Ice Dams on Madison Roofs: Why They Form and How to Stop the Leaks

Every February we get the same calls from across Madison, Monona, and Middleton: water staining the ceiling, drips at the top of an exterior wall, a ridge of ice building along the gutters. The culprit is almost always an ice dam — and by the time you see the leak inside, the water has already been working for a while.

What an ice dam actually is

Heat escaping into your attic warms the roof deck and melts the snow on top. That meltwater runs down until it reaches the cold overhang past the exterior wall, where it refreezes into a ridge of ice. New meltwater then pools behind that ridge and, with nowhere to go, backs up under the shingles and into the house.

How to get rid of one — safely

Do not attack an ice dam with a hammer, an ice pick, or a hatchet. You will shred the shingles and the flashing and turn a water problem into a roof-replacement problem. The safe method is low-pressure steam, which melts the ice away without touching the roofing.

• Steam removal of the dam itself, working from the gutter up
• Roof raking to reduce the snow load feeding the dam
• Clearing gutters and valleys so future melt drains

Stopping the next one

Steaming clears the emergency; attic air-sealing and insulation fix the cause long term. In the meantime, keeping the roof raked after big snows is the simplest prevention. If you have an active leak right now, our roof and ice-dam crew treats it as an emergency — the longer the water runs, the more it costs to fix.