Maine Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Do you shovel your roof?
We have family in MA who are having major problems with water leaking because of the build up on their roof. DH is convinced we need to clear ours. I think that's an accident waiting to happen.
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Re: Do you shovel your roof?
No, we never consider it. Hubby- who is a yet to be practicing architect- says it's a bad idea with just a couple of exceptions. You are going to get ice dams no matter what, so shoveling won't help with that. If you clear some, but not all of the roof off- like your rake or ladder only gets you 2/3 of the way up, you'll end up with ice dams in the middle of the roof, and for some reason that's worse. (I forget why it's worse.) And then your roof should generally be able to withstand the weight if it is properly built.
Now if you have flat roof or a roof that you think it structurally compromised, then yet, shoveling is a good idea. Otherwise, you are much more likely to just damage the roof you have, thus inviting more opportunity for leaks, and it's a great way to fall off your roof in slippery conditions.
For the record, I am no expert myself. This is all DH's theories, and while they sound good to me and I know I don't want him risking life and limb up there, I don't have any real facts to back any of this up.
I just know we never do anything with our roof and even though we know it isn't the best, in the 5 winters we've been here, we've never had any issues.
funny you post this now, because MH is getting all geared up at this moment to go push snow off of our porch roof. It's the only flat roof we have, and although we've never had problems with it, our house is old (almost 120 years), so we're worried about taking chances this time around. The ice is heavy. The beauty is that he can just lean out the bedroom windows to do it, and hopefully most of it will land in the front yard and not on the sidewalk. No real danger involved.
Our other roofs (dining room bay & house roof) are pitched, so we're not going to do anything with those.
We do. Or well DH does. He spent a solid 2 hours breaking up an ice dam over our entry door yesterday. It was giant and menacing and causing a leak in the living room. However, our house is in terrible need of repair from floor to roof and the amount of heat that comes out of it makes me cringe. So to avoid further repairs and troubles we have to. Our landlord (FIL) certainly isn't going to do it....
I didn't see the need, our roof is pitched and there is not much snow on it.
DH wanted to do it, and once he gets an idea in his head there is no stopping him. Especially, by my opinion. If I could find another guy to share my opinion and relay it to DH, that can be a different story.
DH borrowed a rake from a neighbor and got what he could reach from the ground.
Another architect's wife chiming in. MH is also in the no camp unless you have a flat roof and the weight of the snow makes roof collapse a serious possibility OR structural integrity issues. Otherwise, he agrees with Erika's husband - you're more likely to cause damage to your own roof or yourself.
We rake after every storm. The bare areas of the roof will eventually warm up and then help to melt off the rest of the roof. We did have to shovel one time last year when the snow amount was insane. Both of our parents shovel/rake what they can and we follow suit.
For those of you with jams, one of my FB friends sent me this link that looks like an awesome plan to me to prevent problems or at least reduce them.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/skill-builder/0,,211604,00.html
I don't, but DH does.
The main part of our roof has a significant pitch to it so it rarely accumulates too much snow, but our porch has a flatter roof and DH clears if off when we get a large quantity of snow.
I wish this topic came up sooner...
We spent about $30K on home repairs to the back corner of our house over the past year and a half. This included entirely redoing the flat roof above our dining room which was under an improperly built deck that had a 5-person hot tub on it!!! The flat roof was leaking and rotting the roofing/ceiling of the dining room, which in turn was leaking in behind the walls and down into the basement, rotting the foundation in the basement. Fun stuff!
So, after all this money spent on repairing and improving, DH went into the dining room today (in the back and not used hardly at all) and there's water all behind the bubbled paint on one of the walls!!! And, there's one spot where the water bubble burst, and dripped onto our laminate flooring (which isn't supposed to get wet) and swelled it in several spots. I'm hoping it's just because we didn't shovel the flat deck/roof and not any more shoddy work from the jerk contractor who did the work on that deck - things didn't end well with him, once we found the second half of the $15K of repairs that would be needed, and asked him to lower his insanely high labor rates a bit, since he should have been able to foresee the additional damage.
But, now the snow is sooo heavy that it's hard to remove, and I can't help.
My Wedding Bio! Not updated in a LONG time!
We don't usually but we've gotten SO MUCH snow this year in CT and we were having some leaks in the back of our house and about an 8 inch ice wall at the edge of our roof that MH has been doing some work on it.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware; joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. -Henry Miller
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