Saturday, 3 hours removing about 500 lbs of ice off the gutter and roof in front of the house. Rocked it old school: framing hammer and masonry chisel. After first I was just trapping away. After half an hour with not much progress, I started just wailing away. Good for removing the ice, because it was splitting into big chunks. Bad for my arm and shoulder. Picking up the kids later in the day and the next morning? Painful.
Sunday, after consulting the weather report for the week, I made the decision that it was the day to finally to install some deicing wire on the roof. So, off to Home Depot I went and picked up 2 80ft wire kits. Wasn’t rocket science, but a lot of busy work: unwinding and straightening the wire, figuring out the best way string it, and about a zillion trips up and down the ladder.
At first, I was leery of the whole idea because I thought you had to nail in the clips to hold the wire; not gonna improve the situation by making more holes in the roof. But, it turns out that they just clip onto the shingles. Well, at least they’re supposed to. Pry up the shingle with a putty knife and they slide on without much hassle, but I’m a little worried how well that they’ll stay on.
Messing around on the roof, I can pretty much pin point the problem. Water freezes in the gutter, things get backed up, and ice grows up under the drip edge. The process repeats in the higher up roof courses the ice grows. Hopefully, the 7 hours invested and $150 to put a little heat up there will keep it from happening again. Fingers crossed.
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