Home Tips & Discussion

[Numtini]

Here we just build roofs with proper strength to hold it and a pitch so if it gets crazy it falls off.

[Rasix]

Your snow doesn't melt the first day? 

[Samwise]

What's "snow"?

[Sky]

The metal frame slices into the snow as it rolls up the roof, and the snow blocks slide off. I have a 1 story house, which helps, too.

Numtini, trust me, it's one of a list of things I consider necessary for a good house (proper pitch and strength)....but the houses built like that (from the 1800's, mostly) are in the ghetto here. Total fucking tragedy.

I was chuckling at my neighbor's roof, which has barely 3" of snow and huge icicles already. I'd hate to see his heating bill.

[Venkman]

I think I mentioned this when I got my house, but it bears repeating: http://www.amazon.com/AVALANCHE-Original-Removal-AVA500-Fiberglass/dp/B002TLSTH4/

Couldn't you just get the roof heat cable? My first house had ample pitch, and after the first year of roof raking (which immediately followed a day of ice dam chopping), the cable seemed to stay ahead of it enough it both prevent ice dams and allowed enough runoff from snow that collected above it.

Granted, I used about 50% more cable to larger peaks and valleys than needed, but it did the job.

Every house is different though.

[Viin]

I was chuckling at my neighbor's roof, which has barely 3" of snow and huge icicles already. I'd hate to see his heating bill.

Doesn't having the snow on your roof help you keep your house warm? At least ,if you have an attic, I would expect the snow to keep the warmth of the house inside more than cleared roof (see: igloos).

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, snow is an insulator, the reason the guy has icicles is that 3' of it is providing enough r-factor that the temperature at the tiles is above freezing.  Sky's neighbor's heating bills could conceivably be lower than Sky's.

Clearing snow from your roof is at best a workaround for an incredibly weak structure that really should be reinforced, more often it's a waste of effort and excuse to sell you tools and services you don't need (if enough snow was accumulating to actually be a danger, you're having a blizzard so severe you're an idiot if you even leave the house).  If you're really that concerned, put on a metal roof and forget about it forever.

--Dave

EDIT: 3' of snow is equal to only a pound or so per square inch.  If your roof was that weak, major hailstorms would turn it into swiss cheese.

EDIT2: Oh, 3 inches, not 3 feet.  Yeah, your neighbor's insulation sucks.

[Venkman]

I was chuckling at my neighbor's roof, which has barely 3" of snow and huge icicles already. I'd hate to see his heating bill.

Doesn't having the snow on your roof help you keep your house warm? At least ,if you have an attic, I would expect the snow to keep the warmth of the house inside more than cleared roof (see: igloos).

So snow isn't bad, unless it can't run off your roof.

Metal roofs can help, but are fairly ugly for your average surburban home. Yes it's because of tile bias driven by herd mentality supported by tile marketing in surburbia. Most of that is lost on the average home owner who doesn't want to be the black sheep of the sub development.

Ice dams are that line of ice at the bottom 1-2 feet of roofline which prevent snow from running off and which either accompany or contribute to icicles. While icicles are pretty, they're usually an indicator of an ice dam, as in, a not-to-have.

Snow/sleet/rain can't run off if it's blocked. And if it's blocked, it builds up weight which in the right conditions/level of avoidance can collapse a roof. Of the water expands as it freezes under the tiles, soaks the wood underneath, gets into the attic insulation and then through it to the ceiling, and floor underneath. Ice is heavy enough, but now you've compounded it with mold, and potentially contractor work unless you're handy.

If you have a poorly insulated attic or eve, and can't deal with that for whatever reason, physically removing the snow from the lower 1/3-1/2 of the roof (or using heat wire from preventing it from forming in the first place) can mitigate ice dams.

This is helpful for older houses that don't have all the modern conveniences like good insulation, easy attic access, any thought given to roof pitch, all the current codes, etc.

[Merusk]

Uh, no.  The guy has icicles at 20 degree or lower temps because the insulation in his attic sucks and heat from the house is melting the snow from the bottom up.  Icicles are bad, leading to ice dams.  Your attic should be as cold as the outside unless you've got living space in it.

No idea where you pulled a pound per square inch, but stick to programming.  Damp snow is estimated at around 15# per cubic foot. SourceGiving three feet of snow a 45# load on one square foot.  Roof trusses are designed at 45#/sf dead load in this area.  New York code wants 55#/sf.   You want to get out there and get that off just in case more snow comes unless you've got a metal roof.  Grumblings of 'incredibly weak structure" be damned, that shit's heavy.  

[Sky]

It's mostly about preventing ice dams, and with my roof rake it's just as easy to clear the whole thing. And since it's going to dump a whole lot of freezing rain, the foot of snow would be a few inches of ice when temps drop 42 degrees overnight in a couple days and then it's just a giant ball of suck on my roof. No thanks.

I've helped rebuild at least a half dozen roofs that have caved in from winter loads, so I might be a bit sensitive about such things. I'd rather spend 45 minutes on a beautiful day making sure I don't have to worry about anything. Most of the caved roofs were metal, it's not a panacea.

[MahrinSkel]

This is all driven by the fact that every time an area gets an unusually large amount of snow accumulation, a few rooves fail, which gets lots of attention.  In virtually every case, some combination of shoddy construction and age is also involved.

I grew up in snow country, where winter-time snow accumulation measured in feet was the norm, and double-digits on that measure was not that unusual.  Most of the measures now pushed for homeowners are simply profiting from fear and ignorance, a slicker and more expensive version of driveway sealing.

If your structure is fundamentally sound, and your roof isn't half-rotten, these things are wastes of time and money.  If they aren't, you should probably fix the real problem.

--Dave

Fake edit: I pulled a pound per square inch out of my ass, by your numbers I was off by a factor of three on the heavy side (45 / 144 = 0.32).  However, before I was a programmer, I was a roofer (among many other things).  Generally the problem is not your trusses, but your sheathing or your main beams.  Frequently a problem in frame housing is windows that were added or widened after initial construction, compromising the support *under* that section of roof.  Additions with a flat roof can be a problem as well.

Real edit: I actually do believe in the heat wires, they do help with a real problem (even a small leak can rot out your support, and ice dams and the resulting issues can cause the edges to get such years before the rest).  But you only need them on the last 12-18 inches of roof.

[Sky]

What the fuck?

[MahrinSkel]

Ehh?  I didn't think I went all psycho on it.  Essentially: A properly built house isn't going to have the roof collapse from snow weight until you hit truly ridiculous levels (like, 10 feet, by which point even a moderately pitched asphalt shingle roof will usually have most of it fall off).  However, a lot of things can compromise that, most of which are either that the house wasn't properly built or it has subsequent damage (such as a slow leak running down a structural support and rotting out the wood).

If the snow accumulation exceeds the norm for an area by a major factor, rooves are going to fall, as deficiencies that didn't show up before are exposed.  But if your area has already had such a situation recently and your house didn't cave in, it's almost certainly okay (as evidenced by the fact that it survived).  However, this is exactly when the "solutions" such as roof rakes and extensive roof rebuilding/replacement will be pushed onto the local market (often abetted by local building inspectors who don't want to admit they miss structural deficits like those, and will argue that it was just a random thing that could have happened to any house).  Nobody is going to come to your door and tell you that $100-200 worth of heat wire you can install yourself will be adequate to protect your house, or that your house doesn't need any additional protection (roof in good repair, pitch sufficient to shed excessive snow, etc).

--Dave

[Sky]

I'm just saying that is a good roof rake for people who give a shit about properly maintaining their house. Or you can go ahead and hope that your roof will survive rather than take simple precautionary measures to stack the deck in your favor. If you're going to remove a couple feet of snow to prevent ice dams, this rake makes it just as quick and easy to remove the entire snow load.

I don't know why it turned into some crusade against predatory products and services. Then I remember this:



Keep your bullshit in Politics and Eve, Francis.

[Numtini]

I'm sorry if I was rude, but I've lived in New England for most of my life and this is honestly the first time I've heard of a device to clear a roof or that you would do such a thing.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm just saying that is a good roof rake for people who give a shit about properly maintaining their house. Or you can go ahead and hope that your roof will survive rather than take simple precautionary measures to stack the deck in your favor. If you're going to remove a couple feet of snow to prevent ice dams, this rake makes it just as quick and easy to remove the entire snow load.

I don't know why it turned into some crusade against predatory products and services. Then I remember this:



Keep your bullshit in Politics and Eve, Francis.

I see my mistake, I tried to depersonalize it, rather than saying "Sky is an idiot, don't waste $120 on that piece of plastic crap that won't do shit when you actually need to do something about snow 5 feet deep', I tried to simply explain things.  Next time I sperg out, I'll be sure not to spare your feelings with a meta-explanation that doesn't call you out personally.

--Dave

[Sky]

Sorry, I'll keep my complete ignorance and stupidity when it comes to the topic of home maintenance to myself from now on.

[Johny Cee]

A roof rake is used to clear off a roof when you have large buildups of snow and ice to prevent ice dams and pockets of water doing a thaw/freeze cycle against your roofing material, or if your building has skylights or dormers or what not.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_dam 

It generally doesn't have anything to do with roofs (rooves is an archaic and seldom used plural) collapsing, and more to do with regular maintenance to maximize the lifespan of your roof.  If you don't do anything, more than likely your roof will be just fine (unless it's well past its 20 to 30 year lifespan). 

In Upstate NY (though Sky is really more Western  ), we will tend to get periods where in direct sunlight you will have melt.  If that melt is running down through a foot or two of snow it can get stuck, refreeze, and cause some damage.... but again not likely to cause a huge problem unless you have skylights or dormers, or a more level slope where two roofs come together.  It does degrade the long-term durability of some roofing materials, and has the potential to cause more damage if you have freak periods of weather (like an ice storm, or a regular thaw/freeze period hovering around 32F).

I would make the guess that this kind of phenomenon correlates with areas that also do lots of maple sugaring (Northern Northeast/Southern Canada) as maple sugaring is dependent on that thaw/freeze cycle for Spice maple sap to flow.

Asphalt roofs (with tarpaper) are subject to some dregradation from standing water going through thaw/freeze cycles, and that could cause rot to the underlying plywood/plank roofing structure and/or some potential for mold or mildew.  It's not about "omg, my roof will collapse!" it's about making sure you get your full 20 or 30 year lifecycle out of your roof, and that bits of it don't get so degrading they go flying off the next time you get a good wind storm.

[MahrinSkel]

And the chances that you will damage your roof while trying to use a roof rake, doing far more to shorten its life cyle than the freeze/thaw cycle would have, is nearly 100%.

--Dave

[rattran]

Maybe that's true of you Dave, but don't assume everyone has the same level of competence.

[MahrinSkel]

Maybe that's true of you Dave, but don't assume everyone has the same level of competence.

You're trying to tear ice off of your roof with hard tool at the end of a long pole.  You're going to damage your roof.  Get heat tape/wire.

--Dave

[Trippy]

Yeah yeah, let's move on.

[Yegolev]

Sheesh.  Let's see what happens when I bring up that light bulbs in certain places in my house tend to blow out quickly.

I did look for signs of arcing on the bulb contacts already.  I've had one or two electricians look at it and the best advice I got was to buy industrial-strength bulbs.  That actually did work for a while, but the filaments did eventually die.  Now I have LED bulbs which seem OK so far but it doesn't really solve the core problem.

Related to this, I assume: I can't leave my 18V batteries in the charger where they are currently plugged because something causes them to go bad, either permanently or temporarily.  Something is off about my power supply but I don't know what.

[Chimpy]

Yeg, haven't you had like 12 consoles die too?

You have something really funky going on with the power into your house. Betting that you have a faulty transformer in your neighborhood that is feeding your house. Have you contacted the power company?

[Yegolev]

The dying consoles were fixed by replacing Ye Olde Powerstrip, which apparently have lifespans.

I haven't called the power company, but that's an idea.  I have my own transformer, but doesn't everyone?

[Chimpy]

The dying consoles were fixed by replacing Ye Olde Powerstrip, which apparently have lifespans.

I haven't called the power company, but that's an idea.  I have my own transformer, but doesn't everyone?

It really depends on the density of customers. In suburban/urban neighborhoods it is usually a few houses that all tie into one transformer.

[Yegolev]

I'll call the power company and see if they have anything for me.

As for mice and whatnot, four cats do the job in that division.  Post-murder cleanup is my job.

[rattran]

One of my cats handles cleanup for all the murders committed by the others.

I just get to handle post-cleanup-cleanup from the box.

[Merusk]

Sounds like you've got surges, Yeg.  Bulbs burn out because of the stress of the element heating/ cooling off or getting banged in a fragile state, after all.  Surges would push them beyond their expected current.

I'm with Chimpy ask the P.C. to look at your transformer.  Do you have any idea at all how old it is?  Their lifespan are like 20-25 years but I thought your house was about that age.  You bought it and built the pool, not built new, right?

Also, no, just those of you with vast country estates have their own transformers. Us peons have to share... with the upside that we don't have to pay when they burn out/ explode.

[Yegolev]

My transformer was installed in 2002, along with the entire house.  However, it's a ground-based unit and now invisible behind many bushes.

[Khaldun]

We had weird surges for a while and it turned out to be the power connection between our house network and the utility company--their fault. Took them a while for them to figure it out.

On lawns, the thing that's killing me every August is a weed called nimblewill, which looks ok as it comes in and then shades out and kills the fescue and bluegrass. If I cut it, it goes to seed faster, on a short stalk. Very annoying shit. Can't selectively kill it.

I solarized my vegetable garden two years ago, but it's getting overwhelmed again by weeds. I think I'm going to build a genuine raised bed with cedar planks instead and grow in that.

Our big issue at the moment is that we've had the sewer back up in the basement twice in a year, but every time they run a camera down the line out to the town sewer they don't see roots or any major issues, and that's with an old terracotta line. The latest hypothesis is that the trap in the lawn is oh-so-slightly misaligned and so it's catching and clogging now and again. Which is a fucking expensive fix according to the plumber whose theory that is.

But the thing that's really stressing me out is the bigger work we have to have done in the next five years--I really don't know how we're going to afford it. Means a loan, I guess, which really complicates our current debt situation.

[Bunk]

I'm thankful for threads like this. Makes me feel better about selling my place and renting again.

[Yegolev]

I'm happy to not have a slothful middleman between me and my comfort.

[proudft]

My transformer was installed in 2002, along with the entire house.  However, it's a ground-based unit and now invisible behind many bushes.

Have you checked the actual voltage at a couple of sockets?  If it's 125-130 or so things will still work... usually... but it's not good and sensitive stuff will blow out.

We lost a refrigerator, garage door opener, and microwave this way one year - the voltage slowly rose up to 130 due to a corroded neutral wire in the box and we didn't notice until stuff started dying.   Things with their own little boxes on power cords like TVs/computers seemed to survive, thankfully.

[Yegolev]

I have a cheap voltmeter that I can jam in some sockets.  I do seem to remember it being over 120V when I was using it to determine what was going on with a bad can light, but I'll try some more samples.

Corroded neutral wire.  I feel like I'm about to learn something.