Kempton Park Hail Storm: What To Check On The Roof, Geyser And Ceiling Afterwards

After a Kempton Park hail storm, the useful checks are the ones you can make from the ground and from inside the house: the roof covering, the solar collector if there is one, the gutters, the pipes from the geyser, and the ceiling over the next day or two. None of it needs anyone on a wet roof. What you find decides whether the next call is to a roofer or a plumber.

This guide is that walk round, in the order that makes sense once the ice has stopped falling. Roof tiles and sheeting are a roofer's work. The geyser, its valves and pipes, the solar pipework and anything that makes the water meter turn are work for Kempton Park plumbers.

When hail comes to Kempton Park

Kempton Park gets most of its rain in summer. At O. R. Tambo International Airport, which lies inside Kempton Park, the long-term averages from South African Weather Service data are 130 mm in December and 131.7 mm in January, against 1.7 mm in July. A 2017 study of the airport's weather counted about 73 thunderstorm days a year there.

Hail comes with the strongest of those storms. A 2023 study in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, built on 14 years of satellite observations of storms over South Africa, found hail events most frequent from mid-November through February. The daily peak it found was between 16:00 and 17:00 South African time.

The warnings come from the South African Weather Service, which issues them for severe thunderstorms and says what each may bring. On 30 September 2026 it warned of storms across Gauteng "accompanied by heavy downpours, strong damaging winds, hail and excessive lightning". No forecast can say which afternoon, or which suburb, the next one will hit.

The storm of 30 November 2025

The last big storm did not wait for the afternoon. Hail fell on Kempton Park on the night of 30 November 2025, and IOL reported streets, roofs and gardens "blanketed in ice up to 20 cm deep". Residents reported shattered windows, collapsed carports, dented cars and widespread flooding, and power was cut from Spartan to Birch Acres.

One resident told TimesLIVE the hail started after 11pm and "sounded like rocks had started falling". She reported broken gutters and a leaking roof. The next morning the City of Ekurhuleni confirmed that most of Kempton Park, including the CBD, had no power.

Festival Mall closed after sections of its roof were damaged, mainly between Woolworths and Edgars, the Kempton Express reported. The centre was closed when the storm hit, and nobody was hurt.

The reports describe roofs, gutters, windows, carports and ceilings, and none of them mentions a geyser. The plumbing questions after hail are about where the water ends up: through a broken tile, over a blocked gutter, or out of a pipe on the roof that took a hit.

What to check from the ground after a Kempton Park hail storm

Wait until the storm has passed and the ice has melted off the roof. Hail and wet tiles are slippery, and a tile that took a hit can break under a foot. Everything below can be seen from the garden or a window, with a phone camera zoomed in.

• The roof covering. Look for cracked, chipped or slipped tiles and dented or holed sheeting, along the ridge and around anything that comes through the roof: solar pipes, a vent pipe, an aerial bracket. A broken tile above the geyser matters most, because the geyser and its electrics lie right under it.
• The solar collector. A flat-plate collector has a glass cover, and an evacuated-tube collector is a row of glass tubes. Look for cracks, a cloudy or broken tube, or water running from the collector or its pipes after the rain has stopped. Water dripping from a collector a day after the storm is unlikely to be rain.
• Gutters and downpipes. Hail piles up in gutters and melts slowly, and a gutter packed with ice overflows behind the fascia, into the roof space or down the wall. Check that the downpipes run freely and that the gutters have not split or pulled away. Broken gutters were among the damage residents reported after 30 November 2025.
• The geyser's pipes on the outside wall. A geyser in the roof can have up to three small pipes through an outside wall or under the eaves: two overflow pipes from its valves and one from the drip tray. During rain, water running off them proves nothing. Look again on the next dry morning: a pipe still dripping or running then is the geyser, and the geyser leaking guide explains what each pipe is telling you.

The geyser in the roof space after hail

An electric geyser in the roof space lies in a drip tray directly above a ceiling, with only the roof covering over it. If tiles or sheeting above it are broken, rain can land on the geyser, its electrical cover and its tray. The tray does its job and sends that water outside, so a drip-tray pipe that runs after a storm may be carrying rain rather than a leak.

Telling the two apart needs a look from the trapdoor with a torch, once the storm is over and only if it can be done without stepping onto the ceiling boards. Daylight showing through the roof above the geyser, a wet top on the cylinder and cold water in the tray point to the roof. Warm water in the tray, or a wet cylinder under a sound roof, points to the geyser.

If water has reached the geyser's electrical cover, switch the geyser off at the DB and leave it off until it has been checked. Geyser repairs in Kempton Park start by finding where the water came from, and a geyser dried out under a roof that still lets rain in will be wet again after the next storm.

Watch the ceiling for two days

Hail damage does not always show the same night. A cracked tile can let in a little water at a time, and a stain can take a day or two to come through the board. Walk through the house each day after a storm and look up, especially in the room under the geyser.

When the stain grows tells you the most:

• Only while it rains: the roof or a gutter.
• In dry weather as well: a pipe or the geyser.
• Directly under the geyser, or a patch that feels warm: the geyser and its tray. The drip tray section of the geyser leaking guide covers what that means.

A ceiling board that is soaked through can sag and give way, so keep people and furniture out from under a bulging patch.

Rain or a pipe: what the water meter says

The water meter settles what the weather cannot. Close every tap and make sure nothing else is drawing water: the washing machine, the irrigation, a pool's top-up valve. Read the meter, use no water for half an hour, and read it again.

If the meter has moved, water is leaving a pipe or fitting on the property, whatever the weather is doing. If it has not, and the ceiling is still getting wetter, the water is coming from outside: the roof, a gutter or a wall.

Photograph it before anything is moved

Before gutters are cleared or tiles are swapped, photograph the roof from the ground, the gutters, any ceiling stain and the geyser's pipes on the outside wall, with the date. The pictures show the plumber or roofer what the storm left, and they make it easy to see later whether a stain has grown.

Roofer, plumber or the City: who to call after hail

• A roofer for broken tiles, holed or lifted sheeting, flashings and the gutters themselves.
• A plumber for the geyser, its valves and drip tray, the overflow pipes, the solar collector's pipework and tank, any pipe in the roof space, and a water meter that moves with every tap closed.
• The City of Ekurhuleni for what lies outside the property: a burst main or water running in the street, a blocked stormwater drain in the road, and the electricity supply.

When the roof above the geyser is damaged, both are needed: the roof first, then the geyser and its pipes once the rain is kept out.

Before the next storm

Hail season runs into February, so a few minutes before mid-November make the after-storm walk round quicker:

• Know which switch on the DB is the geyser, and where the main water isolating valve is.
• Have leaves cleared out of the gutters and downpipes, so melting hail has somewhere to go.
• Look at the geyser's pipes on the outside wall on a dry day and note which ones normally drip while the geyser heats, so a change after a storm stands out.
• Photograph the ceiling under the geyser and note a meter reading, so a new mark or a moving meter is easy to spot.

If the walk round turns up a pipe that will not stop, a wet ceiling in dry weather or a meter that moves, use the call-out form below and say what you found and where.

Hail storms: questions from Kempton Park homes

Written by The Kempton Park Plumbers for homes across Kempton Park, from Birchleigh North to Bonaero Park. This is general guidance: a plumber on site can tell you what applies to your geyser.