From quarters to grapefruit, we test how hailstones can damage your home
FLOWER MOUND - Hail can seriously damage homes.
The risk, though, varies depending on the size of the stones.
At Haag Engineering in Flower Mound, roofing materials take a beating in the name of science.
"Our company has pioneered the hail testing industry," said Steve Smith, the director of research and testing. "Our first laboratory hail test was performed in 1963."
Manufacturers, insurance companies, attorneys and even government entities have hired Haag to test, grade and investigate the sturdiness of different hardware.
Like ice cube trays, molds at the lab are filled with water and left to freeze to create ice balls, or handmade hail, in a variety of sizes.
Engineers here will shoot them at speeds designed to replicate how fast they fall from the sky.
"Your pea-sized hail, your really small stuff will fall at about 35 miles an hour… and as you get down, your really large hail is gonna be 80, 90, even more miles an hour," said Smith.
Their launcher works kind of like a slingshot.
We started small giving it an inch-wide hailstone.
"That's about the size where your weaker roofing products can start to see damage," Smith said.
Our set of shingles, though, survived the blast with no damage.
At an inch and three quarters, or golf ball size, hail packs a bigger punch.
"There's a pretty large dent there," lab engineer Cory Hurtubise said, examining the results of an ice ball's impact.
At two-and-a-quarter inch, or the size of a chicken egg, a hailstone punctured a shingle we'd shot it at.
"It fractured," Hurtubise said.
To launch anything bigger, we needed some eye protection and a bigger gun. So, Haag introduced us to its Ice Ball Launcher – 9, which operates more like a canon.
"We're going to get the largest hail stone that we produce here in our lab. It's a 4-inch hail stone," Hurtubise said.
That size stone, roughly as big as a grapefruit, is rare, both in nature and in the lab.
"Not a lot of people ask for the 4-inch hail stone to be launched at their product," he said.
Few materials can survive the impact.
"It'll be going at approximately 110 miles per hour," he said.
The result? It split open a commercial-grade metal roof.
"It ruptured the metal panel from rib to rib," he said.
Our residential shingles didn't stand a chance.
"Took out the shingle completely. You can feel the plywood decking breaking," Hurbutise said.
The scattered shards of wood are one sign of just how bad the damage was underneath and the force Mother Nature can wield.
