Remove Damaging Ice With the Gentleness of Steam!
Don’t hammer and chisel that ice away this winter. Chances are that will cause more damage than the ice itself. Let the roofing professionals at Runyon & Sons Roofing, remove the ice in a way that is kind and gentle to your home!
Watch the video below:
Although ice dams might seem like a roofing problem, they are actually caused by poor attic ventilation. Without adequate air exchange, warm air accumulates at the peak of an attic while the eaves remain cold. After a heavy snowfall, escaping attic heat melts snow at the ridge of the roof, and the melt water runs down the roof. At the eaves, the water refreezes, forming build-ups of snow and festoons of icicles. Some of the trapped water can seep through the roof, damaging shingles, the roof deck, even your home’s interior.
Attic ventilation helps prevent ice dams. That’s because heat can be vented out of the attic, resulting in a cold roof deck where snow melts evenly. If dams plague your home, consider having Runyon & Sons apply a waterproofing shingle underlayment with your reroof. Then be sure to increase ventilation.
Protecting Your Roof & Attic
Attic ventilation might seem like a minor consideration, but when done properly, it can extend the life of your attic and roof structure and save you hundreds of dollars in repair costs.
In the summer, hot, moist air in the attic can warp floor boards and roof sheathing and cause shingles to deteriorate prematurely. A hot attic also makes a home more difficult to cool and can result in added energy costs. In the winter, an overheated attic melts snow and can form ice dams at the roof edge. Water can back up under your shingles, wetting and damaging insulation and, eventually, the structure of the roof itself. Ice dams can even cause leaks inside your home, resulting in drywall damage.
Comfort & Health
Effective attic ventilation will keep your home more comfortable throughout the year. In the summer, temperatures in your attic can reach in excess of 150 degrees. As heat builds up in the attic, it radiates to the attic floor, then into adjacent living areas. This makes rooms beneath the attic uncomfortably hot and more difficult to cool. That means air conditioning and appliances will run more — and waste energy. In the winter, heated indoor air and moisture travels from the home into the attic. The average home produces a significant amount of moisture from bathing, cooking and cleaning — as much as 22 pints of moisture per day. When moist air hits cooler rafters and sheathing, it condenses and drips, wetting insulation and contributing to the growth of mold and mildew. This in turn can affect items stored in the attic, lead to wood rot and reduce air quality.
As your roof temperatures rise in the summer
(1), the heat is radiated from your attic into the living areas below. During the winter
(2), moisture rising up through the house condenses in the attic, causing damage to studs, insulation and other materials.
Check Your Attic Environment
There are a number of variables to consider when selecting the ventilation system that’s going to be most effective for your home. Before you make any decisions, the most sensible thing to do is go up into your attic and take a look around. A sure sign of poor ventilation is an unbearably hot attic in the summer. Another thing to look for is evidence of moisture, such as mold, mildew, rusted nail heads, damp or compressed insulation or wood rot. Before you make any decisions about your attic ventilation, check your attic for hot spots, mold, mildew or compressed insulation.
Heat Cables
In Northeast Ohio, snow and ice are always a problem. Gutters take massive amounts of abuse due snow buildups and ice dams. In some cases, these problems cannot always be corrected in a proper or cost effective manner. Sometimes, ice dam problems may be in an inaccessible area with no insulation or in an area where there is no possible way to achieve proper ventilation.
Runyon & Sons uses only high-quality Raychem heat cables to help solve these problems. These heavy-duty heat cables are far superior to anything you will find at the major home improvement stores. Installed in the proper “W” fashion, like in the picture to the left, the cables stop the buildup of snow at the eaves and prevent water from freezing inside the gutters. This ensures that water keeps flowing through the gutter system like it should all winter long. They are a very affordable and effective alternative to major reconfiguration of the home’s insulation or ventilation issues. Best of all, they can be wired directly to a switch for manual operation or they can be wired to a thermostat which will automatically begin heating when the ambient temperature falls below freezing. If your home is experiencing ice dam problems, call Runyon & Sons today to see if heat cables may be a solution for you.