Steep and high charges: the two multipliers that come off without a sentence
Most missing line items at least get a rejection. Drip edge gets argued about. Decking gets argued about. Steep and high charges are different: they do not get denied, because they were never in the estimate to begin with. There is no sentence in the carrier's paperwork that says "steep charge removed." The estimate simply prices your 9/12 two-story roof at the same labor rate as a walkable single-story ranch, and unless someone on your side notices, that is where it ends.
That is what makes these two items worth understanding separately from the rest of the supplement list. They are not a coverage fight. They are not a code fight. They are an arithmetic omission — and the evidence needed to correct them is usually already sitting in the claim file, in the aerial measurement report the carrier itself ordered.
What the two multipliers actually are
In Xactimate — the estimating software most carriers price claims in — steep and high charges are labor adjustments, not materials. They exist because the same square of shingles takes meaningfully longer to tear off and install on a steep or elevated roof than on a flat, walkable one.
The steep charge kicks in once roof pitch reaches 7/12 — that is, seven inches of vertical rise for every twelve inches of horizontal run. At that slope, a crew can no longer simply walk the roof. Movement slows down, footing has to be managed, materials have to be staged differently, and on steeper bands, roof jacks, toe boards, or harness systems come into play. Xactimate handles this with three tiered selectors: RFG STEEP for the first band starting at 7/12, RFG STEEP> for the next band up, and RFG STEEP>> for the steepest roofs. Each tier carries a higher labor adjustment than the one below it, because production rates keep dropping as pitch climbs.
The high charge — RFG HIGH — is a separate adjustment for roofs two stories and above. It has nothing to do with pitch. It compensates for the extra time spent getting workers, tear-off debris, and new material up and down a taller structure: longer ladder cycles, more careful material handling, more staging. A walkable 4/12 roof on a three-story building still earns the high charge even though it earns no steep charge at all.
Two things follow from how these selectors work, and both matter when you write the supplement.
First, the charges apply per square, to the squares that qualify — not to the whole roof as a lump. A roof with 30 squares at 5/12 and 12 squares at 8/12 earns steep charges on the 12, not the 42. This is exactly the breakdown an aerial measurement report already provides: every major report includes a table of roof area by pitch band.
Second, they are separate line entries, not something baked into the shingle removal and installation lines. The base RFG line items assume a walkable, reachable roof. If nobody adds the steep and high lines, the estimate silently asserts that the roof is neither steep nor high — even when the pitch table stapled to the same file says otherwise.
Why they disappear without anyone deciding to remove them
Here is the mechanism, and it is more boring than a coverage dispute. A desk adjuster builds the estimate from an aerial measurement report. The report states the predominant pitch and breaks down area by pitch band. But in the estimating software, the steep and high charges are lines the estimator has to actively add. Nothing forces the software to reconcile the pitch table in the PDF with the labor lines in the estimate. An estimator working through a queue of storm files prices the tear-off, prices the installation, prices the accessories — and the two multipliers, which live as separate selectors rather than defaults, simply never make it in.
No one wrote a denial, because nothing was denied. There is no sentence to argue with. And that absence of a sentence is precisely why these charges stay gone: a contractor scanning the estimate for wrong numbers will not catch a missing line unless they are specifically looking for it. The shingle quantity matches the measurement report, the waste factor looks plausible, the totals seem to be in the right neighborhood — and the file moves on.
Meanwhile the cost on your side is not hypothetical. Steep-roof crews charge more per square, or take more days, or both. If the carrier estimate prices an 8/12 two-story at walkable single-story labor rates, the difference does not vanish — it comes out of your margin, on every square of that roof. And unlike a denied item, nobody ever tells you it happened.
It is worth saying that this cuts differently than the items on a standard supplement checklist. Drip edge or ice barrier can be genuinely absent from a roof, so the carrier can dispute whether they belong in the scope at all. Pitch and height are not like that. The roof is 8/12 or it is not; the house has two stories or it does not. There is no version of the conversation where the physical facts are in dispute — which means the only live question is whether anyone put the facts and the line items in front of the carrier together.
The evidence is already in the file
This is the rare supplement item where you almost never need to produce new evidence. You need to point at evidence that already exists.
The pitch table. Aerial measurement reports break roof area down by pitch band — so many squares at 5/12, so many at 8/12, and so on. In most claims, the carrier ordered this report or has a copy of it. That table is the entire steep-charge argument: it says which squares qualify and how many there are. When you write the supplement, do not just cite the report — attach the page, and mark the pitch table so a reviewer skimming the file cannot miss it.
The elevation photo. For the high charge, one photograph of the front elevation showing the full height of the structure does the work. If the eave height appears in the measurement report, note it. Story count is not a judgment call, but making it visually undeniable removes any temptation to treat it as one. The same discipline that applies to every other item applies here — see how to photograph a roof for supplements — but the burden is lighter, because you are documenting the shape of the building, not damage.
The carrier's own format expectations. Carriers review supplements by comparing line items against their own estimate. TWIA, the Texas windstorm carrier, says this outright on its own claims pages: it asks for line item estimates that break down and show labor and material costs — not lump sums — and states plainly, "We will review your estimates against our own." That comparison logic is exactly why a missing multiplier is a clean request when it is written as a line item: the reviewer can lay the two estimates side by side, see the steep and high lines present in one and absent in the other, check the attached pitch table, and reconcile. A lump-sum "add $X for steepness" buried in a cover letter gives the reviewer nothing to compare and an easy reason to set the request aside.
How to write the request
The request lives in two places: as line items in your supplement estimate, and as one or two sentences of justification tied to each line. Not paragraphs — sentences. The structure that works is physical fact, source of the fact, selector requested.
For the steep charge, the sentence looks like this:
"Per the attached measurement report (page 3, pitch table), [n] squares of this roof measure 8/12. The carrier estimate prices all squares at walkable labor rates and includes no steep charge. We request RFG STEEP for the [n] squares at that pitch, consistent with the attached report."
For the high charge:
"The structure is two stories, as shown in the attached elevation photo and reflected in the measurement report. The carrier estimate includes no additional charge for two-story access. We request RFG HIGH for the affected squares."
Notice what those sentences do not do. They do not argue about coverage. They do not characterize the adjuster's work. They do not ask for a lump sum. They state a measurable physical fact, cite the document in the claim file that establishes it — usually a document the carrier itself relies on — and name the specific selector. There is nothing to interpret and nothing to take personally, which is what a reviewer processing a stack of files needs in order to say yes quickly.
Match the tiers to the table. If the pitch table shows squares in more than one steep band, request the corresponding tier for each band — RFG STEEP for the first band, RFG STEEP> or RFG STEEP>> where the table supports it — with the square counts pulled straight from the report. Requesting the top tier for the whole roof when only part of it qualifies is the fastest way to convert a clean arithmetic request into a credibility problem that bleeds into every other line of your supplement.
One more structural point. Once the request exists in writing as a line item, the silence that removed these charges in the first place stops being available as a response. Under the NAIC's model claims-practices framework — adopted in some form across most states — a denial has to carry a reasonable and accurate explanation of its basis. A charge that was never requested can vanish without a word; a charge that was requested in writing, with the carrier's own measurement report attached, has to be either paid or answered. Either outcome moves the file forward, and an answer gives you something concrete to respond to — which is more than the original omission ever gave you.
Steep and high charges compound with everything else in the file, too. Labor adjustments change the labor base, and where overhead and profit applies, it applies to the corrected totals — one more reason to get the multipliers right before the estimate is finalized rather than after the recoverable depreciation check is cut.
This is written for contractors preparing their own supplements. It is not legal advice and it is not a reading of anyone's policy. Verify the adopted code edition and your carrier's submission channel for the property in question.