Dam ice

Rain fall on our roof, and the water runs down our roof to the front gutter. The front gutter diverts the water to downspouts on both ends, and the water runs down the downspouts and out onto the ground. Except when the gutter is not attached to the house, as it wasn’t until last year, so that the water actually runs down the roof, looks longingly at the gutter just out of reach, and plummets to its death rather than making the leap of faith across the gap and into the teasing gutter.

Now the gutter is attached to the house, and we have less water flowing across our fascia boards and less water falling onto our front steps. That seems good. In winter, as snow melts on our roof and turns into water running down the roof, the water does not form huge icicles in the gap between the roof and the gutter. That also seems good. Until the temperatures are such that the water in the gutter freezes, and builds up more and more ice, and eventually becomes a solid gutter-shaped ice sculpture. At that point, the water running down our roof cannot get past the gutter-shaped ice sculpture, and instead pools on the roof, finds its way under the shingles by going the wrong way (I blame that pernicious gravity interacting with properties of liquids), and starts to run around the wood supporting the front edge of the roof. Into our front porch. First in one spot, then in many spots. Around and through all the framing of our enclosed front porch that we just paid far too much money to have painted. I’m trying hard not to fall apart. I wish our house would try also.

The roof starts about 12 feet off the ground and goes up at a steep angle for another 40 feet or so, so even with the best roof rake we could only clear snow off of a small fraction of the roof. Still, whatever we can clear presumably won’t then melt and run into our house. A longer-term solution presumably rests with stopping the gutter from turning into an ice dam. We could remove the gutter (which can cause other problems), install some sort of heating element in the gutter and downspouts to prevent them from freezing (my instinct says this is a great way to set your house on fire), or possibly extend the front roof edge a bit and lower the gutter a bit (which might reduce the chances of the gutter-shaped ice sculpture acting as an ice dam, since melting water would then have more opportunity to run past the ice in the gutter).

I’d prefer to mount a secondary gutter system inside the roof somehow to channel away water that gets through the roof. Similar to what would happen if you built an addition onto a house, and left the original gutters attached between the original edge of the house and the addition. Sadly, that causes many other problems, according to the folks we talked to at a recent housewarming party who eventually discovered that particular treasure between their addition’s ceiling and their roof. Or we could get giant heat guns and personal hoverpacks. Time to do some more shopping on Amazon, I suppose.