Edmonton Winter Roof Specialist’s Guide to Prevent Ice Dams, Skylight Leaks, & Costly Damage
Hey there. We’re back again with Alberta Skylights Elite Roofing and Ryan, who is the owner operator of Alberta Skylights in Edmonton, Alberta. And really, you do kind of all over Alberta, don’t you?
Yeah, we usually stay within about 120 km of the Edmonton area, but for the right project, we’ll go everywhere.
All right. And these guys specialize in doing skylights. They do skylights, do brand new, cut skylights, and they do skylight replacements, repairs, service work. But really, you really shine when it comes to doing the new cut installations. The large grid ones look really, really amazing.
Yep. We call them an array, where we’ll take and we’ll use your existing framing, but we can put multiple skylights right side by each like a pair of toast and fill your whole roof. We’d have a glass ceiling if you’d like.
Nice thing about the system that we use, we do not have to alter the framing significantly. So, we’re not looking at engineering, we’re not looking at a whole bunch of permitting. It’s just a really quick drop-in system.
Now, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, it’s winter time now, right?
So, winter time, let’s say you had an array of four, five, ten skylights. How does that affect the insulation rating? How does it make the house feel? Because, you know, like most people’s roofs are filled with air and insulation. Once you take away the insulation part, you’re just left with air and then outside. So, how does that work?
Absolutely. I hate to admit this, but the most energy efficient skylight is no skylight. I mean, obviously, you’re not going to beat insulation. You’re going to put a hole in your roof. If you’re in a situation where you rather the light, we have some very, very energy efficient skylights to go in that space.
Winter Skylight Efficiency and Heat Loss
Our skylights are at minimum dual pane triple coated argon filled glass. So, they’re very similar to your windows on the side of your house. So, if you’re curious how much heat loss you’re going to have, that’s probably as good of an indicator as you’re going to get, is what kind of windows do you have beside there.
We did do a project, I think it was a year or so back, it was right around Halloween. We started in on a project where we put two giant skylights on either side of the house facing in towards each other. We knew that the weather was going to come and shut us out. So, we took and we quickly got all of the roof framed out and we cut and put the skylights in on the roof.
The ceiling was all ripped apart. She had no vapor barrier, no insulation, just two giant holes in her ceiling. We finished that up on the Friday. We were coming back on the Monday to carry on with the install, and it snowed. It got cold. It was like – 5 – 7 snowed. It was right around Halloween.
We came back in on that Monday and the snow had still not melted off the top of those skylights. So, you’re talking about direct heat, no insulation, no vapor barrier, nothing. Just full heat from inside of the house to the outside. Thirty degree temperature differential, it still hadn’t melted the snow on the other side of it.
So, for perspective, they’re pretty insulated. They’re pretty good. They do a very nice job of keeping the heat in and the cold out, and summertime vice versa.
Wow, that’s amazing. I I I didn’t know that.
Yep. That same customer sold that house and she asked us to go and put in a skylight array on her new home. It was fourteen skylights wide. So, she had two giant skylights in her first house, lived with that for two years, sold it, and bought a new house, and asked us to take and put fourteen skylights in her living room. So, I mean, there’s some perspective on their faith in that one right there.
Right.
All right. So, they loved it so much they got more.
Fourteen more.
Fourteen more. Okay. So, it’s winter time now and talk about roofing. It’s time to, you know, put the Christmas decorations on the house, light up your house, and, you know, things like that.
So, let’s talk about things that affect roofs in wintertime. So, absolutely. Question number one. Let’s say somebody wants to go and put some Christmas lights on their home up on the second level and so forth. Is it safe to walk on your roof this time of year?
Christmas Lights, Roof Safety, and Snow Removal
You know, I’m not going to say it’s safe to walk on your roof this time of year. It’s snowy. It’s icy. A lot of roofers don’t want to get up on there to begin with, let alone the homeowner. A lot of people get injured. There’s a lot of companies that do Christmas light installs. I’d suggest that’s probably your better play.
Is it going to damage your roof to walk on it? No, it’s not going to damage your roof to walk on it, but you might find yourself getting damaged in the process.
Now, what if somebody uses like some crampons or something so that they have some grip on their boots or shoes when they’re on there? Is that going to wreck your roof?
There’s a few products that you’re talking about. The ones that we use from a professional side are called corkers. They’re like little spike boots. I would strongly advise not walking on your shingled roof with that. I mean, your shingles are going to be cold and brittle. You’re going to have a ton of little pressure points. There’s a good chance you’re going to damage your shingles.
We see those calls every year. Other calls we get every year is people have ice damming on there, so they take and they shovel the snow off and then you have that layer of ice on there. So, they take an axe or whatever and beat the ice off of there and it just totally destroys your shingles. We see those calls on a regular basis as well.
Best course of action would be to stay off of it if you can. There’s a really, really cool product out there. Might be a little expensive for a lot of people, but it’s called the Goat Steep Assist Ladder. It’s got a hook and a pole and you can hook it over the ridge so you can actually go on your roof safely. There’s some really good methods of getting up there.
Ironically, if your roof has a lot of snow on it, it’s a lot safer to walk on than if your roof has just a little bit of snow, because that snow will actually hold on to the roof. But you don’t want an avalanche taking you off the roof with it there. Just Google on YouTube, you’ll see all sorts of those videos.
All right. Well, that brings me to my next question. We get a big dump of snow. You’re looking at it from the ground. It looks pretty daunting and ominous. Should somebody, you know, you’ve seen them with those long poles and shovels, should somebody shovel the snow off the roof?
I’m personally of the mindset that unless there’s a compelling reason to, you should just leave it. Building codes, modern building codes, they allow for snow load. Like your house is engineered to take that snow load on there.
If you say, “Well, my house was built in 1942. It was before these building codes. It’s almost 100 years old. It can clearly handle the snow loads.” I would say just leave it unless there’s a compelling reason to take it off.
Compelling reason might be your house is very, very prone to ice buildup and so you want to get as much of that snow off of there to try and prevent that to begin with. In that case there, those snow rakes are actually pretty decent at doing it. They’re a nice safe way of getting that snow off of your roof without having to go up there and risk your own neck to shovel it off.
One thing to be mindful of, if you’re going to take the snow off, just take it down to the hard pack. Take the loose stuff off. Don’t go impacting that. Don’t go putting salt on your roof, any of those other things there to try and get that little bit of ice off of there. You’re just going to cause problems. You’re going to damage your roof in the long run.
Take the loose pack off. That’s not going to be much of an issue, but do not scrape the shingles.
With that thought in mind, you’re probably going to void your warranty if you did something like that. Am I right?
Any physical damage to your shingle isn’t going to be covered by a manufacturing warranty, and it’s certainly not going to be covered by a workmanship warranty. Homeowners do stuff. There’s nothing we can do about that. So you’re correct to say that would pretty much fall outside of the scope of a warranty.
Yeah. So you come back and you develop a leak because you’ve damaged your shingles by being, you know, scraping them or what have you. You can’t call the manufacturer or the roofing ice dam company and say, “Hey, you got to fix this. My roof is broken.”
Yeah. That’s probably pretty evident for you to tell what happened on that roof.
Yeah. It’s pretty obvious to see, especially when it’s the bottom three to four feet of your roof that has consistent, you know, ice scraper gouges all over it. It’s pretty clear to see what happened in there.
Ice Damming Causes, Ventilation, and Leak Barriers
All right. Now, let’s talk about things that happen and occur during this time of year when it gets cold. Ice damming. So, what causes ice damming and how do we solve that problem?
In the simplest of terms, ice damming is caused by heat loss. A lot of people will say, especially roofers that don’t know a lot better, will tell you that lack of ventilation causes ice damming. That is only a part of the equation and it’s actually wrong. If there was no heat loss, there would be no ice damming.
So, your best defense against ice buildup, ice damming on your roof is to keep the heat in the house where it belongs.
From a roofing perspective, we don’t do insulation. Some roofers do. We don’t. But from a straight roofing perspective, the way we try to mitigate that is through ventilation. It’s why a lot of roofers say you need ventilation to beat the ice damming.
By flushing all of that hot, warm air that’s escaped from your house out of the attic before it gets a chance to melt the snow is how roofers are going to try and handle that circumstance there.
The ideal temperature of your attic above your insulation is the same temperature as it is outside. So, if your ventilation is working properly, you’ve got lots of intake and lots of exhaust, you know, that’s how roofers typically try to solve the ice damming problem.
Okay. Now, let’s say somebody does have ice damming and they developed the leak. Can you fix that stuff in the winter time, or like what happens in that case?
If you’ve got ice damming that’s caused a leak, the ways to fix it, well, at that point, it’s almost too late. We’re going to have to do something that is likely to damage your shingles to stop that.
Shingles are, you know, fancy term, hydrokinetic. Water has to run off of your shingles in order for a shingle system to work. When you take and introduce a giant block of ice there, all of a sudden you end up with water sitting on your roof, hence the name ice dam. All that water will back up and run underneath your system.
We have to remove that blockage. The way we can go about that, we’ve used, in commercial applications, steam trucks. We’ve seen people put salt on there, heat trace, lots of ways people try and get that in there to try and flush that and get it through, but almost every one of those options is likely to damage your shingles.
I hate to say it, but at that point, you’re already too late. You’re dealing with the consequences rather than being proactive.
I guess the question that I’ve got is, you know, ice stemming. Okay, there’s heat loss and there’s a ventilation equation in that. Now, what about improper installation? Like maybe there’s no inadequate drip edge or something like that. Like what are some of the other things that can contribute to ice daming?
Ice damming is always going to come down to heat loss and improper ventilation. If you’ve got too much heat in the attic and not enough ventilation to get that out of there, you’re going to have the problems.
From an installation perspective, Alberta Building Code requires us to put a leak barrier on the bottom portion of your roof, which is meant to mitigate that. We personally prefer to use that at 6 feet as in two rows of 36 in because it’s been in our experience that’s where most of the ice damming happens.
A lot of contractors use 44 in just to meet Alberta building code. That’s fine. They do what they want. We prefer the 6 ft.
Improper installation. If your installer didn’t put the proper leak barrier in there, if they didn’t install it properly, sure, that could cause problems. They are not going to cause the ice dam. They are going to fail to mitigate the effects of the ice dam.
Is there anything else that people should know about their roof or caring for their roof in the winter time?
A lot of homes have a humidistat attached to their furnace. If you take and look at the temperature outside and the temperature on the inside, a lot of those humidistats actually even have a chart that shows wintertime, summertime.
Relative humidity as a rule doubles every 10° temperature differential. So, if you drop that temperature by 10°, relative humidity is going to double. Keeping your humidity in check in your home during the wintered months is very important. If you’re starting to see a lot of moisture building up on the insides of your windows or your doors, that’s a indicator your humidity is too high. You want to take a look at that.
Other problems we see quite a bit of in the winter time is bathroom fans. People have bathrooms that they don’t use very often and they end up with all sorts of water leaking through there. People have fans at the bathrooms that they use all the time and they get that in there. A lot of times those fans are 25, 30 years old and nobody’s ever checked them. Nobody’s ever cleaned them. Nobody’s ever done anything with them.
A simple little test to see if your bathroom fan is working half decent, take a piece of toilet paper, turn the fan on, hold it up to the grate, see if it has at least enough air to hold that toilet paper up in there. You’d be surprised at how many times we do that test and it won’t even hold a piece of toilet paper up in there.
All that hot, warm air is getting caught up in that space. If it’s not getting into your attic, causing all sorts of problems in there, you’ll end up with things like attic rain. There’s all sorts of things.
Humidity Control and Fan Tests to Prevent Moisture Issues
Keeping your humidity in check, making sure that your bathroom fans are working properly. Even your kitchen, your hood fan in your kitchen, you can run that same test in there.
If you’re boiling water, cooking dinner, run that fan, keep that humidity in check. You can go on Amazon and buy a little hydrometer, humidistat, if you will. It’ll tell you what the indoor relative humidity is.
When it is -15 – 20 outside, you do not want that humidity above 25%. That’s probably the easiest thing you can do to help mitigate a lot of that moisture in your house.
Run those bathroom fans longer than you would expect. Just because you’re done your shower doesn’t mean that fan shouldn’t run for another 10 to 15 minutes.
A lot of times we take and replace those switches that actually have a little hydrometer in them. So, if the relative humidity in that bathroom gets out of check, those fans will just turn automatically. Saves a lot of grief. It’ll help regulate that humidity in your house and save a lot of problems.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending some time and telling us all the ins and outs of how to take care of your roof in the winter time, what to do and what not to do.
So if you guys are looking for the ultimate pro for skylights and roofing at the same time, look at Ryan Harbison at Alberta Skylights Elite Roofing out of Edmonton, Alberta. We’ll see you guys in the next video.