Ice Dams

[yamalaris]

I have had some serious ice dam issues the past few years at my place in the UP, has anyone used EZdeicer in ice-socks?

According to their advertising you fill the socks with EZdeicer and toss the socks on your roof where they will open channels to allow melted water to not damn up, has anyone used these products? I'm concerned about damage to the asphalt shingles and wooden decks from the chemicals and do they work as well as they claim?

The other product I'm considering is called Ice Dam Breakers sold at GreenIceMelt.com

Any other ideas out there?

 

[yamahauler]

The only other thing I have seen is basically a wire grid laid on the roof and plug it in. The only downfall unless they have changed in the last 4 yrs is that your electric bill will skyrocket, and that is no joke.

I would say that when possible, you need to get to the root of the problem which usually is lack of insulation.

Although, I will counter the lack of insulation comment I guess because on my house, part of my roof slopes north so it gets no sun. But there are 3 other parts of the roof higher up that get plenty of sun and the melting runs down to the north side and then refreezes. I still have to figure out how to deal with that.

Oh ya, if you are gonna reroof anytime soon, you can put stuff under the shingles that are in zones and you can turn them on when needed. They say they are pretty efficient.

 

[revman]

Snow Rake

I used to have them really bad, but I bought a roof rake and just clear off the bottom 3-4 feet. No more dams. Not sure what your roof is like and how easy it is to access, but you might want to try it.

REVman

 

[yamalaris]

The electric grids are just too expensive.

I do have a roof rake and also remove the snow but unfortunately I'm not up enough to keep up with the snows which is why I'm considering the chemical socks to hopefully keep the dams from forming between my ability to shovel.

 

[longtrack]

Metal Roof, then your problems are over.

 

[ubee]

ceiling insulation,eave ventilation,gable end vents, = cold attic and no ice build up. you see a lot of real old houses without much insulation in snow country with aluminum for first 3 feet then the shingles,helps some.you buy insulation once,energy forever !

 

[fredster]

I stapled heat tape to a 10 foot long 2X2 (didn't run staples THROUGH the heat tape just on either side!) and when an ice dam starts i place this on the roof, snove up through the snow and just over the ice and use it to melt a drain channel. Usually 3-4 hours is enough and I've created a path for the water and I'm good. I've had to do this 4-5 times (usually once a winter) and it's been a good 'when all else fails' backup plan.

 

[trailshredder]

ceiling insulation,eave ventilation,gable end vents, = cold attic and no ice build up. you see a lot of real old houses without much insulation in snow country with aluminum for first 3 feet then the shingles,helps some.you buy insulation once,energy forever !

UBEE is absolutely right...insulation and proper venting is the key.

 

[Falcon20]

What ubee said X2. Air flow (cold) is your friend in this situation. If you don't have vents, cut 'em in. Don't forget about roof vents. I did this on my 1860's era Ohio house. At the time I discovered that there was insulation placed in many of the eaves plus what I'll call fire stops. The fire stops were from original construction, insulation added much later. Who knows what thought process decided that insulation was a good idea. What a p i t a to remove the insulation, it was loose, and knock out all the fire stops I could to allow air flow. Even as I did all this I could feel air flow increasing.

 

[ubee]

Nice big gable end vents really make a big difference,plus great place to stash stuff ,lol. valleys big problem in big snow country ! snowing hard in BJ right now !!

 

[arcticgeorge]

Pisco Roofing

My house has a area where a large ice dam occurs and my neighbor Joe who owns his own roofing company said he will install sheet of flat roofing insulation and then liquid cement a 10 foot long rubber membrane in the valley where the dam builds. The smooth but thick rubber will allow the ice snow and anything else slide off the roof. And of course as one guy said get to the problem from the inside as well. i opened up a wall and saw that the previous insulation had fallen down and there was nothing to hold the heat back from the wooden underside...But at the moment he is busy wrapping up his companys jobs.

 

[booondocker]

Longtrac is right...seems like overkill but a metal roof takes this problem away. While venting and insulation can help, any time the sun hits the roof and takes it down to where the roof line has no place to either vent or insulate, your going to have problems.

Unless I miss my guess, the sock thing is simply salt that trickles down as it gets dissolved by the snow, and will both be hard on the shingles, and whatever it hits down below, and not spread like you think it should. It will find the path of least resistance and is not likely to be where you need it the most.

Shoveling will help if you are there...get the snow off and it won't dam up on you...but if you aren't there all the time that can be hard to do.

All of the above suggestions will work to varying degrees, but nothing will make it go away like a metal roof. Once you do that....the problem is over and done.

But remember that metal roofing can also be noisy if it rains or hails.

 

[kamikaze_bros]

I have had some serious ice dam issues the past few years at my place in the UP, has anyone used EZdeicer in ice-socks?

According to their advertising you fill the socks with EZdeicer and toss the socks on your roof where they will open channels to allow melted water to not damn up, has anyone used these products? I'm concerned about damage to the asphalt shingles and wooden decks from the chemicals and do they work as well as they claim?

The other product I'm considering is called Ice Dam Breakers sold at GreenIceMelt.com

Any other ideas out there?

Yamalaris,

Calcium chloride is the active chemical found in most good de-icing products. It is available at just about any Hardware or Big Box store and sold under countless brand names such as "Ice Bite", "Melt-Mor", "Mega-Melt". I believe it will work down to temps as low as -15 maybe even lower depending on the blend of calcium and chlorine. To be effective, it needs to be in contact with a source of moisture (h2o in any form). Because of this you're going to need to put a little thought into the location of the socks in order to be most effective.

You can put the calcium chloride in just about anything, socks, sweat pants, nylons and get the same or better results. This method of "Dam Prevention" is pretty creative and a very cost effective band aid for the short term. Ubee's identified the solution, which essentially is the elimination of any opportunity to capture warm air within the roof system above the attic insulation. Unfortunately, there's a massive gap in what it will cost to solve this issue and what it costs to just treat it. I don't have any idea what the short or long term effects calcium chloride has on traditional building materials. I'd be especially concerned with contact with anything steel such as the step flashing, valley tin, nails or staples.

 

[mezz]

100% with ubee's statement, proper insulation & ventilation is key. I had an issue similar to yours on a 3 wall on-grade addition to my home. Due to the repeated ice damming on one of the roof's on my home, even after installing new Low E thermal pane windows, the issue continued & I had to re-roof, this after having only 10 yrs on the roof. Tabs can't take the repeated freeze thaw too long before they start to break down. As such, I had a tear off done & while up there, noticed after opening a larger gap for the ridge vent that there was only 4" of insulation in that ceiling. So, opened up a section of the sheathing to get inside & further discovered a section in the area where the worse damming was occurring Zero insulation. Whoever did this addition back in the 70's apparently didn't feel it was necessary! Go figure, anyway, the void was filled, then an additional 9" of insulation on top of it all to include installing proper vents & opening up the vent space in the eve's on each side. I did put down ice shield prior to re-roofing just in case, now, no more issues. By the way, the room in this addition only has one run of baseboard heat, so what little heat that was in there was racing out the void in the insulation. There is obviously a heat loss issue there, so merely putting on a metal roof is also like putting on a band aid, sure, you wont have the ice hanging on for long, but, your still losing heat. Can't beat proper insulation & ventilation.-Mezz