Ice damming in your roof usually occurs when the heat from your house escapes into your attic. This causes the snow on top of your roof to thaw and as it turns to water, instead of going down your eavestrough, it gets forced up and under your shingles and penetrates the roof sheathing.
As the water loses places to go and the ice build-up gets bigger at the edge of the roof, causing icicles, the water gets forced into the attic and soffits. Water will ultimately find the lowest point and will eventually create a pool somewhere in your upper floor ceiling or walls, and you may notice a big wet spot on your ceiling. Most people assume that they have a leak in their roof but, more often than none, this is ice damming at work!
The good news is this can be easily solved by improving the ventilation of your attic as well as increasing your attic insulation. By equalizing the attic temperature with the outside air we can prevent snow from melting on your roof and having water build up. To improve the ventilation of your attic, make sure that soffits are not covered with insulation, install maxivents and top up your attic insulation with additional blown-in insulation. These steps can contribute to preventing ice damming from occurring in the future.
We recommend that you seek professional advice and help, however if you want to do it yourself, just make sure you don’t block your soffits while blowing in your insulation.
