As cold and icy as ice dams are, they can’t form without heat.

You know the story of how ice dams form. It’s winter, it’s cold, and you crank up the heat, but your attic isn’t properly insulated, so the heat rises up through your roof. The snow on your roof melts and then refreezes, forming ice dams.

If you’d like to turn over every possible stone in an effort to prevent ice dams, you may want to consider turning your heat down. It may help prevent ice dams from forming. Less heat coming up through your attic means less melting snow on your roof. Less melting means that the snow on your roof largely remains snow and is less likely to become ice.

I’m not saying shut off the heat. If your home has a history of ice dams, turning the heat down to the 60s could help minimize the formation of ice dams. If you can go even lower, so much the better. Of course, if there’s no snow on your roof and you don’t see any snow in the forecast, there’s no probably harm in cranking up the heat to your heart’s content.

The other benefit of turning the heat down is you save money. It’s an economic way to help deter ice dams.

As you can probably guess, turning down the heat won’t singlehandedly prevent ice dams from forming. It helps mitigate one of the factors that cause ice dams—a hot roof caused by a hot attic—but it’s still important that you keep your roof as snow-free as possible. Consider the heat dial one of several tools in your ice-dam-prevention toolbox.

They know that your ice dam problem is severe enough that you will hire an ice dam removal service, and that the only question is whether you’ll pick their company or another one.  They’ll say whatever it takes to get their feet in the door.

Here are 3 tell-tale signs of a potential rip-off:

Warning Sign #1.  Suspiciously low rates.  Some ice dam companies may quote you prices that sound good at first, but what they don’t tell you is that they charge by the man-hour.  This means that even though their rates sound like a great deal over the phone, they’ll probably have 3 guys on your roof and charge you for each hour each guy spends.  It ends up costing $250-$300 / hour.  Good ice dam removal costs at least that much—but good ice dam removal companies are honest about their rates.  Ice dam removal is expensive—and anyone who tries to make it sound cheap is either completely inexperienced or about to rip you off.

Another reason for abnormally low rates is that the ice dam removal company might be using nothing more than a hot-water pressure washer, various salt products or primitive tools, like hammers, hatchets, chisels, or even torches.  Not only will these methods damage your roof, but using such practices will almost certainly void your homeowner’s insurance. They may be able to charge less, but it’s because they don’t worry about investing in the proper equipment (steamers). And let’s not forget about the proper liability insurance, workman’s comp insurance, training their technicians, etc.  The best way to sniff out this dangerous rip-off over the phone is to check whether or not the ice dam removal service uses only steam (250 degrees or higher).  If they don’t use steam, do yourself a favor and end the call: do not let them try to sell you on their alternative methods.

Warning Sign #2.  Promising to remove the ice dams in a specific number of hours.  It’s impossible to do this over the phone.  Why?  Because the ice on your roof is almost always completely blanketed in snow.  There’s no way to tell how much ice is on your roof or how tough the ice will be to remove until you actually get on the roof and remove the snow.

Imagine a layer of ice along the edge of your roof that you can clearly see from the ground.  That layer of ice may go back towards the peak of your roof only a couple of feet or so.  On the flip-side it may also crawl fifteen feet or more up the pitch of your roof.  The moral of the story?  It’s impossible to estimate the size of an ice dam (or how long it will take to remove it) without first removing the thick layer of snow covering it – or without the aid of your x-ray goggles you recently found near the bottom of your favorite cereal box.

In general, if you’re quoted a “guaranteed” number of hours over the phone, one of five bad things will happen when the ice dam removers actually get to your home:

1.  They won’t even show up.  We get close to a hundred calls every winter from homeowners who are infuriated that the other ice dam company didn’t show up.  We make it a point to ask what the other company was charging, and almost always the answer is that their rates were suspiciously cheap.  The bottom line here is cheap rates almost always spell trouble.

2.  They won’t be able to melt the ice dams within their promised timeframe, and will leave you with a roof that’s only partly free of ice dams (and therefore at risk of caving in or leaking).  They’ll claim that your roof is a “special case” and that they didn’t foresee having quite so much ice on top of one roof—and that they’ll need even more time and money to melt it all.

3.  They won’t remove the ice dams on-time, and will ask that you pay them even more to finish the job.  So much for only paying for the “guaranteed” number of hours!

4.  They’ll hustle to get the job done by cutting corners—and potentially damaging your shingles in the process.  They’ll go too quickly and won’t be able to exercise caution.

5.  Instead of removing the entire ice dam(s) they will simply melt channels through the buildup of ice to relieve the standing water behind the ice dam(s).  They will claim that this is standard practice in the ice dam removal industry, but this is a lie.  The only time this method should be considered is around March when both daytime and nighttime temperatures are above freezing.  If nighttime temperatures fall below freezing, these channels can completely freeze up again in as little as 24 hours—requiring you to fork over additional cash for even more ice dam removal in the near future.

Warning Sign #3.  Free estimates.  Anyone who offers free estimates is an amateur—someone who wants to make a quick buck on ice dam removal in the winter because his or her main line of business hasn’t been doing so well.

Experienced ice dam removers know that they can only provide an estimate of time once they see the full extent of the ice dams—which requires clearing all the snow first.

Anyone who gives you a free estimate either doesn’t know better or is just trying to get his foot in the door by telling you what you want to hear.  They’ll give you a surprisingly low estimate of time and then after they’ve climbed up on the roof and removed your snow they’ll come back down and tell you that the ice dams are much bigger than they thought.  They’ll tell you that there was a lot of ice underneath the snow and they couldn’t see it until after they removed the snow (which is of course always true).

You may think this makes perfect sense and give them the go-ahead to complete the extra work.  But they knew from the very beginning that they wouldn’t be able to tell how big the ice dams were until they actually removed the snow; it’s a classic case of low-balling you.  The moral of the story?  Don’t trust “free estimates”—ever.

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In general, if you think it sounds too good to be true, you’re probably right.  When you’re choosing an ice dam removal service, don’t shy away from asking a lot of questions, or saying no to a company that gives off any of these 3 warning signs: your home and your finances demand nothing less.

But when you get back home, what will you find?  Will you find a safe, comfortable home that’s exactly the way you left it—or will you return to a house that’s covered in tons of ice and snow with water running down the walls and dripping from the ceilings?

If you’d prefer toasty over leaky, you’ll want to follow these steps to minimize the chance of ice dams forming on your home while you’re away.   Here’s how I suggest you do that:

1.  Turn down the heat as much as possible.  Ideally, turn your thermostat down right before you step out the door.   As you may know, one of the major causes of ice dams is the build-up of heat in your attic, which causes the snow on your roof to melt, which eventually turns to ice as it runs down the roof and reaches the overhangs.  If the attic stays hot, snow will continue to melt and freeze until there is no longer any snow left to melt.  If you keep the heat dramatically reduced, at the very least you’ll help prevent leaking and will save a bundle on your heating bill.  At most you’ll have prevented ice dams from forming in the first place (and you’ll still have saved yourself a fist full of cash on your heating bill).  Keeping the heat turned down is a win-win.

2.  Rake your roof prior to leaving.  The more snow you can remove, the better.  If ice dams were fire, snow would be the gasoline.  No fire without fuel.  No ice dams without snow.

3.  Pre-schedule a roof snow removal service to remove the snow from your roof if and when it snows while you’re gone.  Make sure they know to come over only if there’s a certain amount of snow accumulation.  If you don’t have a history of ice dams, have them come out only after about 6 inches of new snow has fallen.  Or if you’ve had ice dams before and feel as though your home is particularly susceptible to ice dams, you may want to have the roof snow removal service come by after even less snow has fallen.

A couple notes on having a roof snow removal service come by when you’re out of town:

- Make sure that at the very least they clear the snow off the overhangs of your roof.  It’s even better if they can get the valleys of your roof as well.  And, as always, the very best is if they can clear the entire roof.  Important: Having your entire roof cleared of snow is something you should only consider doing a handful of times per year.  You don’t want to be scraping your entire roof after every 2’’ snowfall.

- Just keep in mind that the roof snow removal company will have some sort of minimum charge per visit to your home.  Either it’ll be a trip-charge plus some hourly rate, or they’ll just have a minimum charge per visit.  Just depends on the company.

Enjoy your vacation—and don’t let the worry of ice dams spoil your rest and relaxation!

But if you want to control the leaking as much as possible and minimize the harmful effects, here are a few tips (some of which you probably know already, some of which maybe you haven’t thought of):

1.  Set down some towels.  Big bath towels or beach towels are ideal.  Try to change them every now and then, so that they’re not sopping wet and unable to absorb more water.  If you don’t have fresh towels on hand, wring out the wet ones and put them back into action.

2.  If water is dripping onto a specific area, set out some buckets to collect it.

3.  Set up FANS.  Lots of fans.  If you own one, it’ll help.  If you own ten, haul them upstairs and get them churning air.  This doesn’t even occur to most people, but fans are an enormous help because they evaporate the water quickly.

4.  Turn the heat down as much as possible.  I’m not going to pull a Jimmy Carter on you and tell you to turn the heat down until you’re shivering and scampering for the nearest sweater.  However, the whole reason your roof is leaking is because heat has built up in your attic and melted the snow and ice atop your roof.  Less heat means less melting, and less melting means less leaking.  If the thermostat is set to 75, maybe turn it down to 70.  65 is even better.  60 is better still.  You get the idea.

5.  If you see soggy-looking sheetrock, poke or drill a small hole in it and put a bucket underneath the leak.  Use a drill bit, a nail or an awl, or some sort of sharp skewer-like metal poker that’s about 1/8 inch in diameter.  Poking an object through wet sheetrock should be extremely easy and won’t require any brute force.

By the way, DO NOT bring space heaters into the wet area where there’s leaking.  They won’t really help evaporate the water (not enough heat).  Plus, hot electrical coils and water don’t mix.

To a safe, toasty, bone-dry, leak-free home!

Signs of a serious ice dam problem = dollar signs

Safe, professional ice dam removal is expensive.  As a smart homeowner, you already know that: it’s just part of caring for your piece of the American Dream.

Different ice dam removal companies have different reasons for charging different rates.

Minnesota winters test the durability of your home and particularly the durability of your roof: heavy snowstorms leave multi-ton ice dams on your roof, which put your roof under constant strain and often cause leaks in your home.  The test for homeowners is to find a service that can remove these ice dams safely and affordably.

I’ve removed thousands of ice dams from Twin City -area homes since 1996.  But I’ve also seen improper ice dam removal cause heartache for far too many homeowners–who often are left with damaged roofs, more leaking, and/or an oversized bill that cuts into their mortgage or heating bills.

To preserve your home and your checkbook, you’ll want to make certain that the ice dam removal service you hire avoids making the following 5 mistakes:

1.  Using the wrong equipment. If an ice dam removal “pro” tries to remove the ice dams or icicles with a tool like a hammer, chisel, shovel, or (heaven forbid) a blowtorch, your roof will be damaged.  Not only will your roof be more susceptible to leakage but your insurance company won’t cover the damage to your home.

What should be used to remove ice dams?  That brings us to mistake #2:

2.  Not using steam. Steam is hot enough to remove ice dams quickly and without drowning your roof in water.  But some ice dam removal services instead use hot water–water that’s less than 250F.

There are three problems with using hot water.  One, hot water takes significantly longer to remove ice dams–because it’s not as hot as steam, and because steam blasters give an ice dam removal pro the ability to cut ice dams off of the roof surgically.  Two, because ice dam removal services charge by the hour, you will end up paying significantly more if you hire someone who uses time-consuming hot water rather than steam.  Three, if your roof is already leaking due to the ice dams, the hundreds or even thousands of gallons of hot water will only make the leakage worse.

3.  Making the “rookie mistake” of leaving footprints on your roof. If the ice dam professional walks back and fourth along your snow-covered roof without first clearing a path through the snow, another ice dam will form within a few days or weeks (and sometimes immediately).

When you climb atop a roof in the dead of winter, it feels much safer to stand in the middle of a foot-high snowdrift than on bare, slippery shingles.  But the problem is that once someone stands atop your snow-covered roof, the snow gets packed down and will harden (eventually turning to ice).  The so-called ice dam removal “pro” will have charged you to remove one ice dam while he left you with a completely new ice dam.  This newly created ice dam is most likely even worse that the one he just removed because it’s higher on your roof where you have no protection from ice and water shield.

My crew and a few others take pains to stand on bare shingles at all times.  This requires that we shovel the snow in front of us as we walk across the roof.  Although this creates a little extra work for us, it helps ensure that once we’re done removing the current ice dams, the homeowner will not have to worry about another ice dam forming for quite a while.

4.  Slow response time. If the ice dam removal service you hire doesn’t offer same-day or next-day service, your home is at the mercy of the elements until the ice dam removal truck shows up.

If you call up an ice dam removal service and they promise to come by in a week or two, you’d better hope that (1) it doesn’t snow in the next week and that (2) the temperature doesn’t rise causing additional melting atop your roof.  But it’s winter, so snow is common, as are daily spikes in temperature.  As a result, your ice dams will get worse and you’re more likely to experience even more leaking.  Living in Minnesota and hoping for weather that’s cold and steady but not snowy is nothing less than a pipe dream.

Find an ice dam remover that offers same-day or next-day service, so that you can get rid of the ice dams before they become even more of an inconvenience or cause further damage to your home.  It’s not uncommon for us to see an entire ceiling lying on someone’s living room floor as a result of waiting too long for the ice dam removal pro to show up.

5. Sloppy steaming technique. A seasoned professional will use the steamer to cut off one large chunk of ice at a time, carefully separate it from the shingles, push it off the roof, and cut off another chunk.  Only once the bulk of the ice is removed will he do a more general spray-down of the roof, in order to remove every last bit of ice and snow.

A less experienced ice dam remover will try to melt all the ice at once just by spraying unmethodically over the whole ice dam.  This eventually works, but it takes significantly longer than if he used the “cutting” method.  Given that you’re paying by the hour, you’ll want to ask the ice dam removal service over the phone which method they use: You’ll save hundreds or thousands of dollars when you find a service that uses the “cutting” approach.  Just remember: if a particular ice dam removal service does not use this approach, then they simply aren’t the “pros” they claim to be.

I hope this “top-5” list serves as a checklist for you when you’re researching ice dam removal services, and for when you’re on the phone with one and trying to determine if it’s the one you’d like to entrust with keeping your home safe and free of ice and leaks.

1. Shingles are extremely fragile in the winter months. Striking the roof top (even if it’s covered in ice) can severely damage your shingles.
2. Sending a shock wave through the ice dam could cause the entire dam to break loose and slide off the roof (taking you and your ladder with it). According to a local newspaper this is exactly what happened to a homeowner back in 2008.
3. Breaking the bond between the ice and your shingles using force will almost always result in the loss of many granules. Granules make up the protective layer atop asphalt shingles. In layman’s terms, without these granules your roof is nothing more than a thick layer of tar paper (not good).

Using steam is the only safe and effective way to remove an ice dam. Considering steam-only ice dam removal is expensive some homeowner will be forced to use a less disirable meathod. The only alternative you should even consider is using a garden hose hooked up to the hot-water from your laundry tub (if available). This should only be done as a last resort and you’ll need to be extra careful not to add to the pooling of water behind the existing ice dam.

If you already have water leaking into your home there is a chance you could make things much worse. We always recommend that you stay on the ground, stay safe, and call a professional that provides a steam-only ice dam removal service. In most cases keeping your vents clear of snow and roof raking the first 3-6 feet of snow along your overhangs will prevent an ice dam from forming in the first place. As the old saying goes…An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

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