Educate me.

[gtblum]

Yesterday, while inspecting a $299.000 & NO SENSE. home, I ran across an attempted sheetrock repair and some water stains that were located directly under a second floor bathroom.

The buyer's rep was there and she said, the seller said the stains were from an ice damming problem that had been repaired by a roofer.

When I pointed out the fact there was a bathroom above and there were no stains or evidence of any type of repair, her eyebrow went up, also.

A while later, the listing agent / next door neighbor showed up and tried to show me where the repairs were made to the roof. (Must have been magic) I took him around back showed him the proximity of the bath over the damaged first floor ceiling and he began to get angrified, and again stated that a roofer had fixed it.

Beautiful. So, there should be no problem producing documentation supporting the repairs.

Here's the Q. Other than tearing the roof off and starting over, exactly what kind of repairs can be made to the roof cover to prevent a problem with ice damming?

[Mark P]

Ice daming is the result on improper attic ventulation - no? Maybe the roofer added needed vents?

[Rob Amaral]

It's often a matter of controlling heat-loss and ventilation at the same time.. "Depends on the situation" of course..

[kurt]

"........exactly what kind of repairs can be made to the roof cover to prevent a problem with ice damming?"

None I'm aware of.

Having spent a couple decades trying to "repair" insulation and ventilation in older homes to prevent ice dams, I've come to the conclusion that it isn't possible without completely gutting and reengineering the assembly to include state of the art systems.

Brand new house? No problem.

Retrofit repairs? Not without gutting the joint, or, almost gutting the joint. In some instances, I've found adding insulation and venting to help, but it didn't stop the ice dams. I suppose there's some house out there that has perfect access, high pitched roof, big eave overhangs, and all the access necessary to allow perfect insulation retrofit, but they're rare.

Take off as much roof and gutters as necessary to get IWS wrapped around everything.

One can't stop ice dams in older homes; one can only prevent water backup into the house.

All those "repairs" people constantly point to are usually nothing that's going to stop ice dam backup.

[In-Depth]

Another key to ice dam prevention is air sealing-preventing heat loss from the conditioned areas to the unconditioned areas.

I don't know how you'd do that from the roof.

Jim

[kurt]

Another key to ice dam prevention is air sealing-preventing heat loss from the conditioned areas to the unconditioned areas.

I don't know how you'd do that from the roof.

Jim

Good point.

[gtblum]

Thanks for the responses. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't some new magical remedy for this.

It amazes me that folks can look you in the eye and try to bullshit their way through stuff like this. Nobody did a damn thing to the roof or anything else, other than slop some mud and paint on the ceiling under that bathroom.

I'm well aware of the fact that water can work it's way from this side of a roof to that side of the house before it shows up, but I'd say it's unlikely water from an ice dam would show up on the first floor ceiling, eight feet from the outside wall without seeing more evidence of it elsewhere.