You've got to get as much of the snow and ice off the lower edge of the roof as possible. Do you have a roof rake? If not, you can use a pushbroom or something to drag as much snow down as possible. Then you can either use a blow dryer or heat gun to melt the offending ice dam. To prevent this in the future, you can get some heat tape at the hardware store - it lays in your gutter and melts the ice as it forms in the gutter. You could probably just get the heat tape and install it now instead of blow drying, but I've never done it that way.

And of course, the real way to prevent ice dams is to make sure you have good insulation and vapor barriers in place so warm air never makes it into your attic space to melt the snow in the first place, but that is easier said than done, LOL!

I do not have advice, I just wanted to say that we have them too, and we did major insulation and ventilation when we bought this house last year so it's not necessarily a deficiency there. I read somewhere on one of these forums someone's opinion that it has to do with our early snowfall and the sun's inability to melt it in December (or something like that). Maybe it was on the old house forum? Hope you get it under control and hope ours doesn't start leaking too!

Hi Organic - we had this problem the winter after we moved in here. Hubby installed deicing cables, and they worked like a charm. They basically look like an extension cord, which you lay on the roof. It keeps a pathway melted for the water to flow, so it doesn't built up and cause a dam.

We've since installed a metal roof, so 99% of snow and ice slides right off.

I've included a link with more info re: deicing cables. It's just a random google search result, I have no idea who this comapany is. We bought our cables at a local building supply place for about $80.

Good luck - a roof leak would be NO fun during the Holidays!

Here is a link that might be useful: more info

I had typed up a nice long reply but lost it. We had this happen about six years ago. We drilled a large hole into the ceiling to allow the trapped water to drain into a five gallon bucket.

Turns out we were missing a vital roof wall intersection flashing, called kickouts. So, the as the ice melted it was allowing the water to run straight inside the house. Note: it leaked when it rained, but we never knew as the insulation and drywall could absorb it fast enough.

Here is a link that might be useful: More on roof kickout

We had this problem a couple of years ago in a enclosed porch at the back of our house that was converted into a room. When the roof has an excessive amount of snow and there is a melting period, if the gutters are filled and have iced up, the water seeps under the shingles and has dripped into the room. The only solution as it was happening was to catch the water in a large bucket until we were able to clear the gutter of the ice. After that experience, we always pull the snow down off this part of the roof over the room with a roof rake (this part of the roof does not get much sun so it ices up quickly). We are able to get to the roof because there is a deck right near the offending spot. Since pulling the snow off after each storm, we have not had an issue.

I just made a long post to answer someone else's question about ice dams over on the Old House Forum. I'll attach a link.

But your situation sounds slightly different.

For first aid, I would take advantage of the slight moderation of temps and get up there and get the ice and slush knocked out of the gutters, ASAP. Start at the down spout point and clean up along the line to get past the point of blockage. A hair dryer can help, particularly if you have aluminum gutters. It won't do much to solidly frozen run, but to hasten the removal of slush it works OK. A flat panel paint burner can help, too, but takes some experience to avoid damaging the surrounding surfaces. With both these please use a GFI outlet to plug them in since you'll be awash in water and using an appliance at the same time. I would never allow anyone to use a torch to do this, though. Too dangerous.

After the gutters are clear, and until you can make any necessary changes to insulation, slope of gutter, flashing, roofing or underlayment, etc., you will just have to rake the roof after every snowfall. It's not that hard to do. I always used to let my DH do it, but last year he was laid up so I found it could be done pretty easily. I was doing it on my second story this afternoon.

The good thing is that ice dams seem to be an artifact of of early, unusually cold and snowy winters. Later on in the season the sun is higher and it's less of a problem.

HTH,

Molly

Here is a link that might be useful: Ice dam question on Old House forum

Organic, something similar happened to us last year and we had a drain company come out and hook up their compressor hoses to our hot water and they blasted all of the ice and debris out of the gutters and drains. It took about 20 minutes to clear the whole house out to the bottom of the yard where the water all runs off.

Rilie, do you still use the cables with the metal roof or are they unnecessary? Also, did you install snow/ice guards?

The roofing guy said he'd come back to put them on, but we haven't heard from them and we're not sure if they're ever coming back or will get to it whenever...

We had to hire someone to get 2 ice dams off our old roof one winter. They were too thick and in too precarious a position for us to safely deal with. The following spring, we insulated the heck out of our attic with rolled insulation. Ice dams never happened again.

For your own sanity's sake, figure out a way to get it removed now.

We have the same problem periodically. We have a very old house and can't even get into places to insulate. Anyway, on the front of the house, we filled panty hose legs with walkway 'salt' (whatever it is....) and tied it to a strong cord and threw them on the roof strategically as best as we could to form a 'drain' in the ice so the water could drain off. I don't know if I'm explaining this well enough, but it looked weird, but it did melt sections of the ice down to the edge of the roof for drainage. What a mess this situation is, I KNOW!!

Hi Chicory - our metal roof was new this fall, but so far there is no snow or ice built up whatsoever, and therefore the deicing cables are not necessary. Our roof pitch is steep enough that everything slides right off (so far). We've have two heavy snowfalls so far this winter, and so far so good.

I know that proper insulation, etc., etc. is the correct way to prevent icedams but stuff like that is not always easy to work on in the middle of winter - and especially if you live in a 100+ year old house. My hubby always removed whatever snow he could from the roof in our problem area, and the deicing cables did the rest.

We didn't have the cables all around our house like the is shown in my link above, we just used one length across the problem area (an old porch that was closed in years ago). When the problem first presented itself, hubby just laid the cables onto the ice and they eventually melted/worked their way down to the roof surface. They certainly did their job, it was money well spent for us.

organic, hope you guys are having some luck dealing with this!

In case it helps others, I think I finally figured out why we have them...we have a 1 1/2 story house, and there are knee walls in the back of the closets. They're vertical so the blown-in insulation doesn't address them, and there's no way to get in there to put batts up behind them. Also, part of the stairwell just goes straight up to the ceiling so I don't think there was access to blow anything there either. As Pooh would say, "Oh, bother!".