Damn These Ice Dams!
It's been a crazy winter this year. Weekly snow storms, endless shoveling and collapsing roofs all over the news making everyone worry. As I understand it, the weight of the snow is not an issue for the typical pitched roof home. There is a potential problem on the roof however... ice dams. All those icicles hanging from the edge of the roof are pretty but they're also a bad sign. What they indicate is that ice is forming at the edges of your roof. This ice forms because the temperature at the edge of the roof is colder than the rest of the roof. This may mean that you need more insulation in your attic to keep heat from rising up and creating this temperature variance. Ideally your attic is close to the outside temperature. Although I've been hearing that this year the conditions have been extreme enough that even homes with very well insulated attics are not immune to this problem. So, what happens when you get a build up of ice along the edge of your roof? The snow o...