Ice dam removal

What an ice dam actually is

An ice dam is a ridge of ice at the edge of your roof that stops meltwater from draining. It takes three conditions at once: snow on the roof, freezing outdoor temperatures, and heat escaping from your living space into the attic.

That escaping heat warms the underside of the roof deck and melts the snow sitting on it from below. The meltwater runs down the slope until it reaches the eave, which hangs past the heated part of the house and stays cold, and refreezes there. Every melt-freeze cycle makes the ridge taller. Eventually it holds standing water behind it, and standing water on a roof finds its way under the shingle courses, through nail holes, into the soffit, and into the wall and ceiling below.

Two things people get wrong. First, this is a heat loss problem, not a roofing problem — your roof did not cause it. Second, it does not take a blizzard. Dams can start with as little as two inches of accumulation on the right house.

The warning signs

• Large icicles hanging from the eave, or ice building up over the gutter line
• A visible ridge of ice at the roof edge, often with a wet, darker band of roof above it
• Water stains or damp spots on ceilings, especially along exterior walls or near windows
• Damp insulation, frost, or water tracking on the sheathing in the attic
• Snow melted off one slope while another stays fully loaded — usually the sunny side clear, the north side covered

By the time a stain shows on a ceiling, water has already been getting past the roof edge for a while.

The two things you can safely do yourself

Rake the snow, from the ground

A long-handled roof rake, ideally one with wheels or a bumper that keeps the blade off the shingles, removes the fuel supply — see how much roof snow is too much for when it is worth doing. One caution that does not get said often enough: clearing only the bottom few feet can cause a second dam to form higher up the slope, right where you stopped. Take off as much as you can safely reach from the ground, or none of it.

Cut a drainage channel

Fill a nylon stocking or fabric sleeve with calcium chloride ice melt, not rock salt, and lay it vertically across the dam so one end hangs over the gutter. It melts a channel that lets trapped water drain. It does not remove the dam. It buys time.

If water is actively coming through a ceiling, a box fan in the attic aimed at the wet section of roof deck can refreeze the leak path and slow it down while you get help. That is a stopgap, not a fix.

What is not safe is going up a ladder onto a snow-covered, ice-covered pitched roof. That is where people get seriously hurt every winter.

Why steam, and how to verify you are getting it

Steam is the only method that removes a dam without physical contact with your roofing materials. Low-pressure, high-temperature vapour melts the ice where it is applied. A trained crew cuts channels through the dam and lets the bulk of the ice release under its own weight rather than melting the whole thing, which is both faster and cheaper for you.

What happens when we arrive

• We walk the exterior and the attic, and photograph conditions before anything is touched
• If there is interior damage, we document it before removal begins — see our page on ice dams and insurance claims for why that order matters
• Snow above the dam comes off first, so the ice is reachable
• Steam cuts channels through the dam; the bulk releases into a controlled fall zone
• Gutters and downspouts are cleared so meltwater has somewhere to go
• We tell you what caused it and what it would take to stop it happening again

Pricing moves with storm conditions, ice volume, roof height and access. We put the hourly rate and the minimum hours for your property in writing before we start — see what ice dam removal really costs for how the industry prices this and why published averages are unreliable.

The permanent fix is heat, not ice

Everything above is triage. Ice dams come back, often within a week or two if the weather repeats and the snow load is not managed, and they come back in the same spot, because the heat leak causing them has not moved.

The durable fix is upstream, and we cover it under ice dam prevention: air sealing the attic bypasses where warm air escapes — around recessed lights, plumbing stacks, wiring penetrations, the attic hatch, and where interior walls meet the attic floor — then insulation to the level your climate zone calls for, then verifying that soffit intake and ridge exhaust venting are genuinely open and not packed with insulation. Air sealing generally matters more than insulation depth. A well-sealed attic at a moderate R-value routinely outperforms a heavily insulated one full of leaks.

Heated cables at the eave and in the gutters are a management tool, not a cure — trade-offs in are roof heat cables worth it. They keep a drainage path open. They do not stop the melting.

Common questions

Where we work. Ice dam removal, roof snow removal and heated cables are offered across 29 states — Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming — with crews mobilising to wherever the storm lands. Roofing, gutters, siding and insurance restoration are offered in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, where we are a licensed contractor.

Coverage questions on this page are general information, not insurance advice — read your policy and speak with your carrier or agent.