The joys of home ownership

[jducoeur]

We love the house dearly, but I think the honeymoon is over. This week, it developed its first real Problem.

Far as I can tell, the issue is ice dams. It looks like the front gutters have frozen solid, and they don't get much sun; the upper roof, however, does get a bit. So the melt comes down the roof, hits the gutter, can't get through it, and backs up into the flashing. Along most of the front, this isn't too terrible: it comes out the back of the flashing and runs down as icicles. Unfortunately, though, one of the things under that flashing is that lovely front bay window of ours.

So the past few days have been bucket-focused. Fortunately, the drips are well-behaved: there are about five distinct spots where it is coming through, and we've put big buckets under all of them. No significant damage from the drips yet, but the situation can't persist in the long run.

If the weather predictions come true, I suspect the problem will ease on Sunday -- it should get warm enough to melt the gutters, at which point I expect the worst of the problem to go away. But come spring, we'll have to look into a better solution. I suspect that will involve restructuring of that gutter, but I'm not sure of the details yet.

Oh, well. Compared to the old house (whose roof got ripped off in a hurricane, producing one of the worst weeks for me ever), this is pretty minor stuff. It's still a nice house, just showing the warts now that we've been in it a while...

Comments

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

There are fixes for ice dams, however most of them involve fixing when they aren't there.

1) Usually they are caused by your roof getting to warm due to heat or air leakage through the attic. The fix is to go up in the attic and seal _every_ penetrations with either Great Stuff(TM) or, for larger holes, foam board and Great Stuff. I don't recommend the latex variety. Use fireproof foam board and fireproof caulk. around the chimney. Once that is done put as much insulation as you can up there. (see caveats in point 2) The wet insulation all needs to be removed, and probably discarded.

2) Another problem could be if the roof isn't getting enough venting to keep it cool. Ideally there should be a vent in each bay at the soffit (the horizontal board under the eaves), and at least 1/2 as much (in square inches) at the peak of the roof. Either in the form of large vents in the gable ends, or a continuous one under the peak shingles.

3) Until you can get that done, you should rake the snow off the roof at least 4-5 feet up. Right now, if you can make even a little path for the water, it will help keep it outside.

4) Your roof is probably NOT ruined. A hot summer sun and some adjustment should get your shingles back where they were. _If_ you can dry the sheathing.

5) Do whatever you can to get it dry right away. Pull out the wet insulation, put a fan in the attic to dry it out, whatever. Nothing kills a house faster than water.

6) You may not need gutters. You need to keep the water away from the foundation, but there are other ways to do that. They should be mounted below the line (i.e. the tangent) of the roof.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Can he have heat tape put on as a stopgap, or does that have to be done in the warm season, too?

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

Not really. Currently (my visualization is that) there is nothing to attach it to. There is ice and water. After you get rid of those, the problem is gone, and a snow rake should prevent re-ocurrence. Getting rid of it is the trick. Also if the problem is (as he says) the gutter, rather than the edge of the roof, heat tape would make it worse rather than better.

Not to mention the horror of the idea of heating the whole outdoors with electricity...

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Gak. No heat tape. Fix the problem - attic letting heat out when it shouldn't -what he said.

[jducoeur]

Usually they are caused by your roof getting to warm due to heat or air leakage through the attic.

Our first instinct, but it doesn't appear to be the case -- there is no sign of drippage in the attic itself, only *below* the attic. This seems to be something rather different than an ordinary ice dam. (Not certain yet, but the signs indicate that it really is a gutter issue, not a standard dam.)

And yes, it may be that the gutter is optional in that spot -- we'll have to think about that. (But in that case, we need something to keep the water from splashing directly down onto the bay window...)

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

"there is no sign of drippage in the attic itself, only *below* the attic."

That might still be consistent with a regular ice dam, as the spot below the attic is where the freeze occurs. And water can be tricky. But you, having seen it, are a better judge.

"we need something to keep the water from splashing directly down onto the bay window.."

Do you? The roof on the bay window should be ok. But if you do, something simple like a rain diverter, like they put over doorways, might work.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, that's an option I'm considering. But in general, I'll need to give the whole thing a better examination once the snow is cleared enough...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Our first instinct, but it doesn't appear to be the case -- there is no sign of drippage in the attic itself, only *below* the attic.

Well, yes. The snow melts high on the roof, and flows down (under the snow blanket) to the gutter, and encounters a dam there, and backs up under the flashing and shingles - and from there it finds the path of least resistance. If you stop the snow from melting high up, it cannot flow down to the gutter.

Which is not to say that your problem isn't with the gutter, but that a normal ice dam does not necessarily leak into the attic proper, so that isn't in and of itself telling.

[jducoeur]

Yeah -- that had begun to occur to me as a possibility. Given that the drippage seems to be continuing during the night (albeit much more slowly), that supports this diagnosis -- something has to be causing the melting, and it seems like that almost has to be attic heat. I'll need to look into that.

Pain in the ass if so, since we *are* doing what we thought was supposed to keep the attic cool. (The house came with an odd homebrew box that fits over the attic ladder, specifically to prevent heat leakage, but this may indicate that that's enough enough to prevent the problem by itself.)

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

To add a little to this:

a) if you don't know about roof rakes, they're roughly 25' long aluminum rakes designed for removing snow from the roof where it could form an ice dam. My apologies if you do know about them.

b) electric heating cable *can* be useful, once the dam is gone, to prevent reoccurence, by running it THROUGH the gutter AND downspout. You can plug it in only when needed.

c) IFF you wind up needing to do roof work (not clear), then you should consider snow&ice shield, a rubber matt that goes under the shingles and prevents water from getting IN in the event of an ice dam. It's not infallible, though -- it's failed me in one part of my roof, presumably because it wasn't quite correctly installed.

d) lots of roofs don't have adequate venting, and the recommended amount of venting has gone up a lot in the last 12 years or so.

[jducoeur]

if you don't know about roof rakes

I'm vaguely aware of roof rakes, but I don't know that I've ever actually seen one. Something for me to consider, although I'd need to take a look at the angles and make sure it's actually plausible that even 25' is long enough. (The angle of the roof is a bit shallow, and it's two stories up, so I might have to stand a fair ways back to get a good enough angle.)

electric heating cable *can* be useful, once the dam is gone, to prevent reoccurence, by running it THROUGH the gutter AND downspout.

We actually have this in one of the *back* gutters of the house -- indeed, a fairly ridiculous length of it, judging from how many times it seems to loop around in the gutter. It came with the house, but I haven't actually used it much because it makes me a little suspicious: it draws so much current that I can actually see the lights dim, which smells like a possible short to me. (Although it may just be that it's way too *much* heat cable for the purpose.)

heat tapes and roof rakes

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

It may be the right amount of heat tape, and draw a lot of current simply because it's long. You need a lot of it, because it doesn't do much -- each length of "tape" will melt a small channel in its immediate vicinity. If it's up and turned on BEFORE the icedam weather, then that's enough to keep a dam from forming. If you turn it on AFTER the dam has formed, then it can reduce the ill effects, but not eliminate them. At least, that's my understanding.

So, it might make sense to turn that one that's installed on now, if you are seeing a possible dam in it's gutter.

I have a roof rake, and will post a picture of it later, at mhb.wiglaf.org/TEMP/roofrake/ It's not there yet.

Mine is actually closer to 17' than to 25', nor that I've gotten it out and looked at it. It works on my first floor eaves. I have to stand about 10' from the house to use it, as I recall, and it helps to be able to move back and forth closer and further from the house.

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

One of our downspouts freezes solid if it gets any excuse at all. I mentioned the roof rake concept to chiefoperator with concern about how I could get at the roof and he said he thought I'd have to stand on a ladder, not something I'm happy about in icy conditions. I can't even see our roof without standing in the neighbors' front yards and looking down the side of my house because the houses are that close together. Is a roof rake something I can use? Is he right that a ladder would be involved (in which case he probably won't be at all happy letting me try).

There are days when I really wonder why we even have gutters and downspouts.

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned above, my roofrake is about 17' long; it reaches my first floor eaves, maybe some a little higher than that (I have a complex roof). One *could* buy two of them -- each is 4 4' sections, plus the rake part -- to make a longer rake, but it's pretty darn awkward to handle as-is, and requires a fair bit of upper-body strength as well. I'm not at all sure I could handle a 34' rake, and you're a tad smaller than I am.

I would NOT want to handle one from on top of a ladder.

The first time I had to sweep snow from an icedam location, I used a regular ladder, leaned against the gutter. In the spring, I had to replace the gutter, which I had squashed with the ladder.

As for why we have gutters and downspouts, some early houses don't. It's not at all clear that all houses need them. There are a number of other products out there that will divert some or all of the water away from the foundation.

If it's your DOWNSPOUT freezing, rather than your gutter, perhaps heat tape would help. Also, perhaps your downspout has some sort of partial blockage?

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

I think it must be something like 30' from my driveway straight up to the edge of my roof (two and a half stories?) so it doesn't sound like roof rake is in my immediate future. Hooray? And if chiefoperator gets sufficiently concerned, he can climb the ladder and see what's what up there, which I gather he would prefer over having me up the side of our house anyway.

The worst downspout is not really entirely intact, I think, and should probably be removed or replaced in the spring. It's on a problematic corner of the house that really should be renovated/rebuilt anyway but we never quite seem to get around to it. It has Issues. I will keep the heat tape in mind as a stopgap because there is something vaguely scary about having a downspout that seems to full of ice, at least as far up as we can reach without a ladder.

Aside.

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

All houses need maintenance. No house should be faulted for that. If there was an underlying design issue which caused this problem, that can be blamed, and fixed. Blame the morons who screwed up, not the house.

It is nice when you do the maintenance _before_ the issue gets to the leaking water stage, but that often isn't always possible.

Wishing you many happy years together.

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

My last several posts have been primers on attic and roof insulation. You might want to click through some of the links.

There are many large roofing outfits that will do roof work in the winter. I used Superior Roofing (Littleton MA. I think) last year. Got their name via Angie's list. If you are willing to pay, you don't have to wait for spring. The key words to get their attention are "I have an ACTIVE leak."

[cellio]

Ouch. I had that same problem in the bay window in my first house, too. Fortunately, once the gutter was fixed it stayed fixed (at least for the 6 or 7 years following that I still owned it). I hope yours is similarly easy.

[jducoeur]

Thanks...

[its-just-me.livejournal.com]

Dan and I invested the extra cash in Gutter Helmet brand gutters. huge difference. Lifetime guarantee, national brand.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

There are also firms which will come and shovel off your roof in the winter, which might well chip off your dam wherever its location, so you can start on your own next snowfall with the roof rake.