I live in Wisconsin and we received around 16 inches of snow a couple weeks ago, and it hasn't been above freezing since. Our house is 1.5 stories, and the finished attic is poorly insulated. To try to prevent ice dams, I raked the bottom 3-4ft of most of the roof, and as much as I could (all but the top 3ft) of a known problem area.
This didn't work. All it did was move the ice dams up higher, and on the north side of the house, the 3-4ft I cleared turned into an inch thick layer of ice, with a dam several inches thick at the top of it. Over the last week, we've been having several spot leaks that thankfully I've been able to get to, but I wanted to finally put an end to it and paid someone to steam all the ice and snow off our roof.
During that process, I noticed a few spots of water on the floorboards in the unfinished parts of the attic (inside the kneewalls) while they were steaming/spraying the roof.
Could this be indicative of a leaky roof, or perhaps it's just ice that was already under the shingles finally being melted, and had to happen sometime? The asphalt roof is ~5 years old, and the shingles look in good condition. I have not noticed water in the attic in previous rain storms/etc., but I do not check every time it rains.
I will be attempting to airseal and reinsulate the attic as best I can soon, and don't want all my work to get soaked and ripped apart in the future.
This didn't work. All it did was move the ice dams up higher, and on the north side of the house, the 3-4ft I cleared turned into an inch thick layer of ice, with a dam several inches thick at the top of it. Over the last week, we've been having several spot leaks that thankfully I've been able to get to, but I wanted to finally put an end to it and paid someone to steam all the ice and snow off our roof.
During that process, I noticed a few spots of water on the floorboards in the unfinished parts of the attic (inside the kneewalls) while they were steaming/spraying the roof.
Could this be indicative of a leaky roof, or perhaps it's just ice that was already under the shingles finally being melted, and had to happen sometime? The asphalt roof is ~5 years old, and the shingles look in good condition. I have not noticed water in the attic in previous rain storms/etc., but I do not check every time it rains.
I will be attempting to airseal and reinsulate the attic as best I can soon, and don't want all my work to get soaked and ripped apart in the future.