New Construction Roof Warranty in Cane Bay and Nexton the year-five inspection nobody schedules.

Almost every production home in Cane Bay Plantation and Nexton — whether built by Lennar, D.R. Horton, Pulte, Toll Brothers, K. Hovnanian, David Weekley, Beazer, Eastwood, Crescent, Ashton Woods, Kolter, Hunter Quinn, Dan Ryan, or Centex — ships with three distinct roof-related warranties layered on top of each other. They are not interchangeable. They cover different things. They expire on different schedules.

First is the builder's workmanship warranty. This is what your purchase contract calls the limited home warranty, usually administered by a third-party company like RWC (Residential Warranty Company) or 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty. It follows the industry-standard 1-2-10 pattern most South Carolina production builders use: one year on workmanship and materials, two years on the mechanical systems built into the home, and ten years on major structural defects.

Second is the shingle manufacturer's warranty — the GAF, Owens Corning, CertainTeed, Atlas, or Tamko warranty that came with the shingles your builder installed. These are typically marketed as 'lifetime limited,' which sounds great until you read the proration schedule. Most manufacturers fully cover material defects for the first ten years, then prorate downward sharply.

Third — and only on some homes — is a separately purchased extended structural warranty, sometimes ten years, sometimes longer. Toll Brothers and a handful of higher-end Nexton builders include this; many production builders do not. Check your closing packet. The word to search for is 'structural.'

South Carolina does not have a state statute requiring any specific warranty terms on a new home. The protection comes entirely from the contract you signed at closing and the third-party warranty company's policy document.

The first year is when the builder is most actively on the hook. Workmanship defects — meaning anything installed incorrectly — are covered. For a roof, this means missing shingles, improperly nailed shingles (less than six nails per shingle in our coastal wind zone is a defect), gaps in flashing, drip edge not installed at the eave or rake, exposed nails not sealed, vent pipe boots cracked at installation, and ridge vents installed without proper end caps.

What is also covered in year one but most homeowners miss: nail pops. As trusses settle into a new Lowcountry humidity cycle, nails can back out and tent shingles. Most production builders will send a crew to re-seat them at the 11-month walkthrough if you flag them. After year one, you are paying for that visit.

What the first-year warranty does not cover: storm damage of any kind, hail, wind-lifted shingles from a named tropical system, tree-strike damage, debris damage, or anything an insurance claim would normally handle. Those go through your homeowner's policy.

The thing to do in month eleven, before the warranty closes, is schedule the builder's pre-warranty-expiration walkthrough. Most builders advertise this — Lennar and D.R. Horton both formalize it as the '11-month inspection' — but they will not show up unless you call. Walking the roof with the builder's warranty rep, with a list of items, before the clock runs out, is the single highest-leverage hour you will spend on the home in its first decade.

GAF Timberline HDZ, Owens Corning Duration, and CertainTeed Landmark — the three shingles that show up on roughly nine out of ten roofs we walk in Cane Bay and Nexton — all come with a 'lifetime limited' warranty. That phrase is doing a lot of work. The actual material coverage is full for the first ten years and prorates down after that. By year twenty, most owners can expect to recover roughly twenty to thirty percent of replacement cost on a defect claim.

What voids the manufacturer warranty fastest, in order of how often we see it: improper attic ventilation (and we see undervented attics constantly on production builds — single ridge vents trying to handle a 2,800 sq ft footprint with sealed soffits), power-washing the shingles, walking on the roof in extreme heat (yes, this counts), and unauthorized repair work using a different shingle brand.

Manufacturer warranties also have a transferability clause. GAF's standard Timberline warranty transfers once, within the first ten years, and only if the new owner submits the transfer paperwork within sixty days of closing. Most resale buyers in Cane Bay never file the transfer. When they discover a defect at year twelve, the warranty is gone.

If your builder installed a system warranty — meaning GAF's Silver Pledge, Golden Pledge, or System Plus — the coverage is materially better and the workmanship is also covered by the manufacturer. Check the certificate. If your closing packet does not include one, you have the base limited warranty only.

We see the same gap patterns repeatedly. The most common is a leak that shows up in year three or four — past the builder's one-year window, well inside the shingle warranty, but caused by workmanship the manufacturer will not cover. A pipe boot that was installed without sealant. A valley that was step-flashed wrong. A nail driven through a shingle in the wrong place. The builder will tell you the workmanship period has expired. The manufacturer will tell you the defect is not in the shingle itself. The repair bill comes to you.

Second is post-storm damage that the builder denies. After the June 10, 2024 storm — golf-ball-size hail in Knightsville, 80-85 mph wind gusts across Summerville and Ladson — we walked dozens of roofs in Cane Bay and Nexton that had wind-lifted shingles. Owners called their builders first. Builders correctly told them this was insurance, not warranty. Owners then waited weeks before filing insurance claims and missed their statute of limitations window for some carriers. The right move is to file an insurance claim immediately and let the builder warranty conversation happen in parallel.

Third is the year-eight to year-ten window. The builder's one-year workmanship period is long gone. The shingle manufacturer's full-coverage decade is winding down. The structural warranty — if you have one — is about to expire. A pre-expiration inspection at year eight or nine catches issues while the leverage still exists. After year ten, every conversation about the roof is yours alone.

Fourth, and most preventable: homeowners who never read the warranty packet at all. The forty-page document in the closing binder names the warranty company, the claim portal, and the dispute resolution path. RWC and 2-10 HBW both run claim portals. If you do not know which one administers your warranty, you cannot file a claim against it.

Between year four and year six, on a Cane Bay or Nexton roof, the conditions that will cause problems in year ten are usually visible to anyone who knows where to look. Pipe boots have started to dry-crack. Ridge cap shingles in the southwest corner show wind-lift signs. Sealant strips at penetrations have begun to release. The asphalt itself has lost some of its initial flexibility and you can see early granule loss in the gutter screens.

None of this requires emergency action at year five. What it requires is a written record. We provide free roof inspections in Cane Bay, Nexton, and the rest of Summerville for exactly this reason — a year-five walk-through gives the homeowner a dated, photographed baseline of every condition on the roof. If something fails at year seven, the year-five photos prove whether it was an emerging defect (manufacturer territory) or new damage (insurance territory).

A year-five inspection costs nothing, surfaces problems while warranty coverage still applies, and gives the next buyer — if you sell — a written file that adds real money to the sale. Most homes in Cane Bay and Nexton trade hands inside the ten-year manufacturer window. A documented roof history is a closing-table asset.

We recommend pairing the inspection with the gutters. Pine needles, live oak debris, and the granule wash from any aging shingle field all accumulate in gutters before the roof itself shows symptoms — which is why we wrote a separate piece on Summerville's tree canopy and what it actually does to roofs over time.

Every claim starts at the warranty administrator, not the builder. If your home is under RWC, you file at the RWC claim portal. If it is 2-10 HBW, you file at 2-10's portal. The builder may also have an internal warranty office (Lennar Warranty, D.R. Horton's warranty department, Pulte's customer care), and you can call them — but the formal record gets created at the warranty administrator.

Bring photos, a description of the symptom, the date you noticed it, and your closing date or warranty commencement date. The warranty company then schedules an inspection. If the inspector confirms a covered defect, the builder repairs it. If not, you get a written denial with the reason.

The denial is the critical document. It tells you whether your next move is a manufacturer claim (defective shingle), an insurance claim (storm damage), or out-of-pocket repair (out-of-scope wear). Without the written denial, you are guessing.

If the workmanship is clearly defective and the builder pushes back, South Carolina contractor licensing (LLR) accepts complaints against licensed residential builders. That is a slow process — typically months — but it exists and Cane Bay and Nexton owners have used it successfully.

Year ten on a Cane Bay or Nexton roof is the inflection point. The full-coverage manufacturer window has closed. The structural warranty, if you bought one, has expired. From this point forward, every problem with the roof is yours.

The good news: a roof that has been inspected and maintained — pipe boots replaced, ridge caps re-secured, isolated wind damage filed with insurance promptly — typically has another fifteen to twenty years of service life on it past the warranty cliff. The bad news: a roof that has been ignored for ten years usually starts compounding problems quickly. Pipe boots cracked open in year seven that no one noticed have been letting small amounts of water into the decking for three years. Wind damage from a 2022 storm that the homeowner thought was 'cosmetic' has lifted a row of shingles and the underlayment beneath is degraded.

The transition from warranty territory to owner-maintained territory is the moment to switch from reactive thinking ('something has to break before I think about the roof') to scheduled maintenance ('we look at the roof every other year regardless'). The cost difference between a $400 boot replacement at year twelve and a $9,000 partial replacement at year sixteen — caused by the same boot, ignored — is the entire reason we wrote this piece. If you are inside the warranty window, get the inspection. If you are past it, the same logic applies, just on your dime.

Repairs we handle inside that window are covered separately in our service pages — targeted roof repair work in Summerville is what we do most often after year five.