Devices and Equipment You Can Add to Your Roof to Melt Snow and Ice

Ice dams on your roof may look beautiful, like icing on a gingerbread house. However, this ice is much more damaging to a real roof than icing to a cookie roof. Thankfully, there are devices and tricks to preventing ice on your roof, thus preventing ice damage.

Roof De-Icing Cables

These coils are applied to the edge of your roof. When they are installed properly, they continuously melt ice that is attempting to accumulate in that area. Snow will melt too, and not be able to turn into ice as it rolls off the edge of the roof. While these are really good for melting and keeping ice off the roof, you need a professional to ensure that the cables are installed effectively.

Rock Salt

Rock salt, the kind you usually use in a water softener, can be sprinkled all over the roof. If the weather isn’t too cold, the rock salt begins to disintegrate when the snow hits it and melts everything. You can also fill your gutters with some rock salt (not to overflowing, but just enough in the bottoms of the gutters). As the melting snow and ice trickles into the gutters, the rock salt there prevents it from re-freezing. It travels through the gutters and down into the downspout.

Another approach is to fill used old pantyhose stockings with rock salt. Tie off the open ends of the tops of the stockings and then lay the rock salt-filled stockings across the bottom edge of the roof. Because the salt can’t roll down and the pantyhose get snagged onto the shingles, snow and ice is melted by the disintegrating rock salt in the stockings.

Pressurized Hot Water

There aren’t that many contractors that can do this, but if you find one you can use this method. Essentially, it’s a pressure washer treatment with boiling hot water. As the snow and ice melt, they break apart and fall to the ground.

Erin Mauch