Ice Dam & Roof Snow Removal in Methuen, MA

Senco is based at 1150 Main St in Tewksbury, about 12 miles from Methuen by I-93. We've replaced roofs on Methuen homes, and every winter our crews clear ice dams and heavy roof snow around the area with steam and roof-safe tools. Here's what that means for a Methuen house. The ice dam & snow removal overview covers the rest, including what's safe to try from the ground.

Methuen's Older Houses And Ice Dams

Census figures put the median Methuen home's build year at 1968, but that number hides a long tail. About one home in four in the city was built before 1940, and the rest spread across every decade since. Older houses often have attic insulation added a piece at a time over the years, around a chimney, over an addition, behind the walls of an attic room finished later, and every gap lets warm air reach the roof deck. The snow above it melts, runs down to the cold overhang, and freezes again. The ridge of ice that builds there holds the next melt against the shingles. The ice dam guide on our blog shows where that heat gets out.

Taller Roofs In The Arlington Neighborhood

About one Methuen home in six is in a two- to four-unit building, and the City's master plan describes the Arlington Neighborhood as dense two- and three-story multi-family homes on small lots. An ice dam three stories up is the same problem with a longer reach, less room on a tight lot to set up, and more gutter and downspout to clear. We plan the access before we quote, and we check the attic and every downspout as well as the spot where the water showed up.

What An Ice Dam Does Inside

Behind the dam, meltwater pools on the roof and works backward under the shingles, through nail holes and the seams in the underlayment, into the sheathing and the attic insulation. Inside the house it turns up as a ceiling stain, peeling paint, or water at the top of a window, often a room away from the ice. If the water's already in, our Methuen roof repair page covers how we find the leak and fix it.

Snow Load On Methuen Roofs

Every community we serve, Methuen included, has the same 50 psf ground snow load in the Massachusetts building code, and that covers an ordinary winter on a soundly framed roof. The roofs we worry about are carrying more than an ordinary winter. The January 2015 blizzard dropped 31.5 inches on Methuen by the National Weather Service's count, and drifts stack that kind of snowfall into valleys and against taller walls. An ice dam along the eave adds its weight to the edge that's already wettest. If the roof is sagging or making noise under the snow, call us. If it was due for replacement anyway, our Methuen roof replacement page covers what comes next. Our guide to how much snow a roof can hold covers the warning signs.

How We Remove The Ice

We melt a drain channel through the dam with low-pressure steam, down to the shingle surface, so the water behind it runs off the roof. Nothing gets chipped and no salt goes down. A hatchet takes shingle with the ice, and rock salt corrodes shingles, gutters, and fasteners. Steam is slower, and it's the method we use on every asphalt shingle roof.

Roof Snow Removal

Snow left along the eave is the water supply for the next dam, so that's where we start. We clear the eaves, the valleys, and the drifted spots with tools made for roofs, never a shovel scraped across the shingles, and we leave the rest of the roof alone unless the weight calls for more.

When The Roof Needs Replacing

If the ice did enough damage that the roof needs replacing, Methuen requires a building permit from the City's Inspections Division, in the Searles Building at 41 Pleasant Street, Suite 203 (978-983-8625), and you can apply online. We pull it on every Methuen roof we replace. In the Searles Tenney Nevins Historic District, the City's local historic district, exterior work you can see from a street also needs a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic District Commission, and its guidelines ask that original roofing be replaced in kind. The Commission meets on the fourth Thursday of the month and has up to 60 days to decide, so we start that conversation early. Steam removal itself doesn't change the outside of the house.

Preventing The Next One

Removal takes care of this winter. Next winter gets decided in the attic during the warm months: insulation where it's thin or missing, and ventilation that pulls cold air in at the soffits and out at the ridge, so the roof deck stays close to the temperature outside. Massachusetts requires an ice barrier at every eave, from the roof edge to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, and 36 inches along the slope on roofs pitched 8:12 or steeper. An older Methuen roof that's been re-covered more than once may not have one, and when we replace it, the barrier goes on before the first shingle. Clear gutters help too. Our Methuen gutter page covers that part.