In this insightful episode, John Maher sits down with
Brett Rogenski, General Manager of Master Roofers, to discuss ice dams and
their impact on homes. Brett explains how ice dams form when heat loss from
poorly insulated roofs causes snow to melt and refreeze at the eaves, resulting
in dangerous buildups that force water back under the shingles. He highlights
the risks of DIY removal and details how professional techniques—such as snow
removal, steam applications, and the use of commercial-grade heat tools—can
safely eliminate these ice dams. Additionally, Brett offers practical tips on
prevention, emphasizing the importance of proper insulation, ventilation, and
heat tracing to mitigate future ice dam issues. This episode provides
homeowners with essential knowledge to protect their roofs and maintain safe,
damage-free properties during harsh winter conditions.
John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher, and I'm here today with
Brett Rogenski, general manager of Master Roofers, the most trusted roofing
company in New Hampshire, for over 80 years. Today our topic is ice dams.
Welcome, Brett.
Brett Rogenski: Thanks, John. I appreciate you having me today.
How Do Ice Dams Form And What
Damage Can They Cause?
Maher: Sure. Brett, ice dams obviously can be a really significant
threat to homes, especially here New England, or anywhere in the northern part
of the United States. What insights can you share about how ice dams form and
the potential damage that they can cause to a home?
Rogenski: Sure. Well, ice dams form most typically due to melting
snow that is on the roof. So, if you're thinking about your roof or a typical
roof, it's sloped and we get snowfall and snow accumulates on it. And
eventually, even the best insulated roofs have some heat loss through them, and
poorly insulated roofs have even more heat loss through them, and that snow
melts.
So, it becomes a liquid usually on the bottom side. So if
you're thinking of a stack of snow, the bottom melts first. And it makes its
way down the roof, just like it should. Goes down your shingles and stuff. The
problem is when it gets to the edge of your roof, where your gutters are, if
you have gutters or what gutters would be if you don't have gutters, on that
soffit as it's called, that area is now cool because it's not being heated by
heat from the underside of your house, it overhangs your home, right?
Maher: Right. So it's open to the air.
Rogenski: Exactly, exactly. So, just warm enough to keep that
water dripping down your shingles until it gets to that soffit piece, and then
that area becomes cold. So all that liquid now refreezes, and that's why it
becomes an ice dam. It's literally a dam. You literally go down and it'll 'vrooop',
it just keeps accumulating.
Maher: Once that ice builds up and builds up and builds up, and then
the water that's continuing to melt comes down the roof and then hits that wall
of ice and has nowhere to go, and now it's going into your home.
Rogenski: Precisely. So, what it does is it comes down that big
ski jump of ice at the edge forms, as you said, and then all the water that
then comes down, once that has started to form, piles up behind it, continues
to freeze. And also, because it can't make it off of your roof because of the
ice dam, it then starts to, as you said, back up and it literally will start to
back up under the shingles.
You've now created essentially a pond on the edge of your
roof as opposed to letting it flow off. And so it'll start to seep backwards up
the shingles. Well, once it starts doing that, and eventually that freezes and
the hole problem just continues to grow exponentially.
The other problem with that is, once you start getting ice
underneath those shingles, it's now pushing back up into your sheathing. Even
if you have ice and water dam, that typically goes back, well by code, it has
to go back three feet. We do six feet because we're in New England. That's our
personal standards.
So now, even in many cases, even the proper ice and water
sheeting underneath that edge, the water can then go up behind that and now
it's soaking into your plywood. It's finding the nail holes, it's finding the
seams in the plywood. It starts dripping into your attic. And then the problem
continues to accelerate.
The other thing is, again, if you think of that ice dam,
and a lot of times I don't think people realize how thick ice dams can be, it's
not horribly uncommon in those situations to find ice dams that may be 12 to 16
inches thick. So a solid rail of ice, if you will, across the edge of your
roof, 12 to 16 inches thick. We've seen bigger, we've seen smaller obviously,
but that's not uncommon. So, now you're dealing with a significant amount of
ice.
When you're talking about a roof line that's 40 or 50 feet
long that now has 16 inches of ice going back two feet, there's a lot of mass
there. And of course it's solid as a rock, it's ice, so very challenging to
work with.
Are Ice Dams Dangerous?
Maher: So, then does that become a danger as well if that ice decided
to break and fall off, it could potentially hurt somebody who's standing at a
doorway or something like that?
Rogenski: It certainly could be. And then it's also not an easy
fix at the homeowner level because there is so much mass there. So we're not
trying to... It's not like our sidewalk and we're trying to melt off a little
layer of a half an inch of ice. We're trying to melt our way through a literal
dam that's a foot thick, 16 inches thick, something like that. So, it's not
throw a little rock salt on there and it goes away type situation.
What are Signs That An Ice
Dam Is Forming?
Maher: What are some of the signs that an ice dam is forming or has
formed? Obviously, if you're getting water inside your house on the edges of
your house, that would be a sign. Are icicles hanging off of your roof a sign
that you might have an ice dam forming?
Rogenski: Sure. Well, the icicles, that's a great call, John. And
Icicles certainly show that you're at risk because icicles form from that snow
melting, so a well-insulated attic or well-insulated roof is going to allow
very little melt of that snow. A poorly insulated attic or a poorly insulated
roof is going to allow more.
So yeah, if you have that house that has the big row of
icicles down the side of it, big long icicles, and they're always there, that
probably means that your attic or your roof is not well-insulated. And that's a
great indicator that you're probably really at risk of ice dams, as you said,
certainly you can see dampness in the house usually where the ceiling and the
wall meet, somewhere in that area.
If you are a two-story home, up on the second floor, is
typical. Although, I've seen water many times in the first floor start coming
out near a window where it's traveled down the inside of the wall and hit the
header above the window and now you're on the first floor and there's water
damage.
Maher: It goes down through the entire outside wall and then in through
a window.
Rogenski: Exactly. Yeah, because once it does that, it's in the
house. It's just a matter of where it pops out of that wall. So yeah, we've
absolutely seen it where it's traveled down the entire second story outer wall
within the joist, and then been able to present itself down on the first floor.
Yeah, those are things. Icicles, if your house is also the house that after a
snowstorm you see that all that snow melts off a lot quicker than maybe your
neighbors with maybe newer homes and that sort of thing. That again, is a sign
that you're probably not well-insulated and very much at risk for ice dams. And
you may have had to deal with them in the past as well if you've lived in the
home before.
Can Consumers Deal With Ice
Dams On Their Own?
Maher: Sure. What are some dangers maybe of trying to tackle this
yourself, from a homeowner's perspective? Do you find that homeowners maybe try
to DIY this and get rid of the ice dams themselves? Maybe they get a hairdryer
out there and they're up on a ladder trying to melt the ice, or maybe they're
trying to break the ice apart with an ax or something like that. That could
maybe potentially cause some damage to the roof. What are some of the things
that you've seen and what do you advise against in terms of DIY, you know,
fixing the ice dam?
Rogenski: Sure. We're not big proponents of people getting on the
roofs. We're not big proponents of people getting on the roofs anytime because
most folks aren't comfortable in that situation, and we definitely are not
proponents of people getting on the roofs when there's snow, ice, rain even, on
that roof.
I know it all looks easy, but it's not an amateur act. And
especially in the winter, if you think about it, if we've had enough snow that
you're now suffering from ice dams on your roof, you're going to go... Think
about a two-story home. Could even be a one-story home, you're going to be out
setting up a ladder on top of snow because it's not like all the snow went
away, otherwise we wouldn't have this problem.
So, you're going to be trying to... So you're someone
who's probably never spent a lot of time on a roof setting up a ladder on top
of snow trying to then get it to safely rest against a giant ice dam on the
edge. It's a real safety hazard.
And so number one, we just really don't like that because
we don't want anyone to get hurt. It's not worth becoming injured or dying over
an ice dam, okay. There's professionals who can take care of this for you. And
then you get into the repairs. Let's say we get past that and someone does get
up on the ladder, usually the first thing that they do is they go get
something, hammer, hatchet, machete, something that they can swing and they
start to try and chop away at that. It almost always leads to, if we're talking
about shingle roof, damage to the shingles.
So in the short term, you may create a little bit of a
solution, maybe you can chop a channel into that stuff to allow some drainage.
You probably didn't do enough of it that it won't reform, but you may have done
that. But there's an outstanding chance we see it every year, especially in the
spring, where people have gone up and they've chopped away an ice dam, they've
done damage to the shingles, and suddenly in the spring when it's raining, now
they have water issues.
And that's because they inadvertently did damage to those
shingles, whether it be through actually hacking them, just over-striking. Or
whether it be from the fact they dislodged them just through the violence of
the whole thing.
The other thing that we see people doing pretty regularly,
you're right, we've seen hairdryers, not real affected because of the size of
the ice dam. So you go stand on a... You end up standing on a ladder for two
hours to get a little teeny thing in this ice dam-
Maher: Tiny little bit done, yeah.
Rogenski: Yeah, exactly. The other thing is, and you'll see a lot
of DIY stuff online about it, that people are like, oh, you go get calcium
chloride and they make pucks and they make granular, put it in nylon and throw
it up there, which can actually go through the ice. Calcium chloride is
something we use on driveways and streets and stuff as well.
Maher: Right. Ice melt.
Rogenski: Yeah, exactly. But the problem with that is that you're
now exposing those shingles which were not made to be treated with calcium
chloride to that, and it can eventually lead to deterioration of the shingles,
britteling of the shingles, et cetera. So you may be, again, doing, maybe not
instantaneous, with some long-term damage.
The other part again is are you really getting it where
you need it? That all goes back to having a professional do it. Are you getting
two nylons full of calcium chloride on a roof that really should have six or
eight paths created for water regress? Chances are you're just not quite
getting it with the way a professional would do it for you.
How Does Master Roofers Deal
with Ice Dams?
Maher: Right. So what would a professional like Master Roofers do? If
I've already had an ice dam that's formed and I've got this big block of ice
now on the edge of my roof, do you have method of safely getting rid of that
ice dam? And then secondly, once the ice dam is gone, what are some of the
types of things that Master Roofers can do in order to help prevent ice dams
from forming again?
Rogenski: Sure, great question. So, depending on the situation and
the type of roof, there's a lot of factors. First thing, we will probably
suggest here is snow removal, because what we want to do is get that snow
that's now going to melt and come down and cause more ice damming, we want to
get that off the roof.
So, we will perform snow removal up there so we get a nice
clean roof so we're not in the process of just reforming ice while we're doing
this. So snow removal first. Next thing, we have equipment, we have commercial
equipment that essentially is a, think of it as a steamer.
Back in the old days, they used to have these steamers
that use on the wall to get wallpaper off. It looks a little bit like that, not
quite like that. And we can do that where we're applying heat, steam heat, to
those areas to actually remove that dam or sections of that dam to create
drainage channels. So we can do that.
The other thing is we have, if you will, commercial grade
electric heat guns as well. So if we're determining the heat is what we need to
do here, we'll actually get at that with, there's a particular brand of heat
welder called the Leister. We may use a Leister gun on there to help create
channels. And then while we're at that as we're loosening it, we will actually
remove sections of the ice dam as long as it's freeing itself from the
shingles.
We don't want to start using a shovel to bang away at your
ice dam and send your shingles off the edge of it, with it, or damage how
they're adhered. So, typically it's removal of snow, steam applications, or
occasionally again, using electric if you will, commercial heat guns to create
those channels. But the snow removal is part of the key to that because once
you've created the channels, any drainage that's happening can now go through.
So, if we eliminate most of that water that's up behind it, it'll allow the
rest of that dam to start to dissipate as opposed to simply reform.
How To Prevent Ice Dams
Maher: Okay. And then in terms of preventing ice dams, what do you do
with proper insulation or ventilation or heat tracing, things like that, to
prevent ice dams from forming again?
Rogenski: Sure. Well, you pretty much hit the three things that we
would look at while we're there, so we're going to need... People don't think
about it, but the attic is, that's the other side of your roof, okay. It's just
the inside, okay.
So, we're going to ask you if we can have access to your
attic. We're going to assess why did this form to begin with? Is it inadequate
insulation? If it is, we're going to explain it to you, show you what that is.
And either offer you a solution through insulation or have you work... You can
choose to work with a contractor to get insulation. Otherwise, it's simply
going to happen again. So insulation is absolutely one thing.
The second one is ventilation. A lot of times heat builds
up in an attic space, in that roof space, because it's not adequately vented.
Does it have gable end vents or does it have ridge vent? And what is the size?
There's actually mathematical formula on air turnover to allow for proper
cooling in an attic. And we don't tend to think about cooling in the winter,
but you need cooling in the winter. Otherwise, all that snow melts and here we
are.
So, we're going to look at the ventilation in your attic
and see is it obstructed, is it undersized? Was it not done properly? And offer
you solutions there as well.
Frequently, maybe in an older home, people have some gable
end vents, the little vents in the end of the house, and they're undersized. We
might recommend to you that we can seal those off and then put in soffit vents
and ridge vents. So, now the air comes in from the edge, and through
convection, leaves out through the top and keeps that attic space cool and
dissipates any moisture that's there.
And then the other thing you mentioned is sometimes, it's
usually due to the roof design, you need heat cable, you need heat tracing
cable. So, we've all seen it before, a lot of folks see the type that they
maybe buy at a retail store that they put on themselves.
Well, we have commercial versions of that if you will, but
we can add heat cable either into... A lot of times people need it in their
gutters too, if they have it, add it into the gutter and then add it on the
edges of the soffit area. And it's actually pretty cool in that it runs on its
own thermostat and it raises and lowers how many watts it's using dependent on
the outside temperature.
So, if it's 30 degrees out, it may say there's a trigger
point, high and low, and it may say, "Hey, I need a little bit of power
going through here to melt this." It keeps stuff from accumulating.
It's negative 20 out, that thing is cranking as much
wattage as it can through there to offset the cold to continue to keep that
melted. And a lot of times where people have issues too is not just where those
dams... Well, dams can form in a lot of places. It's in the valleys of the
house.
So, you may have a garage and a house roof line that come
together into that thing called the valley. A lot of times, snow, water, ice
can accumulate there. So we can, rather than the zigzag method that a lot of
times you see, we can actually run heat cable up those valleys and create
essentially lateral drainage channels to allow that thing to clean out. So
that's something we do a lot.
Maher: So even if you had snow on the rest of your roof, you could have
just that valley is free of snow and ice and that's enough to funnel the water
down that channel.
Rogenski: Exactly, exactly. So again, each situation's a little
unique, and we can do that on all types of roofs. We do it very regularly on
standing seam metal roofs. That's very common, and we do it on asphalt shingle
roofs. Typically, it's not done on slate roofs because they tend to have other
means for dealing with snow and ice, and plus they shed it naturally. But we do
that with all types of roofs. So, we have solutions, it's really just
individual to what your need is.
What Safety Protocols Does
Master Roofers Follow?
Maher: So, we talked a little bit about how dangerous it would be for a
homeowner to go up on the roof in the winter, but obviously you want to protect
your workers as well. What sort of safety protocols do you guys use to make
sure that your workers are staying safe when they're doing work like this?
Rogenski: Sure. Well, most of its driven by occupational safety
and health administration guidelines, OSHA guidelines. And also years of
experience. So, we always have roofers working in teams of at least two. Okay,
so that's a requirement, is that roofers work in teams of two.
We have fall arrest gear, so you'll see our people wearing
a harness. You'll see that they're securing that harness off. Typically, it's
on the ridge, that they have a ring that they're able to tie into. So they're
making sure that if they do slip on that roof while they're working on it,
they're tied into that ring through a rope and then there's fall arrest gear
that actually slows and stops them.
The other part is, we've been trained a lot on ladder
safety because that's the most dangerous part is getting up, down and on and
off the ladder. Ladder safety, how to properly mount your roof, how to properly
dismount your roof. And then while we're up there. The other thing I've seen
homeowners do thinking that they're doing the right thing to stay safe is wear
like cleated shoes.
They've got spikes they put on there, that they go put on
their boots and go up there. That way they're safer. And that's good, I don't
want them falling off the house, but they're walking around the roof basically
stabbing it with pins. So that's not something that's good either.
But yeah, we work with fall arrest gear, we work in teams
of two or more. And then depending on the type of roof, we may even use a
safety monitor there. That's a little more of a commercial thing. Where we set
up a perimeter and we have someone who is there and his sole job is to make
sure, keep visual inspection that everyone is working safely within that
perimeter. So that's something we do. Again, that's a little more of a
commercial situation than a residential.
How can Homeowners Get In
Touch with Master Roofers?
Maher: How can homeowners get in touch with Master Roofers if they have
an ice dam problem that they need taken care of? Or maybe they just want a
consultation to talk about some preventative measures?
Rogenski: Sure, absolutely. Well, I would tell you there's three
basic ways. First thing, you can go to our website at masterroofers.com,
there's a whole section there on service, winter services, et cetera. And you
can even request, through the website, a consultation or request a call. The
second would be to call our number right here at the office. So Monday through
Friday, eight to five, it's answered live.
And then the other option would be if you were to email us
at workorders@masterroofers.com, that's monitored by multiple employees 24
hours a day. And that's when we receive service requests and we would be, at
two in the morning, if you mail us at work orders, we might not call you at two
in the morning, but you're going to get a call at like six AM, and we're going
to arrange to get someone out there to help you or give you a call anyhow, and
talk to you about what it is you're hoping to accomplish.
So, website's a great tool that anyone can access anytime.
Obviously, you can call us. If we don't pick up on the second ring, it's simply
because tied up. And you can leave us a voicemail, you'll get an almost
immediate call back. Or you can email us at workorders@masterroofers.com.
Maher: All right, well that's really great information, Brett. Thanks
again for speaking with me today.
Rogenski: Thanks so much. I appreciate your time.
Maher: And again, the website is masterroofers.com or you can call the
phone number at 603-623-4973.