Ice Dams

This has been a cold and snowy winter in New England. As a result, our dreaded ice dam problem is back. We thought it had something to do with the shingles, lack of protection under said shingles and the lack of flashing behind the gutters at first. Now we know it's an ice dam.

What is an ice dam you ask?

Here's a little graphic from www.select-restoration.com to explain it:

Basically, an ice dam is caused when heat escapes through your attic or crawl space and melts the snow on your roof. The melted water then flows downward until it reaches an eave where the temperature is cooler because it's not being warmed by the heat escaping from your house. When liquid water meets a sub-freezing patch of roof, it re-freezes and creates a chunk of ice. As more water melts and flows down, it hits the ice which acts like a dam and holds the water in place like a tiny lake. The backed up water goes under your shingles (because they only work in 1 direction) and it travels into your house.

Once it's in your house, it can flow down a wall, travel along a roof beam or do any number of other exciting things. The end result is all the same - damage and leaks.

That's currently what we have going on. Our summer goal of getting more insulation into the attic was postponed by brutal temperatures, so we pushed it into the fall. My husband is a master procrastinator, so it was the late fall. The fall is a busy time for us - my mother-in-law compulsively has gatherings every other weekend that requires traveling to another state and we try to pack the kids up for a weekend at my parents' house at least once a month. Then there are birthday parties and everything else. The result is that for most fall months we simply don't have a weekend at home to take care of any kind of house-related chore. So, unless I get my husband in the dangerously hot attic during the summer, it's not getting done. He refuses to believe that our falls are so jam-packed that he won't have any time to do it then. He also underestimates the amount of time it takes, foolishly thinking he can get it all done in a single weekend. Ha! Considering he only stays up for about 2 hours before getting tired and coming down, it's going to take a lot more than 1 weekend to accomplish that job.

Anyway, enough excuses. The problem is apparently a lack of insulation so we need to get it fixed. I've also noticed that it happens right above a particular window in our kitchen that's massive and drafty, so I'm guessing the low-quality window has something to do with the heat escaping as well. On top of fixing the cause of the ice dams, we need to patch the ceiling and the wall above the window, then paint everything. That means the whole ceiling needs to be done as well as the walls because they were painted over 5 years ago and the ceiling is dingy now and the wall color can't be found. Good times. More work was created because my husband was lazy. That seems to be a theme... I should mention too that this house was HIS pick, not mine.