Why You Should Try to Be Home for Ice Dam Removal
Many customers ask whether we need them to be home when we remove their ice dams. Our answer is always the same: We don’t require it, but you should still try to be home.
Sure, it may be inconvenient, but there are several reasons it’s a wise choice:
Reason #1: We need guaranteed access to water.
Gaining access to water isn’t always as easy as turning on the spigot. Sometimes not only is the spigot frozen, but several feet of its pipe are frozen – stretching into the house and beyond the reach of our heat guns. In these cases it can be much faster to apply heat directly to the copper pipe from inside the home.
It’s also common for homeowners to turn off their water during the winter months, which makes the outside spigots pretty useless. If you’re not home we can’t enter the house to turn on the water. You may want to stay home at least long enough to ensure we’ve got water. (Of course, if we can’t get access to water at all, we’ll have to pack up and help out the next customer.)
Reason #2: We need some important info about your home and yard.
Is your favorite patio table buried under the snow? Is that odd-shaped snow pile actually your favorite stainless-steel gas grill? Do you have a skylight on your roof? Gee, we’re glad you told us!
We need information about not only your roof and any valuables in your yard, but also about what’s going on inside your house. For example, sometimes ice dam removal briefly causes existing leaks to intensify before they completely stop. There are strategies that we can use. They’re not cost-effective (for you) to use them automatically, but if you’re home and you come outside to let us know the that the leaking has gotten worse, we can use these techniques. Having you there helps us prevent a potential catastrophe that we’d never even know about otherwise. Although these cases are very rare, they do happen from time to time.
Reason #3: You’ll want to determine we’re trustworthy.
You’re about to pay us several hundred dollars an hour to de-ice your roof safely. We know you can trust us, but you may not have determined that yet.
Face-to-face interaction matters. The very few misunderstandings we have every season almost always come from a job where the customer did not stay home for at least a few hours. It’s hard to know a person’s character over the phone. You’ll want to develop that good gut feeling so that when an Ice Dam Guys® tech gives you his recommendations you’ll know that they’re to benefit your pocketbook, not ours. Many variables determine how long ice dam removal takes, so it’s nice to see that someone has worked himself to the bone for the entire amount of time you’re paying for.
Reason #4: We want to show you what’s going on.
A lot of times we will climb down off the ladder to show you some of what we’re talking about. We’ll stand on the ground and point to various pieces of ice that may be helpful for you to see, so you can know the scope of your ice dam problem and what will be involved in remedying it. We may even snap a photo and use it as a point of reference.
That’s harder to do over the phone. We may not be able to explain your unique situation fully. And it still takes longer, and that’s time we have to bill for (because it cuts into the time we have to help other customers).
Reason #5: It makes payment simpler.
In most cases, we show up at your house, complete all of the work, and all without asking for a penny in-advance. We do so on weekends, holidays, and on our kids’ birthdays if necessary. (Old Man Winter doesn’t care much about 9-to-5, Monday through Friday.) The trade-off is we can’t leave your house until we receive full payment. If we have to track you down to call us with a credit card or wait for you to race home from work and give us a check we’ll need to ask for compensation for all that idle time (and that’s not something we want to do). The same is true of nearly all professional ice dam removal companies, whether they tell you so beforehand or not.
Reason #6: It’s your home.
This is your home – probably your biggest investment. Won’t you feel more at-ease if you do everything in your power to protect that investment? That’s why you’re getting ice dam removal. The only thing better than that is to stick around and help us ensure that your ice dam removal goes off without a hitch.
Stay home whenever possible. We guarantee you’ll have a better all-around experience if you’re there to witness just how hard we work, and to be our eyes and ears inside your home.
