How To Make Sure Ice Doesn't Damage Your Gutters During Winter

Now that we’re well into the freezing months of winter, the ways that ice can affect your home are likely top of mind. The best way to ease these worries is to prepare and prevent in the warmer months, but it’s still a great time to be aware of the possible dangers and know where to look into doing some home improvement when spring rolls around again.

There are 2 main ways that winter precipitation can inflict damage on your home:

1.     Heavy weight of snow and ice:

If ice piles up and goes long enough without melting, its weight can create downward pressure strong enough to dislodge the guttering from the home. This only happens in extreme cases, but is costly enough to keep a lookout for it. Worth noting, a home with a lower angled roof is more susceptible to this issue.

2.     Ice damming:

This is the most common issue we see in the wintertime for gutters.  An ice dam is essentially exactly what its name eludes to: a dam created by ice at the edge of the roof that prevents melting snow from draining off of the roof as it should. It is formed when heat from the inside of a house rises into the attic, warming the roof and therefore warming the snow on the roof. The melted snow then flows down to the edge that is still below freezing, forming the ice dam.

Water can easily get stuck behind the dam because it is now blocked from draining off, and eventually soaks into the roof. This water can make its way into the ceiling, walls, and plenty of other places in the home you don’t want it.

One way to prevent ice damming is to make sure your attic is well-ventilated, maintaining a consistent temperature. We also highly recommend Ice and Water Shields, Drip Edges, and Gutter Aprons to protect your home. We put these features on every new roof we construct (in the eaves, valleys, and trouble spots on the roof), but can also add them on to existing roofs!

If you have any questions or concerns about your home’s roofing system or gutters, please give us a call. We’d be happy to chat.