Ice dams are ridges of ice that can form at the edge of your roof. They can prevent water from draining correctly and cause leaks in your home.
To prevent the need for water damage restoration Sioux Falls or Yankton services, follow these steps to remove ice dams.
Of course, the ideal scenario is to avoid ice dams forming on your house from the start, but if you aren’t so lucky, here’s how to break them up and avoid the need for water damage restoration Sioux Falls or Yankton services.
Safety First
Let’s cover a couple basics. For one thing, if you’re reading this because an ice dam is already causing water to leak into your home, please reach out to our team. Our water damage restoration Sioux Falls services will help solve the problem inside. We can also lend some advice on how to deal with outside.
If serious ice dams have formed, your safest bet might be to hire someone to remove it. Professionals can steam ice dams off your roof without damaging it, and this way you aren’t falling off a ladder or injuring yourself with a sharp tool.
That said, if you do decide you need to remove ice dams yourself, be smart. Have someone there to hold a ladder for you instead of trusting it to stay put on ice or snow. Secure tools with some string or cord so you don’t drop anything on your ladder holder.
And in general, please be careful.
Found a Leak? Let us Help Stop the Damage
Removing Ice Dams Yourself
Remember, for this to be an ice dam it must be holding back water.
If all you’re seeing are icicles with no water trapped behind them, you might be okay – though removing them is still a good idea, provided you don’t knock them down on yourself.
If you are dealing with an ice dam, here’s how to remove it:
Remove Snow
This is necessary so that snow isn’t insulating your home or the ice, promoting the melting and leaking that will exacerbate your need for a Yankton or Sioux Falls water damage restoration service.
Get a roof rake and remove the snow three to four feet from your roof’s edge. Take care not to damage your shingles or roof covering by always pulling the rake and snow straight down. Be sure to scoop walkways again after knocking snow from the roof.
Use Calcium Chloride
These mixtures can be purchased from most hardware stores, which is good, as sodium chloride can damage roofs.
Some advocate filling nylon stockings with calcium chloride and positioning them vertically on the roof to melt a channel through the ice, while other sources are skeptical as to whether the stockings help or hinder the melting.
In any case, calcium chloride will help melt the ice more effectively and safely than you can chip or hack through it. If there are plants under your roof, cover them with tarps so that calcium chloride-saturated water leaving your roof won’t damage any shrubbery.
Dealing with a Leaky Roof
Again, you might want to hire someone to remove the ice dam for you [NOTE: Intek does not remove ice dams]. And if it’s already caused a leak, you definitely want Intek there to handle the water damage restoration.
To minimize your home’s winter water damage, call us at 605-332-3006 or click below:
