It’s wintertime up here in Northern Michigan, and when the snow starts to melt, we deal with quite a bit of the aftermath from ice dams. Today we are going to address what ice dams are, how they form, and how having an attic inspection done to assess your issue may help prevent them.
What Are Ice Dams
Ice dams are barriers of ice that form on roofs throughout the wintertime. You can often see these forming on many residential homes up here in Michigan toward the bottom eave edges of the roof, but they can form just about anywhere depending on the roof condition and various factors. Once an ice dam starts forming, it can become quite the headache for a homeowner. If it is left unaddressed, it could very well begin to cause significant damage to your home.
Recent data from Home Advisor states that the average cost to have ice dams removed from a home comes in at $1,200 in the USA – source. With a recurring expense like that, you can see why we think being proactive and preventing them from forming is the best approach.
How Ice Dams Form
The science behind ice dams forming is fairly easy to understand. As we all learn early on in science class—heat rises! When a homeowner heats their home, that energy travels upward and can begin to seep into their attic space. Once in the attic space, it continues to rise and hits the roof system from below, warming it. When an attic isn’t insulated or ventilated evenly, it will cause certain areas to warm up and melt while other areas stay cold enough to remain frozen. The higher areas with snow will melt and cause water to flow down to colder areas below, where it freezes again. This will start the ice dam off as a small lip of ice, which forms into a larger barrier over time and prevents water from running off. Now you have an ice dam.
When the ice dam establishes, it traps additional water behind it, which can seep back up under shingles and cause leaks. Water under shingles can also refreeze, expanding and lifting/damaging the shingle itself. As a homeowner, you can see how this can be a costly problem to have.
Preventative Measures for Ice Dams
Many homes have insulation that does not meet the recommended R-value for their region, or they lack insulation in certain areas but not others—leading to energy seeping through, as mentioned above. Without adequate thermal resistance, the snow-melt cycle gets initiated. To be clear, though, it is not just the insulation we look at in an inspection, as multiple factors can play a role. Your attic space needs several factors to check out for preventing ice damming:
- An adequate insulation layer evenly spread throughout.
- Proper venting of heat when it reaches the peaks of the home’s roof system—i.e., ridge venting.
- Adequate intake of air through features like gable or soffit venting.
The goal with attic space is to ensure it keeps an even temperature throughout. Proper ventilation requires bringing in new cool air and exhausting out warm air through the ridge areas.
Additional Protection from Ice Dams
As Roof Installers in Northern Michigan, something we do that our competitors often do not is install additional layers of protection between your roof decking and shingles. This is called Ice & Water Shield in our industry, and it is typically applied to areas that may be affected by ice dams. Many roof installers in our area install only a single layer of barrier, giving homeowners only 3 feet of protection. We install two rows of Ice & Water Shield to give homeowners a little under 6 feet of protection (it overlaps slightly). We do this to help give homeowners peace of mind knowing their home is further protected from all of nature’s elements.
Taking the Next Steps
Hopefully, this article helped answer some questions you were having related to ice dams. If you are ready to move forward with addressing ice dams or would like an assessment of your home’s attic space, don’t hesitate to call our team at (989) 340-0162 or reach out by contacting us online.