Ice & Snow Damage Repair · Cambridge

Ice and Snow Damage Repair for Eavestrough in Cambridge

Steep roofs shed snow in one slide, and a light trough on spiked hangers is what it lands on. The spring repair is routine; the useful part is making the next winter different.

Cambridge's older neighbourhoods have steep roofs — the Gothic gables and storey-and-a-halfs of Hespeler, the Victorian pitches of Galt and Preston, wartime houses with sharp roofs on small lots — and steep roofs do two distinct kinds of damage to an eavestrough. Each has its own repair and its own prevention.

Snow slides

A winter's snow on a steep shingle roof lets go all at once in a thaw, and on a metal roof it goes sooner and faster. The slide hits the front lip of the trough and either bends it outward, pulls the hangers out of the fascia, or takes the whole run and the downspout with it. The repair is to re-hang or replace the damaged section on screwed hidden hangers at the correct pitch, replace bent lengths, and reconnect the downspout. The prevention is a heavier gauge trough, hangers at tighter spacing below the steep plane, and on metal roofs snow guards on the roof itself so the load releases in pieces rather than in one sheet.

Ice in the trough and at the eave

The second kind of damage is slower. Water that stands in a trough with poor pitch freezes, more water freezes on top, and the trough fills with a bar of ice heavy enough to pull hangers and bow the run. Where the eave itself is building an ice dam — a ridge of ice at the roof edge with water backing up under the shingles — the trough is the victim rather than the cause. The cause is heat escaping into the attic through thin insulation and a soffit that was built closed, melting snow from below so it refreezes at the cold edge. Re-pitching the trough so water drains instead of standing helps. Fixing the dam means venting the soffit, keeping insulation off the deck with baffles, and sealing air leaks from the house into the attic, and we say so rather than selling a trough repair as a cure.

What the spring visit covers

• Securing or removing any run that is hanging, so it is not a hazard over a walkway or the neighbour's side — which in Cambridge is also a property standards question.
• Re-hanging and re-pitching on screwed hangers; replacing bent trough, mitres and end caps.
• Replacing crushed or separated downspouts and elbows.
• Checking the fascia where hangers pulled out, because on an old house that is often where rot was already waiting.
• A plain recommendation on gauge, hanger spacing, snow guards and soffit venting for the plane that did the damage.

Heat cables

Self-regulating heat cable in the trough and downspout keeps a channel open and is a reasonable stopgap on a roof whose ventilation cannot easily be fixed — a finished attic in a Galt storey-and-a-half, say. It is not free to run and it treats the symptom. Where it is the practical answer we will say so, and where soffit venting would do the job properly we will say that instead.

Winter calls

A run torn down in January can usually be made safe and secured in winter; the full re-hang and any sealing waits for a dry, mild day because sealant will not cure in the cold. Clearing ice from a trough with tools damages it, and we do not do it; the lasting fix is drainage and venting.

Frequently asked questions

Serving Cambridge and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.