How Does Ice Affect Your Roof?
As a homeowner ice is an important element to keep an eye out for during the wintertime, as it has the potential to cause severe damage to your home. In this post, we’ll cover two common ways ice can affect your roof: hail and standing ice.
Hail:
Hail damage can be pretty frustrating since it is the hardest to prevent. The best you can do to protect yourself from its effects is to be sure that you have high-quality, durable shingles installed when putting on a new roof. The main ways hail can affect your shingled roof is by denting the ridge cap (which covers the peaks of your roof), leaving circular impressions/dents on the roof, and weakening the roofing system. Once exposed to hail enough times, it is likely that the lifespan of your roof will have been shortened.
If you do experience hail damage and are not sure how bad the damage is, give us a call! You may need to replace the entire roof or perhaps just a part of it. We provide free assessments to the greater Indianapolis and Kokomo areas to provide to your insurance company.
Standing Ice:
If snow melts from the top of the roof and drips down to the lower portion that is still at freezing temperatures, the precipitation can re-freeze as standing ice in the eaves of the roof. Often, this ice will block the roof and guttering system from being able to properly drain other melted snow and precipitation. This blockage can leave standing water that eventually leaks into the home. The ice can start out by hindering the roofing system, but ultimately the damage can have severe effects throughout your entire home from these water leaks.
A couple of key steps to help prevent ice dams from forming is to clean out your gutters towards the end of fall and be sure that your attic is well-insulated. At Eads Roofing, we also have a few standard additions that we install to each new roof (that can also be added to an existing roof) to help prevent this.
If you’d like to learn more about roof maintenance in the winter or are interested in an insurance assessment, please visit our ‘Contact’ page. We would love to work with you.