Wing walls, posts, and concrete steps are common candidates for ad-freezing, even if they go below the frost line. They usually do not have proper granular back-fill around them, they have no weeping tiles under them, and they receive little or no heat from the basement. They are overlooked...
Recent research from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has pointed out new priorities for solving ice dam problems. Common practice for years has been to address ice dams with more ventilation. It was when this practice wasn?t working very well that the researchers took a closer look a...
Nancy in Manitoba has bad ice dams on her roof. She sent me a great sketch of her whole attic arrangement, complete with knee walls and cathedral ceilings, not to mention a dormer -- and there is no ventilation in the roof in front of the dormer.The guidelines for eliminating ice dams are sim...
One viewer has recommended using Urea fertilizer to melt ice on the roof rather than using salt-based de-icers.Actually, the research done, during the famous 1998 Eastern ice storm, confirms this idea. The salt will discolour the shingles and rust the gutters and generally not be good for eith...
If there is one tool that everyone living in Northern United States, Canada and mountainous regions has it's an ice scraper for your car's windshield. And if there is one thing we all have in common, it's the fact that long before the end of the winter, it no longer scrapes well. So just like w...
The famous outdoor second story steps in downtown Montreal, an area they call Balconville because of all the open balconies with stairways, presents a real safety problem in those icy Montreal winters. The most common anti-slip treatment is to install a jute runner, commonly called Tapis CoC...
"I would like to ask your thoughts on the "pros and cons" on the use of the self-adhesive, 3 ft wide membrane (ice dam) used on the edge of the roof line. I believe that this would replace the felt paper, under the 1st rows of asphalt shingle. We have a sloped roof, but I do not know how ste...
You have all seen highway signs indicating the period of spring thaw and reduced truck loads throughout the northern US and all of Canada -- or walked across grass that is just beginning to thaw from the winter making deep footprints or tire marks that would never sink like that during a stro...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Roofing Product: Elastomeric Sheet Membranes
Temperature Limitations: Material and workmen are most flexible above +10 C (+50 F) -- emergency repairs can be made down to -10 C (+14 F)
Rain Lim...
When there is morning frost or light snow on a roof, you can learn a lot about a heat losses from the house and how to eliminate ice dams and icicles.
What causes problems
Melting the bottom of a snow pack or melting off all snow at the crown of the roof sends water down under the snow to ...
