For homeowners in frigid climates, ice dams are a serious concern. They can cause significant damage to your roof and let water into your house when they form underneath the shingles. The moisture can then back up into your home's interior, where it can cause mold to grow, wood to rot, and subtle structural problems to develop. To avoid all of those headaches, you need to understand what ice dams are and how to deal with them. That includes not only the proactive measures you can take to prevent them but also how to safely remove any that form without causing harm to yourself or your roof.
The key to stopping ice dams in your gutters is insulation and ventilation. To prevent the attic from being too warm (too much insulation has the same effect, without allowing the space to breathe), and to keep the roof (especially the eaves) cold, you need good ventilation. In most modern houses, this can be accomplished by using gable end vents and soffit vents on either side of the house. If the roof has a ridge, you can also have a ridge vent. An advantage of using a ridge vent is that it also helps keep the attic cool in the summer. If there is a clear, cold pathway across the top of the attic to the top of the roof, the roof will stay cold, and if the roof stays cold, the eaves stay cold, too.
Promptly and safely addressing the appearance of ice dams on one's roof is of utmost importance. The classic remedy of "raking the roof" can yield results, but much caution must be exercised. The snow must be removed from the roof in a very controlled manner to avoid endangering the snow removal technician or damaging the shingles. For more immediate relief, one can make use of calcium chloride ice melt products in a manner that creates channels through the dam. This technique allows the water trapped behind the dam to escape. Of course, one could always call in the professionals to remove the dams, but roofers don't come cheap, and ice dams usually don't grace our roofs until midwinter when the weather is at its harshest. So how to prevent this situation from arising in the first place?
