I know ice dams can end up causing significant damage, or they may just melt away with no impact.
With the weather recently my gutters are frozen solid and Ive got huge icicles hanging across the front. But what can you really do to minimize risk of damage? I cant exactly clime up there with a hair dryer.

Just wondering if anyone has anything they do about em.

 

get a roof rake and just rake the bottom few feet off the edges.

 

Explosives?

 

next time you have roofing done on the house you need to have them install a rubber mattlike thingy all the way around the house, did that on mine a few years ago when we had this problem, had thousand o dollars worth of damage from the ice damn, seems to be working well...so far so goo
we will see when the real melting stops.
90 days to spring.....woohoo

 

I shoulda bought a ranch... No way Im reaching anything with a rake. lol

 

shug,
you can buy salt cakes shaped like hockey pucks and toss them up onto the dam area to create a channel or fill a stocking with salt and lay it over the damn to cut a channel.

If you are really careful you can use a hatchet to chop away some of the ice to create a channel but only as a last resort as it is real easy to destroy your shingles.
But doing that also implies that you are up on a ladder in icy conditions which may have it's own set of interesting consequences.

The other thing you can do is put up ice melt electric cable but that is not something that you do now but in the spring.
Be forewarned that they can use a lot of electricity, like $200+ a month worth depending on how much you put up.

5 days till ground hog day

when do the buses leave for spring training?

 

Insulate your ceiling and attic space better... I'm doing this to my house now.

 

My uncle is a pretty intelligent man and worked as a consultant with a company on a way to do this same thing for under a dollar a day. He made a pretty penny with the end result.

Here comes the worst part. I have no idea what is it. I just remember talking to him about it a while ago.

 

It all depends on how many feet of cable you put up.
They dissipate ~6-8 watts per foot if I remember correctly.
I have around 600 feet up soooo....

You can also wire a thermostat turn-on mechanism so if it warms up they shut off automatically.
although I honestly can't remember the last time we were above freezing so I don't see what good it would do.

erenyes has it right about putting Ice dam shield in when you install the roofing.
It's called bituthene and is self sealing rubber like sheet which is installed before the shingles. It prevents water from backing up under the shingles into the house.

The other path that water gets in is through the soffit vents at the edge of the roof. Bituthane doesn't help there.

 

Once mine were so bad, I hooked a garden hose up to my shower and then sprayed hot water out the window onto the ice dams below until I melted them away.