Rain Gutters Ice Dams

While your gutters are designed to send water from your roof to the ground the ice dam keeps the water at the edge of the roof leading to leaks and rot.

Rain gutters ice dams.

This pool of water can leak into your home and cause damage to walls ceilings insulation and other areas. An ice dam is a wall of ice that forms at the edge of the roof usually at the gutters or soffit. Lay the hose onto the roof so it crosses the ice dam and overhangs the gutter. Ice dams can form in your gutters when rainwater or other precipitation backs up in your gutters and freezes due to cold temperatures in the winter late fall or early spring.

Why do ice dams form. This in turn adds to the ice sickle or ice dam and will cause it to grow. In essence they extend the area of your overhang. An accumulation of ice can also damage your gutters.

Heat loss from a house snow cover and outside temperatures interact to form ice dams. The more feet of overhang on your roof the greater the potential for bigger. With a lack of insulation or heat source water will build around or on gutter guards even if the gutter system did not experience problems in the past. See below for a shopp.

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. For ice dams to form there must be snow on the roof and at the same time higher portions of the roof s outside surface must be above 32 degrees f freezing while lower surfaces are below 32f. This in turn causes the water to sit in the gutters and with the onset of colder temperatures the water will then turn into ice and at that point you are in a world of hurt. Those ice dams can cause some serious damage to your home.

When it forms the water then backs up behind the ice dam and creates a pool of water. If necessary use a long handled garden rake or hoe to push it into position. Gutters just allow the ice to crawl a bit further past the edge of your roof overhang. The more feet of overhang on your roof the greater the potential for big ice dams forming.

Nonuniform roof surface temperatures lead to ice dams. In my experience gutters can result in larger thicker ice dams by creating a shelf and more depth to the overhang. Ask this old house general contractor tom silva explains the best ways to keep your roof and gutters free from those dreaded ice dams. This backup is usually caused by clogs in the system that prevent water from flowing into the trough down the spouts and away from your home.