Snow Removal From Roofs
It’s that time of year when you need to think about what happens if we have a heavy snowstorm and snow accumulates on your roof. We wanted to give you the following guidelines recommended by the National Roofing Contractors Association for removing snow and ice from your roof.
Because of safety issues, NRCA does not recommend that snow removal or ice dams be tackled by anyone except roofing professionals. Lots of homeowners either try themselves, or hire an amateur, to rake off the snow from their roofs.
When it snows in this area, roof rakes fly out of the hardware stores. Use of those rakes can be counter-productive and harmful to your roof. Roof covering and gutters can be damaged by the rakes. If you are trying to remove snow with a rake from the ground, the rake can only remove the snow on the bottom portion of the roof. Thus the bottom edge of the roof could potentially cause the formation of a secondary ice dam since ice dam membranes are generally not installed more than 24 to 36 inches beyond the roof/wall intersection causing water leakage should an ice dam form.
Proceed with caution and consult a professional roofer.
