Do not let Ice Dams damage your home

Hello everyone! For those of you that live in areas that get snow, do yourself a favor and buy a Roof Rake and after each snow storm remove the snow from the first 4 or 5 feet of your roof. As home owners, it is very important to do things that prevent us from having to do Home Repairs that with a little bit of extra time and effort can be prevented entirely. Ice Dams form at the edge of your roofline, usually right at your gutters, if you have gutters on your home. A lot of the newer homes being built will not even put gutters on homes, but the debate of gutters or no gutters is for a future BLOG. By cleaning off the first few feet, all the way around your home, this enables melting snow to just simply run off and onto the ground. Otherwise what happens is the snow melts, often times under more than one foot of snow and as the temperature drops at night forms an Ice Dam at your gutters or edge of your home. Problems then arise when the Ice Dams become so large (over a period of a few days) that the water that is running down your roof has no where to go. The water then backs up onto your roof and simply goes back under your roof shingles and eventually gets the wood wet enough where it comes into your home. It could take days before you even realize it is in your home and by then it can cost an awful lot to conduct necessary repairs. This happened to my personal residence recently and fortunately the damage was minimal. I have since purchased a roof rake and after I am finished with my driveway I go around my home and rake my roof. It is a bit of a shoulder workout, but worth it in the end. There is a quite a storm that has hit us out here in Northern, MA today, so I figured that I would pick this topic for today. Hope everyone is well and thank you again for stopping by.