Ice Dam Removal & Prevention

An ice dam actually begins indoors. Heat from your living space slips up into the attic and warms the roof just enough to melt the snow on top. That water trickles down until it hits the eaves, the part of the roof that hangs out past the wall, where there's no warmth underneath. It freezes there, and a little more freezes every night until there's a solid ridge of ice. That ridge is the dam.

After that, melting snow has nowhere to go. It collects behind the ice, and shingles are built to shed water running downhill, not to hold back standing water. It works its way up under the shingles and into the house: soggy insulation, stained ceilings, blistered paint and, given time, mold. For a lot of people the first sign is a drip in the hallway.

Southern Maine practically builds ice dams to order. A nor'easter drops a foot of heavy snow, a sunny afternoon melts the top of it, and the night falls back into single digits. Classic Maine capes with finished upstairs rooms, connected farmhouses and older colonials with thin attic insulation get hit the hardest.