Ice Dam & Roof Snow Removal in Lowell, MA

Our shop is on Main Street in Tewksbury, and Main Street turns into Rogers Street at the Lowell line. We've done roofing, gutter, and repair work in the city. Lowell is a city of older buildings, a lot of them divided into apartments, and that changes how ice dams form and who they land on. For the full rundown across every city and town we serve, see our ice dam & snow removal overview.

Why Pre-War Buildings Make Ice Dams

Census data puts the median year built for Lowell housing at 1942, and about half the city's housing units are in buildings from before 1940. Buildings from that era went up before attic insulation and soffit-to-ridge venting were standard. Some have been upgraded since, often a piece at a time, and the gaps are where the heat gets out. Warmth from the top floor rises into the attic, warms the roof deck, and melts the snow on it. The water runs down to the overhang, freezes there, and every thaw builds the dam a little higher. You can watch that happen in our interactive ice dam cutaway.

When The Leak Lands In The Top-Floor Unit

About a quarter of Lowell's housing units are in two-family and three- and four-unit buildings. In a building like that, the dam sits over everyone, and the water shows up in the top-floor unit first: a brown ring on the ceiling, a damp patch by an outside wall, water at the window trim. Shingles shed water running downhill, and the pool behind a dam backs up under them through the laps and nail holes, into the sheathing and the insulation. By the time a stain shows, the water has often been there for a while. If it's already inside, our Lowell roof repair crew traces where it got in and fixes it.

Snow Load On Lowell Roofs

Lowell's ground snow load in the Massachusetts building code is 50 pounds per square foot, no different from Tewksbury or any other city or town we serve. In the January 2015 blizzard, a trained spotter in the city measured 33 inches of snow for the National Weather Service. A properly framed roof carries a normal winter, and what tests an older roof is a storm like that one, then a thaw, then another storm, with drifts piling into valleys and onto lower roofs while an ice dam adds weight at the eave. Sagging, creaking, or doors and windows upstairs that suddenly stick are all reasons to call. When the roof itself is past it, our roof replacement in Lowell page covers that job. We wrote up what a Massachusetts roof is built to carry, and when to worry.

How We Clear An Ice Dam

We melt a channel through the dam with low-pressure steam so the trapped water can drain off the roof. Steam doesn't chip shingles, strip granules, or force water further under the roof, all of which a hatchet, a pick, or rock salt will do. It's slower than hacking at the ice, which is a trade we'll make on every asphalt roof.

Clearing Snow From The Roof

Heavy snow on a roof is weight now and fuel for the next dam. We pull it off the eaves, valleys, and drifted corners with roof-safe tools and stop a couple of inches above the shingles. The state's Department of Public Safety gives homeowners that same advice, because a shovel scraping bare asphalt does its own damage.

Stopping The Next One

Steaming the ice off handles today's leak, and the fix for next winter belongs to warmer weather, in the attic and at the gutters. On a Lowell building we check three things: the insulation over the top floor, the air path from the soffit vents to the ridge, and whether the gutters and downspouts carry meltwater away from the building. Our gutters in Lowell page covers the gutters, downspouts, and the fascia behind them.

The state code also calls for an ice barrier along every eave, ice-and-water shield running from the edge to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, and 36 inches up the slope on a roof pitched 8:12 or steeper. It goes on every roof we install. If an ice-damaged roof needs replacing, the permit comes from the Division of Development Services at City Hall. If the building is in one of the Lowell Historic Board's 11 districts, we also check with the board's staff before we order materials.