Dam Them Ice Dams

     The plip plop of water dripping into a bucket from the ceiling is not a welcome sound any time of the year and especially not during the wintertime.  Folks who live where lots of snow falls every year spend a large amount of time moving snow.  When a person has warm air escaping from their attic onto the roof this can cause ice dams and the plip plop of water into a bucket if the dams are not taken care of.  If the snow is removed from the roof then sometimes this problem can be avoided.

     It doesn’t sound like much fun to me to get up onto the roof to shovel snow onto the deck to then shovel the snow onto the ground off of the deck.  It normally doesn’t sound like fun to my kids either until they were at their friend’s house yesterday.  They spent a good part of the afternoon climbing a ladder to get onto the roof to then jump off of the roof into the snow below.  Whoever was still on top of the roof would then shovel snow furiously off of the roof onto the person who had just jumped off and was still struggling to get out of the waist deep snow below.  What a grand time they all had and the result was a clean roof.

     I’m wondering if the kids will go for it again today at our house?  My guess is "No" because I probably wouldn’t want them climbing the ladder, being up on the roof or jumping off.  The pitch of our roof is a bit steeper and our lodge is a bit taller than the one they were jumping off of. 

     Whether or not the kids decide to join in the fun some shoveling has to be done.  There are icicles hanging off of our roof and that’s a bad sign.  The edge of the roof is coated in a thick sheet of ice and the snow is piling up.  If we don’t take care of it we’ll soon be hearing the plip plop of water into a bucket and that is not music to my ears any day of the year. Dam them ice dams!