How To Safely Remove Ice Dams From Roof

Over time the calcium chloride will clear a channel in the ice dam allowing the water on your roof to escape.

How to safely remove ice dams from roof.

Because ice dams are almost always covered by a thick blanket of snow which must be removed before any ice dams can be removed. Here are five ways to remove an ice dam from your roof. Lay the hose onto the roof so it crosses the ice dam and overhangs the gutter. This blast of cold air will usually be enough to refreeze the fingers of the ice dam while the snow and ice is melting away on the outside of your home.

One way to remove an ice dam is to melt it using calcium chloride ice melt. If necessary use a long handled garden rake or hoe to push it into position. So the first step is to remove this ice and snow using a snow rake which is a retractable rake that can extend up to about 17 feet or so in length. The calcium chloride will eventually melt through the snow and ice and create a channel for water to flow down into the gutters or off the roof.

If your home is beginning to suffer the leaks indicative of an ice dam take a fan a box fan or small air mover into your attic and direct it at the section of roof suffering the leak. Eliminate its fuel source if left alone the ice dam will continue to be built up by the snow and ice up on your roof. One great non harmful way to combat ice dams is to point fans directly at your roof where the problem starts. By cooling down the underside of the roof snow won t melt in the first place and preventing ice dams from forming.

This does involve a bit of manual labor on your part but it s a small price to pay for keeping your roof in one piece. To help prevent this fill up a pair of pantyhose with the salt you d use to get rid of ice on your sidewalk and tie off the ends. If an ice dam removal service spends 3 hours for example to complete a job it s fairly common for 60 90 minutes of it to be spent on roof snow removal for which the company s ice dam removal not snow removal rates would apply. Fill a woman s stocking with calcium chloride and lay it in position directly over the ice dam in your gutter.

When your roof heats up and melts the bottom layer of snow or ice the water leaks down to the edge of your roof and freezes again creating an ice dam.