners hope their shingles stay on.
They want a long-term solution to the shingle problem rather than what they call a band-aid approach.
“It’s crazy,” said Boehm. “We need a new roof and the insurance companies don’t want to pay for a new roof because they’re less than six years old.”
