I have two areas with ice dams - the top of the dormer and a the steep lower roof. This review evaluate a commercial available solution which did not work for me, and my own version of it which worked.Last year I tried using RoofIce Dam Breaker, which is essentially a long tube filled with salt, which are supposed to deposit on top of your roof where you have ice dam problems. RoofIce Dam is a big heavy ice stock. It you can safely get it to the roof it works fine. However I needed to solve the ice dam problem after 60" of snow already fell, make it impossible to get on a ladder safely. Raising the big stock full of salt to the top of the dormer roof turned out to be very difficult. I was able to put it on top of the ice dam on the steep lower roof, but it slid off under its own weight. The sock is too heavy to stay on roof with steep angle. However, I found a solution that worked for both of my problem areas.
I took a nylon stocking, filled it with calcium chloride to form a sausage about 4" long. To make it easier to fill the stocking I took a 16 oz yogurt container and cut out its bottom. This made a nice sturdy funnel which kept the top of the stocking wide open for pouring the calcium chloride.
I tied the top of the stocking onto itself and then tied it to a garden thread so I could retrieve the stocking later (who wants a roof full of stocking?). The thread turned out to be helpful on my failed attempts, when the sock wound up in the bushes and I had to pull it out and try again.
Then I took an extension pole used for a roof rake. I replaced the big rake with a small brush so it would be easier to hoist it up to the level of the roof of my dormer where my major ice dam is located.
My first few attempts were to fold the sock over the brush and dump it on the roof. But that did not work as either the stocking fell before it reached the desired spot, or I could not disengage the brush without knocking the sock down.
Finally, the solution that worked was using the pole and the brush as a lever. I put the thread attached to the sock over the brush, and raised the brush to the roof positioning it where I wanted the sock to be located. The stocking meanwhile was laying on the ground. Then, using the brush as my lever, I pulled on the thread to raise the stocking to the roof. This worked very well the first time I tried!
My second problem area, is the steep lower roof. I could not get even a small stocking to stay on the lower roof as it has a very steep angle. However, my dormer windows are above the ice dam, so I suspended a stocking with ice melt on a thread from a window.
I also want to make a note that the nylon gets stuck to the ice. When I tried repositioning one of the socks it would not budge. The gravity makes it drops when the salt melts the ice around it, but repositioning the sock to another spot turned out to impossible because it is stuck to the ice, and pulling it might tear the stocking dropping all the salt at once rather than via slow release.
24 hours later I saw that the ice stocking built a channel. I can see the trapped water coming out of the channel.
The idea behind this method is not to melt the entire ice dam, but to give water an outlet from under the ice dam. So all you need is a small channel. The water will go where there is the less amount of resistance.
After my first successful ice dam break I put the sock on the roof of the dormer before the snow. When the snow began melting (and normally this is when my problems begin), I noticed that the biggest icicle is formed right under where the sock is placed on the edge of the roof. The unexpected bonus is that the salty water from this big icicle is dripping on the lower roof and pouring into the rain gutter. The rain gutter (which in the past was totally uncased in ice) did not freeze right under the big salty icicle, thus allowing the water to drain into the gutter.
Ali Julia review ★★★☆☆
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