If you are a Minnesota homeowner or business owner you just have to plan on dealing with ice dams one way or another. They’re a fact of life in any cold climate.

However, if you take the right steps you may not have to pay for ice dam removal services every single winter. Here are two great steps you can take to vastly reduce your chances of having to deal with ice dams.

Step #1: Get an Energy Audit

Though it is possible for the warmth of the sun alone to cause ice dam formation, this isn’t the case as often as you might think.

Often, factors inside of the building are causing the roof to get hot. One or more of the following is probably true:

  • You have inadequate insulation, which means heat is passing through your ceilings into your attic space.
  • Your attic space has insufficient ventilation, which means heat cannot escape from your attic.
  • Heat is finding its way into your attic via what we call “attic bypasses,” small cracks, gaps or holes in your walls or ceilings. These are often found around outlets, light switches, smoke detectors, attic access doors, vent pipes, in fact anywhere the walls or ceilings have been penetrated.
  • The heat from your bath and kitchen exhaust fans is being vented into your attic instead of outside of the home.

An energy audit will tell you which of these problems you are dealing with. You can then work with the company who performs this audit to get these issues addressed. Solving these problems won’t stop you from getting the 10% to 20% of ice dams which really are caused by the sun, but it probably will stop you from having to deal with the other 80% of the ice dams you’ve been dealing with.

Step #2: Consider Upgrading Your Roof

If you want a roof that darn near prevents ice dams altogether, call your roofer and ask him about metal roofs!

Metal roofs are wonderful because they provide an ice dam with very few places where it might gain a foothold. Just about the only thing that ice has to hold onto on a metal roof is a series of raised metal screws which hold the metal roof sheathing in place. For the most part, those screws do not provide a sufficient surface for most ice dams to work with.

Instead, snow and ice will typically slide off of your roof before an ice dam gets a chance to form, especially if your metal roof has a nice, steep pitch.

 

This is not to say metal roofing never gets ice dams. It’s still possible, especially if your roof is has a very low pitch. It’s also possible if your roof has snow-stops, which you may have installed as a safety precaution to protect whatever and whomever might be in the path of snow or ice which comes sliding off of the roof.  These snow-stops are great for preventing damage caused by falling sheets of snow, but not so good at preventing ice dams.

However, even when a metal roof does get ice dams they typically do not cause leaks.

Why? Because the water just sits on top of the metal. There’s really nowhere for it to go unless a rubber washer has gone bad on one of the roofing screws. Even then, you’re looking at a pretty small potential leak point. Compare that to the hundreds of potential leak points you find on an asphalt roof, where water can easily work its way under any or all of the shingles (all of which are nailed into place – creating even more leak points).

This is not to say you won’t want to get the ice dam removed…those puppies can really book when they break off of a metal roof, and they really do crush whatever or whomever is unlucky enough to be in their path. Safety first. You’re still dealing with ice dams on a far less frequent basis, and they’re still far less destructive when they do arrive.

If you don’t like the look or expense of metal roofing, then consider a new asphalt shingled roof, only this time talk to your roofer about covering the entire roof with ice and water shielding. This is a self-adhering, thick polymer modified bitumen membrane that goes beneath your shingles. It does a great job of keeping water out of the home, so long as it’s installed beneath the entire roof. You have to make a special request to make this happen, since most roofers will only install it up to 2 feet away from the interior wall line by default.

Keep in mind that ice and water shielding does not resist ice dams the way a metal roof does. This upgrade merely helps you resist the leaks that ice dams cause.

Not sure you want to invest the money in these upgrades?

Remember two things.

First, these upgrades pay for themselves every time you make it through an entire winter without having to pay for ice dam removal. Most insurance companies will also give you a discount if you have a metal roof, since they know those roofs are virtually bullet-proof.

Second, these upgrades do come with some other benefits. The energy audit will lower your gas and electric bills. And that metal roof? It will last 50 to 100 years while resisting just about every type of damage you can think of (including large hail).

Get some estimates. When you sit down to run the numbers your next steps might just be obvious.