This is a follow-up to my blog post on How To Remove Ice Dams. Several people suggested using a blowtorch, and I thought it would be easiest to just follow up with a video. Sorry for the lousy sound quality – I didn’t want to use my good camera on the ladder.
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minneapolis Home Inspections
RELATED POST: How To Prevent Ice Dams
Last year at about this time I wrote a blog about ice dams, covering what needs to be done to prevent ice dams from happening, both on the inside and outside of the house. This year I’ll discuss a bunch of different ways to get rid of ice dams. The methods involve axes, ice picks, pantyhose, salt, and heat cables.
The most obvious way to get rid of ice dams would be to just take a blunt instrument and hack away at the ice dams. I tried an axe.
Pros: Fast results – I hacked through several feet of six-inch thick ice dams in a matter of minutes.
Cons: Unsafe and cumbersome. I had a set up a ladder on the icy ground and swing an axe while standing on a ladder. The ice also really flew in my face – I should have been wearing goggles! I was only able to remove the ice down to the gutter, and only able to get close to the surface of the roof without risking damage to the shingles.
Verdict: This is a high risk, but fast and effective way of getting rid of a lot of ice, but leaves the job incomplete.
Sounds like a natural choice, doesn’t it? I actually used my awl, but close enough.
Pros: Very fast results, very little effort. It’s as though this tool was made for picking at ice. Oh, wait… Still, I was genuinely surprised at how fast and accurate this method was.
Cons: Unsafe. Again, I was jabbing at ice dams while standing on a ladder, which was sitting on the icy ground. I also had to be very careful to not damage the roof.
Verdict: This is definitely my method of choice. Nothing else worked nearly as well.
Yes, this is a product designed specifically for preventing damage from ice dams. Contrary to the name on the container, the product doesn’t actually melt your roof (whew). The instructions say to toss the tablets on to your roof and they’ll melt through the ice dams, allowing for “water to drain safely”.
I tried tossing the tablets on the roof like the instructions said to do, but it didn’t work out very well. I consider my tablet tossing skills to be above average, but I still couldn’t get the tablets to end up in a good location – they all just slid together in one place. If I didn’t get a ladder out to take pictures, I never would have known that the tablets didn’t end up in a good spot.
Just to give the roof melt tablets the best possible chance for success, I hand-placed them on the ice dam and I used about four times as much as the directions called for.
By day two, I had some pretty dramatic results – the tablets had melted all the way through the ice dam. btw – for anyone in a southern climate that might be reading this blog, that white stuff on the ice is snow, from a very light snowfall the night before.
By the third day, not much change. There were definite holes in the ice dam, and some channels had formed for water to drain through, but the majority of the ice was still there.
Pros: If you had perfect aim and tablets didn’t move after you tossed them on to the roof, this would be very safe.
Cons: The tablets don’t stay where they land, which negates the whole safety thing – I still had to set up a ladder on the icy ground and move the tablets around myself. This method was also pretty ineffective – it created a bunch of holes in the ice dam, but so what? Most of the ice dam was still there in the end.
Verdict: This might be a nice way to get down to the roof surface, and it would be nice to follow up with an ice pick after a day or two, but the tablets alone aren’t great. Sure, it’s safe… but so is sitting inside a warm house. Neither gets the job done.
This is a simple, straight-forward approach. Take off your pantyhose, fill ‘em up with ice melt (calcium chloride or something similar), and toss ‘em on your roof. The idea is that the salt will leak through the pantyhose and eventually melt the ice dams away to nothing. This is supposed to work better than just putting salt directly on the roof, because salt applied directly to the roof will just melt a bunch of tiny holes, much the same way the tablets melted large holes.
By day two, there were several tiny holes in the ice dam. Whoop-de-doo. Salt alone would have done this.
By day three, the pantyhose had started to melt in to the ice dam, and had completely melted down to the roof. The part that hadn’t melted down to the roof basically had a hard, crusty layer of salt(?) formed on the bottom of the pantyhose, and nothing else was happening. I picked up the pantyhose, broke up all the chunks of stuck together salt, and placed it back down.
On day four, I tried moving the pantyhose again to loosen up the stuck together chunks of salt, and the pantyhose ripped apart, leaving a big mess of salt on the roof. Yuck.
Pros: This is pretty safe.
Cons: Took way too long and didn’t do much. Waste of time. I wonder if I can return the pantyhose to Walgreens?
Verdict: Better than nothing.
For the record, heat cables aren’t supposed to be placed directly on ice dams, but some people might try it anyway. My friend did this at a house he owns in Saint Louis Park… so I took pictures. These photos all show the heat cables after about one day.
Note the creative way of keeping the cables from touching each other. Pretty cool, huh?
Pros: Gets the job done, and will prevent the formation of ice dams throughout the rest of the year.
Cons: Heat cables aren’t made for this, and I’m sure the manufacturer would tell you that this poses some type of safety hazard. Stringing up the cable was also very unsafe. It’s a good thing my friend owns a jet pack.
Verdict: Don’t do this.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. My favorite method was definitely the ice pick, but this was also very unsafe, and there’s a good chance that the roof surface could get damaged this way. I’d rather not have to deal with ice dams at all.
After a good snowfall, rake the snow off your roof. This definitely takes the least amount of effort and it’s safe. I’ve been asked whether a roof rake will damage the roof, and the answer is definitely no. A good roof rake will have little wheels at the bottom of the rake , which prevents the bottom of the rake from even touching the surface of the roof. Rake away.
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minneapolis Home Inspections
RELATED POSTS:
After all the recent snowfall, it’s a good time to talk about ice dams. Ice dams are caused by the same thing I’ve been blogging about for the last several entries; heat loss! The most obvious sign of heat loss in attics is ice dams – those huge masses of ice that build up at the edges of roofs. Ice dams occur because heat from the house escapes in to the attic, warms the roof, and causes snow to melt. When the water gets to the cold overhang at the eave, it freezes. As the ice builds up, it literally creates a dam. The trapped water can then leak into the home and cause damage to the roof decking, structural members, insulation, and even stain the ceiling.
To prevent ice dams from occurring, you need to stop the heat loss. The best way to do this is to seal attic bypasses – you can read more about this in two of my recent blogs – Attic Photo Explanations and Insulation Vs. Air Leakage. The other two ways to help prevent ice dams are by having adequate insulation and ventilation. Insulation will obviously help to prevent heat loss, and proper ventilation will help to keep the roof colder; the colder the roof, the less chance for the snow to melt in the first place.
Older one-and-a-half story houses are especially susceptible to ice dams because there is usually very little access to all of the attic spaces that need attention. If this is the case, there are still some steps you can take to control the damage caused by ice dams. The least expensive and most labor-intensive way to prevent ice dams is to remove the snow from the eaves using a roof rake. It’s best to remove the snow right away, when it’s light and fluffy. The longer you wait, the more ice will accumulate. If you can remove the snow down to the shingles, the sun will usually keep the shingles warm enough to prevent ice from forming at the eaves.
If you’re looking for a less labor-intensive method of preventing ice dams, you could install heat cables at the eaves. These will usually prevent ice dams from forming, but electric heat cables are expensive and use a fair amount of electricity to operate, making them an environmentally UN-friendly solution. Even manufacturers of heat cables state that they are not the most efficient way to solve ice problems.
The worst way of dealing with ice dams is to get on a ladder and hack away at your ice dams with a hatchet or ice pick. This is dangerous, and you could cause damage to your roof. I’ve seen many roofs with big hatchet marks in the shingles from people chopping too deep. I don’t recommend doing this.
The bottom line? If you can’t stop your ice dams the right way, buy a roof rake.
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections
A few posts ago I included several photos of attic problems in my blog Reasons to Insulate, and said I would come back to them in a later post with explanations. Here we go!
This photo shows a bypass to the attic space around a furnace flue. The square piece of metal is not sealed to the drywall, and there is a fair amount of air leaking into the attic space from this gap. I brushed the insulation away to show the gap for the photo. The insulation has turned black because of the air leakage – as the warm air passes through the insulation, the fiberglass acts like a filter and collects the dust / dirt particles in the air. Any time you see darkened insulation, you can bet there is air leakage occuring. This is often confused with mold because it looks similar.
In this photo the gap around the plumbing vent is allowing air in to the attic. Notice the dark insulation? An easy fix would be to fill the gap with expanding foam.
This photo shows several holes that wires pass through to get to the attic. These holes could easily be sealed up with expanding foam. I didn’t move any insulation to find these holes – this is exactly how the insulation looked when I climbed in to the attic, so there is obviously missing insulation here too. The recommended insulation depth for loose fill fiberglass is 18″, but the silver areas have no insulation at all.
This is another attic space in desperate need of more insulation. Someone probably moved the insulation away to install a ceiling fan, but never bothered to put it back.
There is a major attic bypass around this furnace flue, and this is one of the most common bypasses that I find. You can clearly see the walls on the floor below, and you can even see the basement ceiling from this opening! To correct this bypass, the owner will need to install a large piece of wood, metal, drywall, or any other material that air won’t pass through, and caulk all of the joints to make it airtight. This wasn’t obvious just by looking, but I always make a point of pulling the insulation away around furnace flues to look for bypasses. The fiberglass batt on the right side of the photo was sitting on top of this opening.
Hopefully these photos have helped to illustrate exactly what attic bypasses are and how to correct some of the issues.
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections
With the cold weather officially here, it’s a good time to talk about insulation. This is such a huge topic that I hardly know where to start! There are so many different aspects to insulation that this will have to take up several blogs. Today I’ll talk about why it’s important to have a well-insulated home.
Perhaps the most important reason to have a well-insulated home is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While a recent survey conducted by Owens-Corning revealed that most Americans believe transportation and industry to be the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, in truth the largest contributor is buildings! Buildings use 40% of our energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The number is even higher in Minnesota – 60 to 80 percent! The most cost effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to better insulate buildings. Yes, this is even better than driving a hybrid vehicle, but it’s certainly not as hip.
The most obvious reason to better insulate your home is to reduce your heating and cooling bills – especially here in Minnesota. Adding insulation to attic spaces is often a project that even unskilled homeowners can tackle, and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. Homeowners will typically see a payback in five to ten years. Adding insulation to poorly insulated walls is also a good thing to do and will surely help to save on heating and cooling costs, but this not as cost effective as adding insulation to an open attic area, as this will often require a professional to blow insulation in to the walls.
Arguably the most important reason to better insulate your home is to make it more comfortable. Even if a thermostat says it’s 70 degrees inside the home, poorly insulated walls will make a room feel much colder as the heat from your body radiates out to the relatively cold walls. In older houses with uneven heat, you may even have parts of the house that never warm up enough. I can tell you from experience that insulation makes an incredible difference in the comfort of a home. I live in a one-and-a-half story home with a finished upper level that used to be so cold in the winter that I couldn’t even use it. After re-insulating the upper level last year, I no longer need to heat the upper level! Enough heat rises up from the rest of the house to keep the upper floor so warm that I can shut off all the heat registers and it’s still comfortable.
There are many more reasons to properly insulate your home, but I’ll just mention one more that you’re surely aware of if you live in Minnesota; ice dams. While ice dams are a large subject on their own, suffice to say that lack of insulation can lead to large accumulations of ice at the edges of roofs that cause leaks in the home and destroy gutters.
In my next blog I’ll talk about how to determine whether more insulation is necessary, and what critical steps need to be taken before adding insulation. Hint: the photos throughout this blog all show homes with major room for improvement!
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections
Related Post: Photos Of Problems With Explanations
