Ice dams on roofs and how to prevent them

Ice dams’ formation causes significant damage to the roof and the house by ruining the roofing material and leaking through it into the attic’s insulation and further into your home, leading to the deterioration of its interior along with the health detrimental and cosmetically unpleasant mold appearance and outspread.

In fact, the layer of ice that forms on the rooftop due to the differences of the outside and the inside temperatures on its surface and the warmer air leaks, which continuously melt the snow and make the running water refreeze once it gets to the colder areas of the roof, may get as big as the 200lb chunk of ice that covers the roof from its top to bottom. The poor house ventilation and insulation, the structural mistakes the contractors may have made when building a home, the roof’s state in general and extreme weather swings often contribute to the ice dam issue.

How to deal with ice dams and prevent their formation

Obviously, every homeowner who may be affected by the damage the ice causes to the roof should try their best to prevent the issue in the first place. Otherwise, the ice dam removal process and the roofing contractors’ restoration services would cost them a lot of money. The quality of the roofing material and the installation job, along with the proper and timely maintenance are the necessary precautions we should not even question.

But, if the issue has hit you in the past, you need to take additional steps in order to eliminate its reiteration in the future. While a thorough home examination is required in order to determine possible flaws in the home’s structure that contribute to the ice dam formation, the design flaws the general contractors may draw the homeowner’s attention to after the check-up might be too costly or fairly impossible to fix. On top of that, ice dams often form on the rooftops of the houses that have to obvious structural problems.

And, who’s going to rebuild his house to prevent ice from damming on its roof when there is a number of much easier solutions to this particular problem?

One of them was briefly mentioned above. It’s the decent and timely maintenance. Regarding the ice dams’ issue, it’s the snow and ice removal that has to happen when a significant amount of snow piles up on the roof or before the predicted weather changes and temperature rises happen.

If the house isn’t too tall and the roof isn’t too difficult to reach from the ground, the homeowner may do that on his own using a special snow removal rake with a long retractable handle.  One should never do that in horizontal paths, though, not to rip off the shingles. And, one should never climb on the rooftop to do that not to risk his own life. If the roof is impossible to rake from the ground, call the snow and ice removal services. Remember that the gutters have to be cleaned as well.

In addition to that, it’s necessary to keep our home’s ventilation system’s performance on point. And, it goes without saying that the roof itself has to be in a great condition – no missing shingles, no leaking spots, no holes in the underlayment, etc.

Removing ice dams as soon as you see the signs of their formation (for instance, icicles hanging from the gutters) is essential, as the more you wait, the more water melting due to the  will freeze onto the  

Lastly, you may employ heat cables – relatively inexpensive mean of the ice dam prevention that’s proved its effectiveness. It’s a great choice for those homeowners, who’re tired of dealing with the persistent ice dam formation. They’re normally installed along the edges of the roof, where the ice dams mainly form. But, they may also be added at the problem areas, which are determined during a professional examination or due to the previous experience.

However, one of the issues the heat cables may cause is that the snow they melt may refreeze at the area they don’t cover and (guess what) form an ice dam on the roof you presumed was protected. That’s why I suggest professional installation of the heat cables only as the ‘last-resort’ kind of solution to the ice dam issue.

The prevention methods that eliminate the roots of the problem, which are the poor ventilation and attic insulation, the damaged roofing and the thick layer of snow accumulated on the rooftop and not removed before the heat wave, should be applied in the first instance. 

Thus, invite a house insulation pro, a roofing contractor and maybe an energy efficiency specialist to inspect your home and recommend/take the preventive measures they consider appropriate before purchasing the heat cables, which are the symptomatic treatment that adds to the electricity bill.

My conclusion is that the roof heating cables are the additional protection and the more affordable quick mean of the ice dam prevention people who can’t afford a proper fix may apply, but they may also cause the reverse effect mentioned above.