Question: Dealing with ice dams

[eclaire]

Last summer, instead of spending the money to blow insulation into our roof, we elected to buy new ski equipment for myself, my husband and our daughter. I stand by that decision!

However, it has come back to haunt us because we've now developed a huge ice dam on the back of our house and it's beginning to leak into our kitchen. Before last night's storm that dumped another foot of snow on the roof, we cleared off the snow that we could get to and exposed about 8" of ice. Following the recommendation of a friend, we filled light socks with ice melt and laid them perpendicularly on the ice. This was supposed to create troughs that the water could flow through and off the roof. Difficult to tell if this worked, but if it did it isn't enough.

Short of calling a roofer who will charge me $300 per dam (there's another forming on the front of the house, I see), any suggestions on how to deal with this would really be appreciated.

 

[Jilly]

Let you know more tonight - same problem except we have the electrical wires. I walked out this morning to a skating rink!

 

[Serafina]

This is more of a preventive thing - we have a warm wire that is clipped to the shingles in a zig-zag. It has helped significantly both with ice dams and with icicles. We don't get huge icicles hanging off that roof line any more, and I don't believe there is an ice dam either. Need to get those put on all of the roof lines (I love a Victorian, but they do sure make this kind of thing complicated).

 

[Jenn]

This is more of a preventive thing - we have a warm wire that is clipped to the shingles in a zig-zag.

We don't have that trouble - thank heavens, but used to rent a house with those heat tracers that Serafina has. It was perfect for keeping the roof and perimeter of the house clear of ice. I have no idea how it impacted the heating bill. Whatever it was seemed worth it. I think most of them have timers, and some have movement sensors so they heat up with precipitation. Good luck eclaire!

 

[Serafina]

Ours use a minimal amount of energy - they have a sensor that causes them to turn on only when they are getting hit with cold precip. The increase to our power bill was imperceptible.

 

[mwendell]

Wow, sounds interesting. We've never (as long as I've been here) had this much snow, so frequently and we are having issues with dams and icicles. We had to pay someone to come clear some snow and ice after that last big dump last week.

 

[MaineSkiLady]

Old hats here, checking in. Read this to DH, and he winced. Sorry to say that he says you have to get this ice off or it's going to do more damage. If that means roofer, well----you might otherwise have a lot of insulation and drywall/plaster damage to boot.

We didn't always live in a super-snowy region, so it was all new to us 10 years ago also. The roof HAS TO BE RAKED, at least to within 3 feet of the roof edge, when snow accumulates to one foot. We put aforementioned cables on our roof first summer here. THEY WORK. Ours are full manual, we plug in when visual inspection warrants they should be on.

If you have that much ice, however, it's unlikely that a post-accumulation fix is going to work. I hope your roof flashing hasn't been damaged as well.

Bite the bullet, get it cleared, save $ on further damage. Then get the cables installed (we did it ourselves, isn't bad). Electric consumption is minimal, will confirm per above. Ours are only on a total of about 1 week per winter.

 

[dloveski]

Thanks for this advice MSL...but I'm afraid it's too late for us up here in Yellowstone Country! The ice dams are huge and we've sprung a few leaks. We are frustrated in that we get different advice. One roofer says to leave it alone and they won't touch it til all ice melts (HA--that might happen around June). Another build says get up there with a mallet and gently break them up. Next year, after roof repairs, we most definitely will get heat cables installed.

We came up this weekend to do some break-up---but the sun was doing its thing and the back bedroom leak stopped altogether, with a nice waterfall running down the roof the right way---down and out. But this morning, we found another leak in another bedroom.

The one ice dam that slid off is HUGE and must weight hundreds of pounds--yikes.

Shoveling the roof, we had it done twice and did one section ourselves in January---but we feel more damage may have been done and it's futile with the massive amount of (daily) snow they get up here.

So, to break up the ice or to let the sun do it's thing slowly--that's our dilemma for the duration of the season.

One dam broke loose