Beat the Freeze: Essential Tips to Prevent Ice Damming in Your Home
Ice damming is a critical issue that primarily affects homes in northern climates during winter, and understanding its formation and prevention is essential for homeowners. This week on the Thoughts from the Crawlspace podcast, Jamie Miller, CEO of Gold Key Home Inspections, Inc. delves into the mechanics of ice damming, explaining how snow accumulation on roofs can lead to melting and refreezing at the eaves, resulting in water backing up under shingles and causing potential damage. Learn about the key causes of ice dams, including heat loss inside the attic, poor insulation, and inadequate ventilation. Jamie shares practical tips and solutions for dealing with existing ice dams, highlighting the importance of professional help and safe materials to mitigate damage.
Connect with Gold Key Inspection Services!
Episode Highlights
- Ice damming occurs when warm air from inside the home melts snow on the roof, leading to water backup and potential damage.
- Proper insulation and ventilation in the attic can significantly reduce the risk of ice dams forming during winter.
- Signs of ice damming include icicles hanging from the roof and water stains on interior ceilings.
- Regularly cleaning gutters and ensuring they are properly sloped helps prevent water buildup and ice formation.
- If ice dams form, avoid DIY removal methods to prevent damage; use ice melt or hire a professional.
Timestamps
(00:00) Understanding Ice Damming
(03:04) Ice Damming: Causes and Effects
(09:24) Ventilation and Insulation Solutions for Ice Dams
(13:44) Addressing Ice Dams and Roof Design Issues
(19:10) Understanding Ice Dams and Their Prevention
Transcript
Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.
Speaker A:Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way.
Speaker A:Your path to success starts here, and welcome everybody back to another episode.
Speaker A:Today we are going to talk about a topic that really only occurs one time of year, and mainly only in the northern climates, and that would be ice damming.
Speaker A:So what is ice damming?
Speaker A:How does it form?
Speaker A:What can you do about it?
Speaker A:And what might be some signs that you're having problems with this?
Speaker A:Well, one of the first signs that you might be having a problem with this is simply you see icicles hanging from the edge of your roof.
Speaker A:Ice damming occurs simply when, for example, we get some snow.
Speaker A:We've got some Snow last night, 4 inches, 5 inches.
Speaker A:Depending where you're at, it can even occur with a couple of inches.
Speaker A:But you get snow on your roof and then that snow melts.
Speaker A:There's a couple of factors that cause that to melt, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
Speaker A:But anyways, you get snow melting, it runs down your roof, it runs to the eaves, and depending on how wide of an overhang you have, or if you have gutters or not, it will refreeze because the areas that the eaves don't get heat loss, they don't get heat working from the inside, melting the snow coming down.
Speaker A:So it refreezes and creates like an ice dam right there.
Speaker A:Thus the topic that we're talking about today.
Speaker A:So when more snow melts, more water runs down, and now it can't get off the roof because there's a dam right there at the edge and it can't go over it.
Speaker A:And so it backs up under the shingles.
Speaker A:So one thing you may not know about shingles is they are designed to shed the water off the roof.
Speaker A:They're not designed to see, seal out water.
Speaker A:And so if you get water backing up, it's going to go under the shingles.
Speaker A:It's going to force its way through everything you got on that roof and seep into the attic, seep into the living area and can create unsightly stains.
Speaker A:It can look sometimes like it's, you know, raining down your window on the inside, so to speak.
Speaker A:But one thing that we'll see on home inspections is we'll see signs of this that you have staining up along the, usually the intersection where exterior walls meet the Ceiling.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:And we'll see.
Speaker A:Oh, it could be in one room, could be in multiple rooms.
Speaker A:And the weird thing about this is that sometimes it might happen once and it might not happen for another five years.
Speaker A:And the reason is all depends on the type of winter that we're having.
Speaker A:You know, there's some winters where we hardly get any snow.
Speaker A:And so you're not going to have a problem with it, even if you haven't fixed anything or changed anything.
Speaker A:Whereas if you get a winter where we have a lot of snow and there's a lot of freezing and thawing and melting and running and so forth, you're going to have a chance of having a lot of issues with this and repeatedly.
Speaker A:So let's talk today a little bit about first of all, what it is, what forms it.
Speaker A:So we talked about the mechanics of it.
Speaker A:Why does your snow melt on the roof?
Speaker A:Sounds like a silly question, but there's really two ways that snow melts on your roof.
Speaker A:Sunlight.
Speaker A:And obviously, if it gets warm.
Speaker A:If it gets warm and it's melting, this is not as big a deal because it's warm all over and it's not going to refreeze at the eaves.
Speaker A:But this is more that if we still really have freezing temperatures, but you're getting direct sunlight, which can melt the snow.
Speaker A:And probably more importantly is heat loss from inside the attic.
Speaker A:Heat loss from inside the attic comes from a variety of ways.
Speaker A:Number one, you're heating your house, that heat rises and it is going to escape through your ceiling, through any openings, through any lights, especially recessed lighting, through any pipes around, any pipes that may have openings, aren't sealed quite properly.
Speaker A:And also, it could come from just, you know, where they.
Speaker A:When they constructed the house, they didn't.
Speaker A:They didn't seal the intersections between the support wall and the adjoining walls and things.
Speaker A:Every little gap like that can create a problem.
Speaker A:So all that heat loss combines, it goes up through the insulation, depending on the amount you have, which will be very important here in a minute to basically warm up the bottom of your roof, and then that will melt the snow and as it runs down.
Speaker A:So that's probably the most pressing issue with regard to melting snow on your roof, is heat loss from inside the house.
Speaker A:You've heard in recent years the big push toward getting less and less, or getting more and more, rather insulation and reducing the heat loss and air sealing your attic and so forth.
Speaker A:And that's really one reason for that, obviously, is lower energy bills.
Speaker A:But another reason, especially in cold climates, is to reduce the potential for ice dams.
Speaker A:So the process is basically this.
Speaker A:The snow accumulates on the roof, heat from the home melts the snow melt, water flows down when it reaches the eaves, where it refreezes, creates an ice dam, and then water backs up behind that and seeps into the house.
Speaker A:So what are some causes of it?
Speaker A:We know why the snow melts.
Speaker A:That's not.
Speaker A:That doesn't take an advanced degree to figure that out.
Speaker A:But what are some causes of why we're getting so much heat loss?
Speaker A:In the 50s and 60s, it was fairly uncommon to have recessed lighting many times, even into the 90s.
Speaker A:In some construction, you didn't have any overhead lights into the ceiling.
Speaker A:They may be attached to the ceiling, but they weren't recessed into the ceiling.
Speaker A: s and the: Speaker A:And we went to a lot of recessed lighting.
Speaker A:And especially the initial ones were really.
Speaker A:They got really hot.
Speaker A:And so when the light gets hot, number one, just the heat from that light rises.
Speaker A:And also now you got a hole in your ceiling.
Speaker A:And I've seen on inspections, you'll see kitchens that have 16 recessed lights in them, and that's just bonkers.
Speaker A:Think of all the heat that you create in your kitchen now.
Speaker A:You got 16 openings or whatever going up into the attic, and that's a lot of heat loss and can create a lot of problems.
Speaker A:One thing that we see, even if we don't have an ice dam, is we'll see blackened sheeting on the underside of the roof.
Speaker A:And that's from condensation.
Speaker A:You got cold on the top and you got heat rising from the bottom.
Speaker A:When hot and cold meet, they condense and you get moisture.
Speaker A:And that's why you get the blackened sheathing, especially if you don't have proper ventilation to dry that out.
Speaker A:So a couple of causes.
Speaker A:One, recessed lighting.
Speaker A:Two, the ceiling just has a lot more openings than it used to.
Speaker A:And so any heat from your house, any, you know, steam from a shower, even exhaust fans that exhaust into the attic or even through the attic, that can create problems as well, because that's adding more heat, adding more moisture up there to the attic area.
Speaker A:And this is maybe not noticeable in the summer, but it's going to be very noticeable when you have extremely cold winter, a cold surface of the roof.
Speaker A:And so that's another factor that helps to create these ice dams that just has to be addressed if you're going to solve the problem.
Speaker A:And ultimately, it comes down to what's stopping the heat loss.
Speaker A:You can have all these openings, you can have recessed lights.
Speaker A:You, you have to have a good amount of insulation.
Speaker A:Most modern construction standards require insulation around R50.
Speaker A:R stands for resistance value.
Speaker A:And it's talking about how it resists the transfer of heat from one area to the other.
Speaker A:R50, if you're using blown cellulose insulation, is going to be roughly 12 to 14 inches of insulation.
Speaker A:If you use fiberglass insulation that does not have, even the blown fiberglass, does not have the R value per inch that cellulose has.
Speaker A:So you might see 15 to 18, even 20 inches of insulation for about the same R value.
Speaker A:And so, you know, fiberglass insulation, especially the blown, it still transfers air.
Speaker A:It still allows heat loss.
Speaker A:All insulation allows heat loss eventually.
Speaker A:But it's about what do you do to stop it?
Speaker A:All right, what do you do to slow the escape?
Speaker A:And so if you go in your attic and you have multiple recessed lights and you have three inches of the old fiberglass roll insulation or bat insulation, you're going to have a lot of heat loss.
Speaker A:So one thing you can do is get what we'll talk about in a little bit.
Speaker A:But adding insulation is definitely a first step.
Speaker A:But that's not the only step.
Speaker A:All right, so how do you prevent these ice dams?
Speaker A:Well, in some cases, they are more difficult than others, but the most common, as we just mentioned, lack of insulation, lack of ventilation.
Speaker A:Let's talk about ventilation first.
Speaker A:So ideal ventilation on a house.
Speaker A:On a typical gable style roof, you'll have the peak and you should have a ridge vent along that peak.
Speaker A:And then you should have soffit vents at the eaves.
Speaker A:And in the summer, air will rise because it heats.
Speaker A:So enters at the top, bottom, goes out the top.
Speaker A:And that natural cooling cycle will keep it drying out and keep moisture from accumulating up there in the winter.
Speaker A:It's opposite.
Speaker A:Cold air falls or drops, so it's going to enter at the top and come out the bottom.
Speaker A:Either way, you're getting natural airflow.
Speaker A:You're not using mechanical vents to force air through the attic, which creates unnecessary negative pressure on your house.
Speaker A:This really is an effective way to ventilate your attic and really is a big factor in limiting the amount of damage that moisture can do to your attic.
Speaker A:And that's why we, we pointed out so much on inspections.
Speaker A:That's why building consultants recommend it so much.
Speaker A:And unfortunately, that's a skill that's lacking in a lot of roofers.
Speaker A:They'll put on a new roof, but they won't do their ventilation properly.
Speaker A:And so you can, you can, you know, lose your shingles quicker, they wear out quicker, the building envelopes just hotter because you don't get natural cooling.
Speaker A:But before I go on that trail too far, let's get back to the ventilation.
Speaker A:You want to have ideal ventilation.
Speaker A:If you don't, it might look like this.
Speaker A:You might have some soffit vents here and there along the eaves.
Speaker A:And you might have some of those box vents maybe three or four feet apart near the top of your roof.
Speaker A:Those are better than nothing, but they're often not adequate to do what needs done.
Speaker A:So if you've got a problem with ice dams, you got a problem with condensation on the underside of your sheathing.
Speaker A:First step, in my opinion, is ventilation.
Speaker A:Second step, add insulation.
Speaker A:Now, let me back up.
Speaker A:If you're at a point where you're renovating or you don't have much insulation to begin with, my recommendation would be this.
Speaker A:Have someone remove all of the insulation, clean out that attic completely, and then get to work air sealing your attic before you insulate it.
Speaker A:Air sealing can be somebody coming in and spray foaming a skim coat on the top of that ceiling.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:You can put special insulated boxes around recessed lights.
Speaker A:You can replace old recessed lights that lose and use a lot of heat with LED lights that are pretty much self sealing.
Speaker A:All right, it's still a hole in the ceiling, but they're designed to be a lot less drafty than the old type of recessed lights.
Speaker A:So remove the insulation, air seal your attic wherever there's a, there's an opening.
Speaker A:And it could be that you need to hire somebody to do an energy audit of your house.
Speaker A:This can be done through a blower door test where they come in and put your home under negative pressure to see where the air escapes.
Speaker A:And you're going to find it everywhere.
Speaker A:It's going to be in your walls.
Speaker A:But purposes of this podcast, we're talking about your ceiling.
Speaker A:And then a professional can go in and seal whatever needs sealed to keep heat loss to a minimum or air loss to a minimum.
Speaker A:All right, so once that's done, then let's insulate, let's add more.
Speaker A:Let's put an R50 up there.
Speaker A:Now, adding insulation without the proper ventilation is a recipe for a problem.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:If you just blow a bunch of insulation in there and block up the eaves and you're not going to get any airflow, it's not going to solve the problem.
Speaker A:It'll make it worse.
Speaker A:So you want to make sure if you are doing this, whether you hire somebody or you do it yourself, that you put in those baffles at the eaves that have channels in then that allow airflow to come up even if you have, you know, 18 inches of insulation packed in there.
Speaker A:So those are a couple of ways to help stop ice dams from occurring is air seal your attic, add insulation and improve the ventilation.
Speaker A:Now what about if you do all that and you still have a problem with ice dams?
Speaker A:There are occasion depending on the shape of the roof, the design.
Speaker A:Some of the more quote fancy style roofs with a lot of pitches and peaks and twists and turns are more susceptible to this.
Speaker A:You might have three areas of a roof draining onto one little area.
Speaker A:Sometimes they almost look triangular.
Speaker A:Well, they'll come like this and they'll come to a point and you might have a little 4 inch section for water to get off of.
Speaker A:Well, when you get snow built up there and it freezes or refreezes, now you got a damn and it's blocking water from a big portion of the roof.
Speaker A:So sometimes just the design of the roof is flawed and that's a problem that really can't be fixed just with insulation and ventilation.
Speaker A:In that case, you're going to need to go to a third or a fourth step and use heating cables.
Speaker A:You've probably seen these on roofs.
Speaker A:Sometimes people put them in their gutters, they will put them on pipes that are exposed or in crawl spaces.
Speaker A:It's just a way to keep areas warm so there can't be any snow develop even on there.
Speaker A:It can snow all at once, but these heating cables are going to be warm and they're going to melt that snow before it has a chance to stay there, before it has a chance to create ice.
Speaker A:And those are a way to help this problem.
Speaker A:If you have a design of your roof that this isn't fixed by ventilation or insulation improvements.
Speaker A:So obviously this is going to increase your electric bill.
Speaker A:This is going to be something that's going to probably have to stay on all winter.
Speaker A:Sometimes they may have a sensor on them that they'll, they'll turn on in certain temperatures and turn off, you know, when it's a little warmer.
Speaker A:But regardless, it's something that is an option and I would recommend it.
Speaker A:If you're having problems with ice dams, nothing else working.
Speaker A:Maybe there's just one silly area on your roof that you get huge icicles on.
Speaker A:Well, that's a, an area where you're going to want to get some of that put on professionally installed.
Speaker A:You don't want to just take clamps up there and start hammering them into your roof because then you have holes in your roof and that creates a bigger problem.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:So heat tape can go a long way.
Speaker A:Heating cables.
Speaker A:Another area that you can improve that, whether you do it or somebody else does it, that you might not think about is your gutters.
Speaker A:You need to clean those gutters out.
Speaker A:We've just ended with all the leaves falling.
Speaker A:They clog up gutters, all that debris.
Speaker A:Now your rainwater doesn't drain properly.
Speaker A:If snow melts, it's not going to drain properly and it just creates a big old block of ice in those fountain spouts and gutters.
Speaker A:Worst case scenario, it can rip your gutter right off.
Speaker A:Because they aren't designed to hold a chunk of ice all winter.
Speaker A:Not really.
Speaker A:And so you want to do cleaning, you want to make sure they're sloped properly.
Speaker A:You want to make sure that they're draining and getting water away from the house through the downspouts, through some extensions.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Because all that can back up.
Speaker A:Funny stuff happens in the winter if you get a little water near the foundation and it refreezes.
Speaker A:Now you got ice and now you have nowhere for water to drain.
Speaker A:If you get more rain, and that's where sometimes you haven't had water in your basement in 15 years.
Speaker A:But you get those right conditions where we get extreme thawing in a record fashion, maybe refreezing and then a ton of rain.
Speaker A:That's a good way to get water in your basement.
Speaker A:I know we're talking about ice dams today, but you can get ice buildup or dam like build ups around the foundation as well.
Speaker A:And a lot of times that comes from poor grading or poor gutters.
Speaker A:So make sure your gutters are good.
Speaker A:Make sure your grading is good.
Speaker A:You don't want to have low spots where water runs directly toward the foundation if you can help it.
Speaker A:And those will all help you in contributing to limiting ice damming in your house.
Speaker A:So a couple of other things to note.
Speaker A:How to deal with ice dams after they form, avoid do it yourself ice removal.
Speaker A:Don't get up there with something and start hacking away on the ice that's going to damage your shingles.
Speaker A:It could cause you to fall off the roof.
Speaker A:We don't want that.
Speaker A:Use ice melt or calcium chloride.
Speaker A:And this is something that is safe for shingles.
Speaker A:Now make sure when you buy it, it is safe for shingles.
Speaker A:But throw it on there just like you would melt ice on the Sidewalk.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:And you don't want to get something that is going to be degrading, but that's a better option than going up there and start hacking away with something that would damage your shingles or hire a professional.
Speaker A:Another thing to think about is if you have damage from ice dams, call your insurance company.
Speaker A:They may help with repairs.
Speaker A:I don't know about improvements, but usually any water damage coming from the roof down is going to be covered by insurance.
Speaker A:And so something to look into before you go forking out a lot of dollars, because if you get ice dams and it's a chronic issue and it doesn't dry out and it runs down the wall, what else do you have the potential for?
Speaker A:Mold.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And if you get mold in the wall, then you have a multi thousand dollar problem for fixing instead of a relatively small problem.
Speaker A:If we got a little leakage and we take care of it right away.
Speaker A:So a couple of myths about ice dams.
Speaker A:Just to kind of follow up on what we talked about earlier.
Speaker A:Ice dams.
Speaker A:Myth number one, ice dams are inevitable in cold weather climates.
Speaker A:Not necessarily.
Speaker A:You always have the potential.
Speaker A:But as we, if you take the steps we talked about earlier, you should be okay.
Speaker A:Number two, more roof insulation is always the answer.
Speaker A:Well, we talked about how that's a factor, but not always the answer and sometimes can make it worse if you don't combine it with the proper ventilation.
Speaker A:Number three, ice dams only happen on older homes.
Speaker A:Not true at all.
Speaker A:In fact, some of the newer homes with the fancy roofs have more problems.
Speaker A:Older homes, depending on the way the ventilation is set up and if they added recessed lights with low insulation, yes, you're going to have more problems, especially in some of the really older homes, maybe 100 years old, they didn't typically have venting at eaves.
Speaker A:They might have a gable vent or they might have just a box vent at the very top.
Speaker A:And this can lead to problems.
Speaker A:No doubt about it.
Speaker A:It has the potential.
Speaker A:But it's a myth that they automatically have more problems.
Speaker A:It's more about how it was built and what they did about it.
Speaker A:So just a couple of key points.
Speaker A:In conclusion, ice dams are preventable.
Speaker A:They're caused by heat loss, poor insulation, and inadequate ventilation.
Speaker A:Prevention is the key.
Speaker A:It's like you don't ever want to go through cancer, so let's prevent it to the best that we can.
Speaker A:You don't want to go through the process of replacing your roof or repairing, you know, damaged materials.
Speaker A:Let's just prevent it to begin with.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:And if dams form, don't attempt to remove them yourself.
Speaker A:You can call somebody.
Speaker A:You can use some kind of ice melt, something that's gentle on your shingles and get it to be removed that way.
Speaker A:So I would encourage you to take these tips to heart before winter gets into full blown mode.
Speaker A:It's fall now, technically, believe it or not, we've still had some snow.
Speaker A:And if you have a problem with ice dams or have a question about it, we'd love to help you.
Speaker A:We're not going to fix anything for you, but we'd glad to point you in the right direction, give you some advice.
Speaker A:And that's what we're here for.
Speaker A:To help you out, to give you tips on your home, to make your home a safer place, a more fun place to live.
Speaker A:So thanks for listening to today.
Speaker A:Make sure you share this episode, send it to everybody you know, especially if it was valuable for you today.
Speaker A:And thanks for listening.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening.
Speaker A:This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Speaker A:For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.
