Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Stop the attic from being warm. Ice dams form when heat escaping your house melts snow from underneath. That meltwater refreezes at the cold eave. Air sealing, insulation, and ventilation prevent them. The ice barrier under your shingles limits the damage when one forms anyway.
Treat ice dams as a heat-loss problem inside the house rather than an ice problem on the roof.
Meltwater only exists because attic heat is warming the roof deck from below during freezing weather.
Check your attic on a cold day and see whether it feels warm.
A Utah ice dam is not made by the weather outside your house, it is made by the heat leaving it.
Mattie Tueller, Master Roofing
Heat leaving your house. Warm air escaping into the attic heats the roof deck, snow on that deck melts from underneath even in freezing weather. The meltwater runs down to the eave. The eave overhangs open air, so it stays cold. The water refreezes there and builds a dam that backs the next meltwater up under the shingles.
Because it means the problem is inside the house, not on top of it. A roof that stays as cold as the outside air produces no meltwater. No meltwater means no dam, regardless of how much snow is sitting up there. Deep snow on a really cold roof is a roof behaving correctly. That's why two neighboring houses under the same storm can get completely different results.
The full mechanism, including why melting snow finds problems that rain never will, is worked through in why your roof leaks after the snow melts. This node is about stopping it from happening.
Three things inside the house, in this order: seal the air leaks into the attic, insulate the ceiling properly. Ventilate the attic so any remaining heat leaves before it reaches the deck. Done together they keep the roof deck cold, which is the only real prevention there is.
Insulation without air sealing is the common half-measure. It is why some houses get new insulation and keep making dams every winter.
It limits the damage when a dam forms anyway. An ice barrier is a self-adhering membrane at the eaves that seals around fasteners. So water backing up behind a dam cannot get into the deck and the house. It is protection, not prevention. The distinction matters when someone tells you a new roof solved your ice dams.
The residential code calls for an ice barrier in areas with a history of ice forming along eaves, running from the lowest edge of the roof to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line of the building. Much of Utah qualifies, and the higher and colder your address, the more clearly it does.
Grade matters here too. On the Wasatch Back, buying the cheaper membrane to save a few hundred dollars is a poor trade against the loads that side of the mountain puts on a roof.
Do not chip, hammer, or shovel ice off the roof. Do not treat heated cables as the fix. Chipping ice puts a tool between you and your shingles on a slick surface. It damages the roof you are trying to protect. Every one of these treats the symptom while the attic keeps making more meltwater.
If water is entering the house right now, that is worth a call today. The prevention work is best done in the fall, before the first real snow, when the attic can be assessed without a foot of snow load on it.
Master Roofing does a lot of ice-dam work up the canyons, in the higher and colder parts of Utah where this is a yearly event rather than a surprise. The call almost always comes in January, and it almost always describes the ice. People want the ice gone. That's completely understandable when it is hanging over the front door.
But the ice is the last step in a chain that started in the ceiling. Somewhere below, warm air is getting into the attic and heating the underside of the roof, and until that stops the roof will keep making meltwater every time the sun comes out.
I will be fair to the crews selling cable and ice removal, because in an emergency both have a place. Getting water out of someone's living room in January is real work. An ice dam is not made by the weather outside your house. It is made by the heat leaving it. So handle the emergency but you have to this week, then get someone in your attic before next fall. Fixed properly, this is a problem you solve once instead of every winter.
This article is general information about Utah roofs, not an assessment of yours. Every roof is different, and no article can tell you what is actually happening on your specific house. Have a licensed roofing contractor look at it in person before you act on anything here.
Not always, but they are the warning sign worth paying attention to. Icicles mean meltwater is running off a roof during freezing weather. That's the same condition that builds dams. A few small icicles after a sunny day are common. A thick band of ice along the eave, or icicles that keep returning all winter, means heat is reaching your roof deck consistently.
It changes the behavior without removing the cause. Snow sheds more readily off metal. So less of it sits long enough to melt and refreeze, and that helps. But a warm attic under a metal roof still produces meltwater. Metal brings its own winter consideration in the form of sliding snow. That's why snow retention gets engineered on metal roofs here.
A roof rake used from the ground can help by clearing the first few feet above the eaves. That removes the snow that feeds a dam. Do it from the ground, never from a ladder in winter conditions. It is a reasonable stopgap, not a solution. That's because the attic heat that caused the problem is still there and the next storm starts the cycle again.
Many policies do cover sudden water damage from an ice dam, though coverage and exclusions vary considerably from one policy to the next. What insurers generally will not cover is damage they consider the result of poor maintenance over time. Read your own policy or ask your agent directly. Document everything with dated photographs regardless of whether you end up filing a claim at all.
Yes, and elevation is the main driver. The higher and colder areas along the Wasatch Back see far more ice damming than the valley floor. That's because they get more snow and hold freezing temperatures longer. Homes at those elevations benefit most from getting the air sealing, insulation. Ventilation right, and from a higher grade of ice barrier at the eaves.
We're here to see what's going on with your roof. A real assessment starts with your history and your attic, not a number from the driveway. You'll get a straight answer about what's up there, what it needs, and what it costs. Sometimes the honest answer is: your roof looks great.