After 10 years outdoors, shingles rated for 190 mph winds had failure odds of 0.8% to 99.8% at 90 mph in IBHS tests

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 07:25:38 -0500

Asphalt shingles that spent 10 years outdoors at a South Carolina test site differed widely in how well they held down in wind, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) reported on September 22, 2026. IBHS is a research group whose members include insurance companies. All nine products it modeled carry the top class under both ASTM wind test standards, and one of those classes means a shingle is expected to perform at 190 mph. After a decade, IBHS put the chance of a shingle failure at a 90 mph gust between 0.8% and 99.8%, depending on the product. The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA), the shingle makers’ trade group, published a review in October that disputes the study’s methods.

Nine products with the same wind rating ranged from 0.8% to 99.8% failure odds

Chance that at least one of 60 shingles fails in a 90 mph gust, products aged 10 years at Richburg, South Carolina, percent

IBHS, Table 3. IBHS labels products by letter. All carry ASTM D3161 Class F and ASTM D7158 Class H wind ratings. Source: ibhs1.wpenginepowered.com

Failure odds at a 90 mph 3-second gust for each 10-year product from the Richburg aging farm, with the shingle type IBHS lists. Impact-resistant means a Class 4 rating under UL 2218 or FM 4473.
Product	Failure chance at 90 mph (%)	Shingle type
Product F	0.8%	Architectural
Product I	10.6%	Architectural, impact-resistant
Product G	14.7%	Architectural, impact-resistant, polymer-modified
Product A	30.6%	Architectural, impact-resistant
Product H	59.0%	Architectural, impact-resistant
Product E	60.1%	Architectural
Product C	78.8%	3-tab
Product D	98.8%	3-tab
Product B	99.8%	Architectural

Source: ibhs1.wpenginepowered.com

How IBHS tested the shingles

IBHS began building roof sections on what it calls aging farms in 2013, at its research center in Richburg, South Carolina. Member companies later hosted smaller farms in Madison, Wisconsin, and Amelia, Ohio. Every roof faces north and south. Fourteen products from seven manufacturers were tested, and the report labels each one with a letter.

Sections came off the roofs in 2024 and 2025. In the lab, IBHS measured how much of each panel had come unsealed and the force needed to break the sealant bond, the strip of adhesive near a shingle’s lower edge that glues it to the shingle below. It set those results against wind loads measured on a full-size test house in its wind chamber. The result is the chance that at least one of 60 shingle positions fails at a given 3-second gust. The report notes that a typical roof can have about a thousand shingles, which would raise the odds.

The wind ratings on a shingle wrapper come from these two tests.

The two ASTM wind tests for asphalt shingles and the classes the IBHS report describes
Standard	What it tests	Class	Wind speed for the class (mph)
ASTM D3161	Shingle panel under a fan for 2 hours	Class A	60
ASTM D3161	Shingle panel under a fan for 2 hours	Class D	90
ASTM D3161	Shingle panel under a fan for 2 hours	Class F	110
ASTM D7158	Force needed to lift sealed shingles against calculated wind uplift	Class H	190

Source: ibhs1.wpenginepowered.com

What the results show

IBHS calls unsealing the weakest link. Product B, an architectural shingle, had nearly half of its north- and south-facing shingles unsealed after 10 years and the highest failure odds, 99.8%. The two 3-tab products, the flat single-layer shingles with three tabs along the edge, came in at 78.8% and 98.8%, and IBHS says 3-tab shingles are more prone to unsealing than architectural ones. Product F, with very little unsealing, a moderate average bond strength and a narrow spread, stayed at 0.8% at every wind speed.

Product A had relatively high bond strength after 10 years, but its results were spread widely and some of its shingles had unsealed. IBHS put its failure odds at 30.6% and says products like it are open to failures that start at their weakest shingles, because one failed shingle can set off failures across the roof.

The odds barely moved with wind speed. Product H went from 59.0% at 90 mph to 60.1% at 190 mph.

Failure odds, percent, by 3-second gust speed for each 10-year Richburg product
3-second gust (mph)	Product F	Product A	Product H	Product E	Product D	Product I	Product B	Product C	Product G
90	0.8	30.6	59.0	60.1	98.8	10.6	99.8	78.8	14.7
100	0.8	30.6	59.1	60.2	98.8	10.6	99.8	78.9	14.7
110	0.8	30.7	59.2	60.3	98.9	10.7	99.8	79.1	14.7
120	0.8	30.7	59.3	60.3	98.9	10.7	99.8	79.2	14.7
130	0.8	30.7	59.4	60.4	98.9	10.7	99.8	79.3	14.7
140	0.8	30.8	59.5	60.5	98.9	10.7	99.8	79.5	14.8
150	0.8	30.8	59.6	60.6	99.0	10.8	99.8	79.6	14.8
160	0.8	30.8	59.7	60.6	99.0	10.8	99.8	79.8	14.8
170	0.8	30.9	59.8	60.7	99.0	10.8	99.8	79.9	14.8
180	0.8	30.9	60.0	60.8	99.0	10.9	99.8	80.2	14.9
190	0.8	30.9	60.1	61.0	99.1	10.9	99.8	80.4	14.9

Source: ibhs1.wpenginepowered.com

IBHS measured the spread within each product with the coefficient of variation, the standard deviation as a share of the average. It averaged 0.24 for new shingles, 0.33 at 5 years and 0.29 at 10. Most products gained bond strength in their first 5 years and began to decline after that, the report says. Of the nine 10-year products from Richburg, only A, G and I did not lose strength from 5 to 10 years.

Coefficient of variation of uplift resistance at each age, Richburg aging farm. Higher means a wider spread. The baseline for Product G is blank in the IBHS table.
Product	New (baseline)	After 5 years	After 10 years
Product F	0.30	0.30	0.20
Product A	0.23	0.34	0.36
Product H	0.19	0.26	0.37
Product E	0.26	0.38	0.34
Product D (3-tab)	0.28	0.63	0.22
Product I	0.31	0.18	0.30
Product B	0.13	0.30	0.35
Product C (3-tab)	0.22	0.37	0.24
Product G		0.28	0.24
Average of the 12 products in IBHS's table	0.24	0.33	0.29

Source: ibhs1.wpenginepowered.com

Latitude and this area

The same products aged differently on different farms. For the products installed at both Richburg and Madison, the report says bond strength at Richburg stayed about the same or fell from 5 to 10 years, while at Madison it held steady or rose, and Product B showed the same pattern at Amelia, where it had about a tenth as much unsealing as at Richburg. IBHS links the difference to sun and heat. Sealant activates at about 140°F, and the report says south-facing roofs at Richburg spend as many as 1,000 hours a year above that, against about half as many on north faces.

Conshohocken sits between the farms. On Census Bureau coordinates it is about 1 degree of latitude north of Amelia and about 5.4 degrees north of Richburg.

Latitude of the three aging farms with 10-year results and of Conshohocken, from the Census Bureau's 2024 place gazetteer
Place	Role	Latitude (degrees north)
Richburg, South Carolina	IBHS aging farm with 10-year tests	34.72
Amelia, Ohio	IBHS member aging farm with 10-year tests	39.03
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania	For comparison	40.08
Madison, Wisconsin	IBHS member aging farm with 10-year tests	43.09

Source: www2.census.gov

Wind at the airport

The strongest 5-second gust at Philadelphia International Airport from 1996 through October 28, 2026 was 74.9 mph, on June 24, 2010. The airport recorded 112 days with a gust of 50 mph or more from 1996 through 2025, 12 of them in 2025. IBHS’s model starts at 90 mph, above any gust in that record, so its table gives no odds for the gusts this area sees most. The report’s summary says shingle failures have been observed in storms at wind speeds well below design levels. The weather guide covers wind and hail here.

The airport's strongest gust since 1996 was 74.9 mph, in 2010

Strongest 5-second gust each year, Philadelphia International Airport, mph

NOAA NCEI daily summaries, WSF5. 2026 through October 28. A few years have one or two days without data. Source: ncei.noaa.gov

The manufacturers’ objections

ARMA’s review says the study covered 14 products in a market of about 50 product lines, relied on samples from single production batches and switched its uplift method partway through, from clamping a shingle’s edge to gluing a wooden beam on top. It says the IBHS lab operates without independent auditing, that IBHS withheld raw data from industry groups, and that one-third of the 10-year specimens kept or gained uplift resistance. It puts 3-tab shingles at less than 4% of today’s residential market. ARMA urges insurers not to use the study for age limits, including what it describes as a proposed 15-year age cap on IBHS’s FORTIFIED designations.

The IBHS report addresses the method change. It tested six new products both ways, found no systematic bias between the two methods and nearly identical medians, and says the change, if anything, could make 10-year results look better.

What to keep and ask

Both groups tell owners to know what is on the roof. IBHS says knowing the installed product matters for judging risk, and ARMA tells homeowners to keep records of the specific shingle and its product class. Ask that the contract name the manufacturer, the product line and the color, and keep the invoice and a wrapper. The contract guide lists what Pennsylvania requires a home improvement contract to include.

The wind class on the wrapper does not separate the products IBHS modeled. ARMA tells contractors to follow the manufacturer’s installation instructions, including the enhanced fastening some manufacturers specify at eaves and rakes. Eaves are the roof’s lower edges and rakes its sloped edges at the gable ends. Ask whether the quote follows those instructions.

If an insurer raises the roof’s age at renewal or in a claim, ask the insurer which rule in your policy it is applying. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department’s Consumer Help Center takes questions, and the insurance claims guide covers the claim process.

Caveats

The failure odds come from nine products at one South Carolina farm, labeled by letter, so the report cannot tell you how the brand on your roof performed. Some baseline tests used other shipments of the same product, which the report marks. The model counts 60 failure points and pulls each shingle once, while a storm loads shingles again and again; IBHS says it is studying that repeated loading. Conshohocken’s climate differs from all three farms, and latitude is one of several factors IBHS names. Farms in Kansas and Alabama reach their first 10-year tests in 2027 and 2028. The airport is about 15 miles from Conshohocken.

Standards | Conshy Roofers

After 10 years outdoors, shingles rated for 190 mph winds had failure odds of 0.8% to 99.8% at 90 mph in IBHS tests

How IBHS tested the shingles

What the results show

Latitude and this area

Wind at the airport

The manufacturers’ objections

What to keep and ask

Caveats