Ice Dams Can Cause Serious Damage to Your Roof.
Today was a beautiful, sunny, 68 degree November day here in Wooster Ohio. While you are out enjoying the sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures, the last thing on your mind may be snow, ice-dams and whether or not you need insulation in your home. But don’t be fooled by the fact that Mother Nature seems to have forgotten winter is coming – my bet is she is just teasing us – and soon, we are going to see those first flakes fall, and then the fun of wintertime weather will begin.
You may have done some work here and there to ready your house for winter – checking your gutters, putting storm windows up if you need them, checking seals and making sure the snow-blower is in order. Take a few minutes to think back to last winter, though. Where were the problem areas around your home? Did you have drafts around the windows? Did you have ice on the sidewalk or icicles hanging from your gutters?
If you had icicles hanging from your gutters anywhere on your home, this could signify a significant problem, and may indicate an area of damage to your roof.
Icicles usually indicate that you have what are called ice-dams, and an ice dam is basically a wall of ice that forms on your roof, generally around the gutters or soffit. An ice-dam gets its name, though, because it actually forms a small dam on your roof, holding back water from draining properly. The reservoir it forms can cause damage – it can cause your roof to leak, damaging your insulation, your walls, ceilings, wiring, and even causing mold to grow.
Ice dams tend to form when there is snowfall coupled with improper ventilation in your attic. Heat from the living areas of your home rises into the attic, and melts snow on your roof. The snow melt starts running down your roof, but suddenly finds a colder spot below and guess what? It freezes again. This thaw/freeze/thaw pattern really wreaks havoc on a roof, as the ice gets into the space between the shingles, in the soffit and the gutters and any other valley it can find, and expands and contracts repeatedly.
Making sure that your gutters are clean is one way to help prevent ice dams. You will also want to make sure that your gutters are draining properly and that there are no cracks or leaky seams in them. In the past, people have actually removed their gutters in order to prevent an ice dam or to remove one, however, this just transfers the damage from your roof to your foundation, as water that is not properly routed away from your foundation will cause damage as well.
Read Part 2 on Ice Dams and Insulation Tomorrow on How to Remove and Prevent Ice Dams!
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