A leak that only shows up in January is not a roof leak in the usual sense. It is water being pushed uphill under the shingles by a ridge of ice at the eave. We repair what the dam damaged, take the dam off without wrecking the roof, and tell you what in the attic is making it form.
Leaking right now? Call and say so. Emergency calls are answered 8 am–5 pm weekdays, weekends by arrangement for a fee. An active leak gets a temporary measure first, then a proper repair once the roof is dry enough to do it right.
Call 250-258-8600Ice dams announce themselves. The trouble is that by the time they are dripping into the house, the water has already been under the shingles for days.
A thick band of ice at the bottom edge of the roof, often with a pool of water or slush behind it on the upper side. The dam itself.
Big icicles hanging from the gutter or the fascia mean meltwater is reaching the cold edge and freezing. Small ones are normal. Big ones are heat loss.
Inside, the water shows up on the ceiling near the outside walls, at the top of window frames, or running down inside the wall, because that is where the eave is.
Nothing in the rain, nothing in the snow, and then dripping on the first mild afternoon in February. That pattern is a dam, not a hole.
Snow melting off the upper slopes while the eave stays white is the attic heat escaping. The melt has to go somewhere, and it goes down to the ice.
Ice is heavy. A gutter packed solid with it sags, pulls its hangers out of the fascia, and sometimes comes down with the spring thaw.
Water backing up under the eave courses runs down behind the fascia board and out through the soffit. Bubbled paint and dark stains on the underside of the eave in spring.
Once the ice is gone, the first two or three courses look chewed. Either the ice lifted them, or someone chipped at it. Either way they are not sealed any more.
An ice dam needs three things: snow on the roof, heat escaping from below to melt it, and an eave cold enough to refreeze the melt. The Okanagan supplies all three for weeks at a stretch. A sunny day at minus three melts the upper roof from underneath and from above, the water runs down to the overhang, which has no house under it to keep it warm, and it freezes into a ridge. The next day’s melt has nowhere to go but behind the ridge and up under the shingles.
The heat is the part that varies house to house. Thin or gappy attic insulation, blocked soffit vents, a bathroom fan or pot lights dumping warm air into the attic, and no air path from soffit to ridge all keep the roof deck warm enough to melt snow when the air is well below freezing. Complicated roofs with valleys, dormers and low-slope sections that hold snow make it worse.
Where the geometry means dams will form no matter what, the mitigation is heat trace: self-regulating cable run in a serpentine along the eave and down through the gutters and downspouts so a melt channel always stays open. The photograph is one of Premium Roofing’s own installs, cable in the gutter and up the field of the roof. For the full story on dams and heat trace, see Premium’s ice damming and heat trace pages.
The tempting thing about an ice dam is that spring fixes it. It does not. Every thaw pushes more water into the eave, and the eave is the one place on the roof with the most wood to rot.
Meltwater backs up behind the ridge and under the first few courses of shingle. If there is ice-and-water membrane on the deck it stops there. If there is not, it soaks the underlayment and the top edge of the deck.
Fix now: relieve the dam, check the eave
Each thaw sends water down the sheathing, over the top plate and into the wall or the ceiling near the exterior wall. Stains appear, spread, and the insulation in the wall cavity starts to hold water.
Fix now: eave repair plus drywall
The ice comes off and takes shingles with it. Gutters have sagged or pulled their hangers. The fascia board behind them is stained and soft, the soffit is peeling, and the eave courses are lifted and unsealed for the summer winds.
Fix now: eave courses, fascia, gutters
The deck edge delaminates, rafter tails and the top plate rot where the water sat, and mould grows in the wall insulation. The repair is now carpentry as well as roofing, and the interior wall comes with it.
Fix now: new deck edge, rafter tails, wall interior
We drew the whole sequence, stage by stage, with the roof section changing as you scroll.
The cost of waitingNever chip ice off a roof. Beyond that, the order is the same every time: get the water moving, fix what it damaged, and find out why the roof was warm enough to make the dam.
If water is coming into the house, the first job is to get it draining. Channels cut through the ice let the pool behind it out, and steam or careful removal takes the ridge down without tearing shingles, stripping granules or pulling the gutter off. Hammers, chisels and hot-water hoses all cost more than they save.
From the roof: the eave courses, the drip edge, the gutters and the fascia. From the attic, where there is access: the underside of the deck at the eave, the top plate, and the insulation and soffit vents. Wet insulation and stained sheathing say how long the dam has been getting in, and blocked soffits say why.
Lifted, torn or unsealed eave courses come up. Wet or delaminated decking at the edge gets replaced. Ice-and-water membrane goes on the deck at the eave, and in the valleys if they are opened up, so that water backing up under the shingles next winter stops at the membrane instead of the deck. New drip edge and starter, then the courses relaid and blended into the field.
Sagging gutters are rehung or replaced, with hangers into sound wood. Soft fascia gets replaced, not painted over. Soffit that has been holding water comes down and goes back up dry, with the vents clear, because a soffit vent stuffed with insulation is one of the commonest reasons the deck was warm in the first place.
The repair fixes the damage. The dam is an attic problem, so you get told in writing what we saw: where the insulation is thin, where the air path from soffit to ridge is blocked, which fan is venting into the attic. Where the roof shape makes dams inevitable, heat trace at the eave and in the gutters keeps a melt channel open, and we install it. Insulation and ventilation are for the right trades, but you leave knowing what to ask them for.
Ice dam damage is usually confined to the eave, and an eave can be rebuilt on a roof that has plenty of life in the field. That is a repair, and adding ice-and-water membrane while it is open makes the roof better than it was.
If the shingles across the whole roof are at the end of their life, or years of dams have rotted the deck edge along the entire eave, opening up the bottom metre of every slope is most of a re-roof anyway, and we will say so. Replacements are done by Premium Roofing, same crews and same phone number. How we decide.
We do not quote a roof we have not seen. What moves the number is how many eave courses have to come up, whether the deck under them is sound, the state of the gutters, fascia and soffit, and whether the roof needs ice-and-water membrane added while it is open.
What you can count on: the inspection and written quote are free, pricing is flat-rate, and anything that could change the number is named before work starts, not on the invoice. Heat trace, if it makes sense for the roof, is quoted separately so you can decide on it on its own.
Tell us what you are seeing and we will come and find out what is causing it. Estimates are free, written down, and honest about whether the roof is worth repairing.
Free estimates • Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country & Peachland
