Its time to think about ice dams!

[Dick in Wisconsin]

NOT when its 20 degrees out and the eave troughs and ice dams are frozen solid!

Let's talk up what everyone is doing this summer to eliminate ice dams in this winter.

 

[tornadocaster]

I took care of insulating attic last year but I have a heat loss right over the man door. I took off the sheeting on th inside over the door and never put it back. The little bit of insulation behind it was poorly installed so I'm going to fill in the cavity with expanding foam.
Cheers
Gio

 

[atfulldraw]

I'm hoping that neither of our two days of winter are especially cold!

Be thinking good thoughts for us on January 19th and 20th.....

 

[Gary S]

I live in one of the coldest parts of the nation and deal with snow and ice for at least 6 months of each year, yet, I've never seen an ice dam on any properly insulated house.

So, I'd have to say, put your efforts into properly insulating your walls and ceiling so you don't have heat loss to cause those nasty ice dams. Building heat loss is the greatest cause of ice dams here.

 

[Jarcese]

Weird that this thread came up, I was thinking about this on the way home from work today. I was thinking about some of the weirdest storm related weeks/months that I've had at work. I work for an electric utility and we had basically a "perfect storm" of ice dams for about a month. Peoples eaves were falling off houses all over the place. At first we were chipping ice away from services, but eventually the ice got so thick that it became too dangerous and too much of a liability to remove it from the service. We were offering to cut it at the pole for the fire dept., but that was about it. I got hit in the head with a hard hat on with a 10 lb icicle and that was the end of trying to be a good guy and remove some ice from a house for me.

There was a lot of shady characters offering to remove the dams for people and stealing money and/or destroying sides of houses without insurance.

After that a lot of people invested in roof rakes and heated the first few feet of the outside of the shingles and made sure they had their roof up to code.

It was a pretty weird month. A lot of older/naive people were taken for a lot of money that winter. I'm sure it was a good year for insured roofers.

 

[theoldwizard1]

Snow rake.

If we get more than about 3-4" at one time, I use the snow rake. Anything and sunshine and sublimation take care of it, except maybe in one corner. Luckily I can reach that with a 6' step ladder and 4-6 5 gallon buckets of hot water and no more ice dam.

 

[Jackfre]

Our last winter in MA, 2011 was the worst we saw in our 25 yrs there. Everyone was loosing gutters, roofs, etc. I had never had a problem in all those years, and then we did. 4' of snow on the roof which I shoveled off. Ice was about 12-16" above the gutters and two ft up the roof, front & back. Everyone is out with hammers, hatchets and axes trying to get the ice off.

I on the other hand, got 100' of garden hose, hooked it up to my Rinnai tankless water heater with a spray nozzle that gave a shower head type patter and ran hot water for 3 1/2 hrs. Cleaned it right up, no damage. Also the runoff cleared the sidewalk and driveway.

 

[jethrodawg]

I have a 1:1 pitch roof which helps on the front side of the house.

In the shady rear section of the house I can get about 8-10 ft up the roof just by standing on the ground. Will be pulling snow after every storm as insurance.

 

[APEowner]

I moved from upstate NY to New Mexico. I'm pretty sure I licked the ice dam problem!

 

[justanengineer]

I live in one of the coldest parts of the nation and deal with snow and ice for at least 6 months of each year, yet, I've never seen an ice dam on any properly insulated house.

So, I'd have to say, put your efforts into properly insulating your walls and ceiling so you don't have heat loss to cause those nasty ice dams. Building heat loss is the greatest cause of ice dams here.

+1. Snow is pretty to look at and both work and potentially damaging to remove, so growing up back east we just always let it build up and never bothered worrying. Never had an ice dam either and the snow was often 3'+.

OTOH, we often had ice dams in the river and brooks but those were taken care of with either a bit of blasting, a dozer, or an excavator. I gotta admit thats what I thought this thread was going to be about, but living in an old house I often forget about modern cheap construction issues.

 

[ptgb]

Until we get the insulation taken care of in the house and garage, we have used this method when necessary and it works like a charm:

Buy about 4 pairs of pantyhose and a bag of ice melt. Cut each leg part off the pantyhose and then fill them with the ice melt. Tie off the open end.

Get on the ladder and lay this snake like tube of ice melt perpendicular to the ice dam individually in strategic places on the roof with it laying over the edge of the gutter. It will melt down through the ice dam and give a path for the water stuck behind the ice to drain off the roof.

In the spring, pull the the now empty pantyhose leg off the roof.