Roofers left loose nails everywhere
Roofers often leave behind clipped or loose nails in ridge vents and landscaping that take months to clear out completely. These stray metal pieces pose ongoing safety hazards and are difficult to catch entirely, even when crews use magnets.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Pulling the loose nails out manually, calling the original roofer to come collect them, or ignoring them.
- 2running magnets in the landscaping
- 3doing multiple sweeps of the property with a magnet
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The ridge vent on my house has nails clipped in it all the way down. Is this normal? Roof is about 20 years old I’ve only lived here since 2021, but they appear that they’ve always been there. Is there an actual reason for this?”source ↗
“I removed the hedges this spring and I’ve been picking up nails for months. Literally hundreds of nails, they seem to never end.”source ↗
“Taking off a few hundred shingles means a few thousand nails. Good crews will have the ground guys run magnets in the landscaping but even then, they aren’t the greatest at reaching everywhere.”source ↗
Where this came up
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