For those of you in the south that got heavy snow accumulations

[FrozenNorth]

Very steep, story and a half post WW2 house, you couldn't pay me enough to climb on that thing, got it reshingled, they charge extra because of the steep pitch.

[none]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 01:22:52 -0500, FrozenNorth

My parent's house was the exact opposite. It was a farmhouse built circa 1825 and had an extremely low pitch. To prevent the snow and ice buildup we ran heating wires zigzagging about two feet up all along the back of the house.

[Jeff Thies]

A good idea. I'm one of the ones in a city ill prepared for two inches of snow.

Here they don't even require tar paper, let alone ice damn membrane. Not sure how well the membrane works, but I had it put in.

I've got a truck across the street that slid backwards and wedged itself in between a phone pole and a cement wall. Almost no damage now, but I imagine that won't be the case when it is pulled out!

Southerners do not understand ice and snow. I hear a car at this very moment gunning the engine trying to move.

Jeff

[Swingman]

Bullshit! We even have a snowplow:

[Leon]

Damn fine machine!

[athiker]

I would not think that a properly vented roof would ice dam.

[woodchucker]

Ok, you get to believe what you want.

I know that even a well insulated attic , well ventilated will still damn.

The problem is the sun and air, it will melt the snow, and that will refreeze at night if cold enough (usually is). Then the rethaw will start the process over.... And that is where the problem occurs.

When my house was built, they did not have the glue down membranes in use regularly. Now I believe they do. I am due for a new roof, but it will likely be a second layer.. so not really ideal for a membrane.

[athiker]

I was referring to how the attic is ventilated above the soffit.

[athiker]

I had a near miss in Flagstaff, AZ one day when a couple of feet of snow slid off a metal roof just as I stepped out of the way. I had a blessed day!

[Drew Lawson]

The problem that bit me several years ago was not caused by the roof. It was caused by the gutters.

When there is snow followed by subfreezing temps, the sun melts the snow, which drains into the gutters, where it freezes immediately.

Usually this isn't too much of a problem. But a few years back, things combined just wrong. We'd had enough of that cycle to completely fill the gutters. Then we got more snow, then the snow melted from all but the eves. Then we got freezing rain. The gutters kept the eves cold enough to freeze the saturated snow, then the rain backed up behind that.

I keep saying that I'll put emergency heating cables in the gutters. Maybe next year.

[jo4hn]

Cut the amount of attic insulation to a minimum. The heat from the house will melt the ice. No problem. There are some consequences of going through an uninsulated winter, however. mahalo, jo4hn

[Puckdropper]

"Mike Marlow" wrote in news:lcdulv$jn4$ [e-mail]:

I thought about putting a couple of them up over a Morton Building door. Shut the door and whoosh! snow all over. I've been wondering if it'd be worth the effort...

Puckdropper

[woodchucker]

I think the snow bars... where they are bars that go across might work out better.

[krw]

Keep the roof at a constant temperature and you won't get ice dams. The problem arises then ice melts in the center of the roof and refreezes at the soffits, where it's cooler. The idea is to ventilate the roof so that it stays the same temperature across the span, as over the soffits.

[krw]

I see no difference in the (new home) roof construction here, compared to the construction in Vermont. Roofs on newer homes tend to be steeper, here, in fact. No idea why.

[krw]

Same thing happened tonight on the way home (two days after the snow). Some moron got stuck on the same hill and cops had the road blocked off. I had to drive ~10Mi around. There is still a lot of ice around, where the sun couldn't get at it.

I don't. It's a new truck so has new tires but it does get a little goosy going up slick hills. My wife has been stuck at home since Monday and is about to go over the wall. I went into work at noon and called back to tell her to forget it.

[John Grossbohlin]

Last Wednesday morning one of those drivers got stuck on the railroad tracks just north of Gainesville... the AMTRAK train I was on hit the car shortly after the driver abandoned it. Net result was a tow truck was needed to pull the car out of the front of the train and we had a 2 hour 20 minute delay... I saw thousands of abandoned and trapped cars... 3-5 lane wide parking lots that went on for mile after mile! Glad we skirted most of the problems... ran into some closed roads though as so many cars were abandoned that they were blocked to further traffic. Crazy!

[krw]

+1

When I was in Detroit last month I saw exactly the same stupid behavior that the Northerners are whining at the Southerners about.

[clare]

Well, I was supposed to go out to the airport for my weekly "hangar lunch" at noon, but the white crap was coming down pretty good - and it was that grainy crap - not nice soft flakes - which made the roads slippery as goose shit. The pick-em-up has snows and posi - but trying to get around the corner from Weber Street to Columbia in Waterloo the truck wanted to go straight ahead whether I had the brakes or the gas on, and regardless which way I had the wheels turned. The snow bank stopped me. Then I had to stop again when there were about a dozen vehicles trying to make it up the grade in 6 inches of snow - I went all the way up the hill crosswise, and decided to just go home (another 2 blocks on the level) instead of another 10 miles of country hills and curves.

Sometimes it's all about knowing when to quit!!!