Icicle & Ice Dam Removal in Old Toronto

An ice dam forms because the top of your roof is warmer than the bottom of it. Heat escaping into the attic melts the snow up high, that meltwater runs down to the eave where there is no heat underneath, and it refreezes. The ridge of ice grows, and every subsequent melt backs up behind it into a pond. That pond is the problem. Shingles are engineered to shed water running downhill. Standing water backed up behind a dam finds its way under the shingle course, through the deck, into the insulation, and eventually onto a ceiling. By the time there is a stain inside, water has been sitting in the assembly for a while. Icicles are the visible half and a genuine hazard in their own right. A large icicle over a doorway, a walkway, or a parking area is a serious weight falling from height. On a commercial property or a condo, that is exposure nobody wants to be carrying. The instinct is to attack it - hammer, hatchet, chipping away at the ridge. That reliably destroys the shingles, the eavestrough, and the flashing underneath, and it turns a winter problem into a spring roofing bill. Ice will not lose that fight. Roofs will.