# Snow and Ice Buildup



## mayhem (Jan 13, 2011)

OK, so I've been living with this for years and I'm tired of it.  More importantly though, my wife is REALLY tired of it.

We have a chalet-style log cabin, 11/12 pitch roof that holdds alot of snow and ice.  On the south side of the house is the main entrance and the large front deck wraps around from the front to the south side and you step doen off the deck near the main doors.  The attached pic is what I have and it shows the basic layout ok.  The side deck is about 6 feet from the house to the railing.

I get alot of icicles on the eaves and alot of dripping on the deck which of course turns to ice rapidly...eventually we get several inches of ice built up and the only thing I can do is stop using that door and have everyone enter/exit through the basement.

The ideal solution would be to make the side deck into a porch and just let the ice go off the side into the lawn...but I can't do that midwinter and even in the spring thats probably not going to be in the budget.

My wife wants me to put up a gutter...while thois would certainly keep the roof from dripping on us when it rains in the spring, I just can't see how its going to do a darn thing for ice...its just going to fill up with ice itself and just extend the icicle buildup out a few inches, right?

I have a snow rake and I can get about 2/3 of the way to the peak of the roof mostly clear with it, and by using it is the only thing keeping the ice thickness DOWN to a few inches...in past years when I didn't clear the roof we were dealing with more like a foot or more of ice buildup right in front of the door.

So, anyone have any ideas?  I put some plastic down on the deck last night and it worked like a charm to keep the ice off the deck, but its ot a really workable solution since we cna't walk on it safely and there is no way my wife is going to be picking it up and putting it back down.


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## velvetfoot (Jan 13, 2011)

I'd go with having the basement door as the winter entrance for now and do the screened in porch later.  I'm no sure how that would work in your case though because if the slope of the porch's roof is too low the snow would gather on the porch roof.

I deal with something similar only it's a colonial with a full porch in front and partial deck in back.
The back used to be a full deck but we screened it in and I like that part a lot because the snow slides right off.  
The screened in porch is nice - sit out there in the evening and no bugs -sweet.

If I keep after it with a single stage snowblower (which is easy on the wood) I can just barely keep it clean if I'm lucky, otherwise, it's so icy by the time it falls off the roof it can't be moved.

On the front of the house, the snow slides right off the metal roof onto the walk - it could kill you.  I put some yellow tape across it when there's danger of snow slides.

I think the slides would rip those gutters off the first winter.

Sorry I wasn't much help I guess.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

How much insulation is in the ceiling? If not very much, or there is a way for warm air to get to the roof decking, that might be leading to more snow melt than you would have otherwise. 

If the roof gets lots of sun, you will have snow melt even on a roof of an unheated building, so there's always going to be water dripping down the roof if you get a lot of sun. 

I agree the gutter wouldn't help much. Instead of having to keep the walkway clear of ice, you'll now have to keep the gutter free of ice. Gutters are nice for when it rains, though.

Is the ice a daily problem? That would seem excessive from just normal freeze/thaw cycles in the daily temps.


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## mayhem (Jan 13, 2011)

The roof has about 12-14" of rolled insulation...not sure of the r-factor.  Trusses are 2x14's 16 on center IIRC.  Its a very thick roof.  The main entry doors are not well insulated and despite my best efforts over the years are still drafty...but very expensive to replace as its a double door set...no storm door option either.  That side of the house is southern and a touch western exposure, so it gets alot of direct sun.  Additionally the woodstove chimney is right about in line with the main doors, up near the peak, which probably adds a bit of energy to the mix.  The icicles are definitely longer over the door, but I've got big icicles all the way across that side of the house and only a few on the north side of the house, so I think alot of it has to be solar melting.

I'd say yes, this is a daily issue in that I really need to shovel, scrape, salt and sand daily in order to keep it usable and safe.  If I let it go a few days its game over until we have a thaw.

Maybe I need those strips of metal up there to push the ice off to the sides?  I dunno, but its driving me nuts.


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## daveswoodhauler (Jan 13, 2011)

Nice house!
Probably not an option, but could you put one of those wires/strips that plug in and heat up, and arrange the wire/strip above your doorway/entryway?
I think the cabling is meant to be used with gudders/downspouts, but it may work for a small area above your doorway.


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## seige101 (Jan 13, 2011)

Dave beat me to it. I was going to suggest putting up a gutter, filling the gutter and a little bit of the roof with heat trace. This will virtually eliminate the problem. You could also add those metal spikes to stop the snow/ice from falling off the roof. Should be a relatively easy/cheap solution.


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## mayhem (Jan 13, 2011)

Thought about heat tape, but I'm not sure it'll really fix the problem.  The core issue that I need to fix is that I'got massive amounts of ice forming on the deck floor below the roofline.  If I used heat tape, it would eliminate the icicles, but not the water thats forming them, right?  

Or maybe put some heat tape in a gutter?  

Maybe I should just build a temporary angled roof structure to go over this 8-10 foot section for the winter?  I could anchor it to the eaves maybe and the railing on the far end and put a sheet of metal roofing or plastic roofing on it tohelp it shed the snow adn ice onto the lawn?  Just make a 2x6 frame, heavy playwood over that and some roofing material and call it a day.  It won't be as nice as a full blown porch roof over there but maybe it would do the job sufficiently to keep the entrance clear and my wife off my case till spring?


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> The roof has about 12-14" of rolled insulation...not sure of the r-factor.  Trusses are 2x14's 16 on center IIRC.  Its a very thick roof.  The main entry doors are not well insulated and despite my best efforts over the years are still drafty...but very expensive to replace as its a double door set...no storm door option either.  That side of the house is southern and a touch western exposure, so it gets alot of direct sun.  Additionally the woodstove chimney is right about in line with the main doors, up near the peak, which probably adds a bit of energy to the mix.  The icicles are definitely longer over the door, but I've got big icicles all the way across that side of the house and only a few on the north side of the house, so I think alot of it has to be solar melting.
> 
> I'd say yes, this is a daily issue in that I really need to shovel, scrape, salt and sand daily in order to keep it usable and safe.  If I let it go a few days its game over until we have a thaw.
> 
> Maybe I need those strips of metal up there to push the ice off to the sides?  I dunno, but its driving me nuts.



Do you mean the insulation is 12-14" thick? It FG, the effective R value would be around R30, which is then probably not the problem. 

I'd check for any penetrations of the drywall/ceiling that could be letting even small amounts of warm air get under the roof decking. Some of these might be coming from the adjacent walls. If not already done, I'd air-seal all fixtures, receptacles, etc.

That just seems like too much run-off to form from just solar heat, despite the southern exposure. If the insulation was installed properly, then there must be a source of warm air getting out of the living space and under/onto the roof decking. This would be a real problem if the insulation had pulled at all away from the underside of the roof deck.

Are there any penetrations of the roof on that side? A vent of any kind?


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

Also, though a gutter with heat would solve one problem, namely the overflow onto the walkway, it doesn't answer why you've got so much snow melting on your roof. One way or another, the heat that's doing that is getting out of your house, and unless you like giving money to the utilities, and burning more wood than you really need to, the snow melt problem is the one to be solved.

Icicles are not typically seen on well-insulated, air-sealed houses, except under rare circumstances. Regular icicles and run-off mean something is wrong.

We all remember knocking down icicles as kids, because the houses we lived in were so poorly insulated.


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## daveswoodhauler (Jan 13, 2011)

Do you use the entire deck in the winter, or just the 8-10 ft section?
I'm thinking put up a temporary gudder, downspout, and heat tape strip for that 8 ft section, and see if it helps temprarily.
You could saw out a small portion of your deck to allow the downspout, and this would allow the water to flow underneath and not on top of your deck.
Probably best bet would be to get a structure up there, but I think for $75, you could get a gutter, heat tape and downspout....looks like 30 ft of heat wires goes for $30 or so.
Maybe snap a pic of the area of the icing and the doorway?


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## mayhem (Jan 13, 2011)

I'll take some pics tonight when I get home.  I knocked the icicles off the edge yesterday afternoon around 4pm when I shoveled off that section of the deck and laid down my tarp to try and keep some ice from sticking to the deck.  This morning I went out to lift the tarp so my wife doesn't kill herself slipping on it and I was shocked to find 18-24" icicles all along the section i cleared off.  Now to be fair we got over 24" of snow yesterday and the roof looks like its got a good foot on there, I think there's just enough heat up there to keep the surface at like 33-40 degrees and keep the snow melting.  Since the roof was totally covered in white snow, logically this has to be coming from the structure, right?



> Do you use the entire deck in the winter, or just the 8-10 ft section?



I prefer to use the whole deck, so this sort of problem extends for another 10-12 feet, I'd say I have about 20 or so feet of side deck (and stairs) that are affected by ice on the drip edge.  The front section gets zero ice from the roof because it just doesn't slope that way.  We grill all winter long and sometimes I like to just go out there and enjoy the view on a warmer winter's day.



> Are there any penetrations of the roof on that side? A vent of any kind?



Triple wall chimney pokes through about a foot this side of the ridge, more or less in line with the doorway.  Master bedroom has 2 18x36" skylights, both of those are further towards the back of the house from the doorway though.   There are no other protrusions on this side of the roof, bathrooms are both on the north side of the house.



> I’d check for any penetrations of the drywall/ceiling that could be letting even small amounts of warm air get under the roof decking. Some of these might be coming from the adjacent walls. If not already done, I’d air-seal all fixtures, receptacles, etc.



Walls are solid log, interior ceiling in the great room (front 3/5 of the whole internal volume of the house) is tongue and groove, so certainly lots of potential for air leaks into the insulated area there, I do not know if a vapor/air barrier was put up above the tongue and groove ceiling, but I took hundred of photos during construction so I'll have to dig them out and see, maybe I caught that part of the process.  The ceiling in this room if a 26 foot peak ceiling and I remember a couple years ago I checked the surface temps with an IR thermometer and it can get up to around 100 degrees at the top of that room, can be a 30 degree difference when the stove has been cranking for a long time.  I have definitely not sealed up interior wall receptacles and outlets, but I did do the exterior walls because they were all cold to the touch.

The main doorway definitely radiates heat out of the house and could very well be the biggest aprt of the snowmelt issue as that section of the roof clears off well in advance of the rest...you can watch the semicircle form above the doorway over a few days time.  Part of the latch mechanism for the second door was lost right after construction and that door has always been a bit loose, the primary door also never sealed quite right.  I add weatherstripping and other cob job bit and pieces to try and seal it up better, but that one spot I woudl say is probably my home's single biggest heat loser.  I'd love to replace it with a nice single door and two sidelights with a good storm door, but its just never been in the cards.  Its an insulated fiberglass door and just touching the interior surface of the door I can feel the cold right through it...by comparison, those colossal windows on the front of the house are room air temperature on the inside of the house.  I hate that darn doorway, but I just dont have the funding to replace it.  Maybe the door is the core of the problem.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

Woa! Believe it or not, my next question was going to be: "Have you checked the ceiling's surface temp? Because it might be as high as 85 degrees..."

But 100F? That changes everything.

Even with R30 insulation, at a temp difference of 80 degrees (assuming ceiling of 100F and outside of 20F), the amount of heat lost through the roof is probably plenty high to continuously melt the snow, except on the coldest days of the year. 

I assume you need to run the heat to make the rooms with the large windows feel warmer?

What is the average room temp in the main rooms of the house? Are they comfortable at that temp?

I doubt the leaky doors are the cause of the faster snow melt on the roof at that place. The heat going outside gets dissipated quickly to the air and would not settle on the roof. But doors are often where there are air leaks into the walls/ceiling, so I'd start looking there, for a way that room air is getting into the ceiling.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

AND the chimney is also part of the problem. Insulated is good, but still lets plenty of heat pass through it when the air inside is 600F. My liner cap melts a space around it for many feet, though the roof itself is many feet away (Mine is an exterior chimney).

Not much you can do about that if you want to keep burning, other than move the stove. But I'd be certain the chimney/liner entrance to the ceiling is totally airtight, so no room heat can add to the problem.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

AND, it's 100% vital to know, for sure, whether or not there's an air barrier installed under that T&G ceiling.


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## mayhem (Jan 13, 2011)

I'll see if we have an IR temp sensor here and take it home tonight.  Those temps are with the boiler off, woodstove only.  My meory may also be fuzzy about those numbers...I need to verify.

Those large windows on the front are all one room, the great room is kitchen, dining and living room and aloft office above the kitchen and the ceilings go all the way up.  Literally 3/5 of the interior volume of the house.  The room is so tall and has enough air volume that on a still night, ceiling fans off and wood stove cranking, there is a cool breeze blowing downward from the heat exchange...it feels like I'm sitting under a ceiling fan blowing down on low.

maybe I jsut need to find a better way to keep the air at the peak of the inside to circulating better.  I have no ceiling fans that high so the air is largely stationary...plenty of opportunity for it to seep through and get to roof warmed up...even just from solid material heat exchange.


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## granpajohn (Jan 13, 2011)

I can't help with the real problem, but as for the unusable doorway...

A lot of folks have good results with electric melting mats:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=heat+trak

Not many watts. Might help eas the pain until you find a more permanent solution. Other uses too.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> I'll see if we have an IR temp sensor here and take it home tonight.  Those temps are with the boiler off, woodstove only.  My meory may also be fuzzy about those numbers...I need to verify.
> 
> Those large windows on the front are all one room, the great room is kitchen, dining and living room and aloft office above the kitchen and the ceilings go all the way up.  Literally 3/5 of the interior volume of the house.  The room is so tall and has enough air volume that on a still night, ceiling fans off and wood stove cranking, there is a cool breeze blowing downward from the heat exchange...it feels like I'm sitting under a ceiling fan blowing down on low.
> 
> maybe I jsut need to find a better way to keep the air at the peak of the inside to circulating better.  I have no ceiling fans that high so the air is largely stationary...plenty of opportunity for it to seep through and get to roof warmed up...even just from solid material heat exchange.



You have a boiler? Do you have subfloor or baseboard radiant heat? That would eliminate a lot of these problems.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> maybe I jsut need to find a better way to keep the air at the peak of the inside to circulating better.  I have no ceiling fans that high so the air is largely stationary...plenty of opportunity for it to seep through and get to roof warmed up...even just from solid material heat exchange.



If the ceiling is 100F, then yes. If the ceiling is 75F, not very much. Heat will transfer much faster at the higher temp.

It would be hard to constantly redistribute that volume of air with fans, without feeling like you were in a mini-hurricane. 

Was your house designed to be heated with just radiant heat? It seems so to me.


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## mayhem (Jan 13, 2011)

5 zone boiler (basement, hot water, great room, MBR and first floor back bedrooms), 180k btu oil fired.

Basement is a heated subfloor and the rest of the house is baseboard heat.  Costs me about 1800-2000 gallons per winter to heat exclusively with oil, thuns the woodstove.  Down around 300 per year now, mostly for hot water and end of the hallway rooms that the stove just doesn't heat well.  The boiler does an ok job, but even with doubel height baseboards around the great room side walls and two fan forced kickspace heaters, it still cannot keep that front room warm...before we got the stove the living room zone used to run almost around the clock when nightime temps were single digits or lower...there were days when literally the heat did not actually switch off.  At today's heating oil prices I'm not sure I could afford to keep my house if I went back to using oil exclusively...rather live with the ice.



> Was your house designed to be heated with just radiant heat? It seems so to me.



Not sure.  The house is a Lincoln Logs Valcour Island plan, modified to our preferences.  The original plan had a provision for a hearth/fireplace but we didn't put it in due to the cost of the chimney was in the $30,000+ range (stone chimney rising about 35 feet and the supports under it to keep it from flling into the basement).


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## colebrookman (Jan 13, 2011)

Just wait to Weds. next week.  Should be in the high 30s with rain.  No more snow on the roof to melt.  Course then down to 20 or less.  Ya got to love it in the hilltowns.
Be safe.
Ed


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## velvetfoot (Jan 13, 2011)

The weather guy was talking about possible freezing rain around here next Tues.   I hate freezing rain.


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## dave11 (Jan 13, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> 5 zone boiler (basement, hot water, great room, MBR and first floor back bedrooms), 180k btu oil fired.
> 
> Basement is a heated subfloor and the rest of the house is baseboard heat.  Costs me about 1800-2000 gallons per winter to heat exclusively with oil, thuns the woodstove.  Down around 300 per year now, mostly for hot water and end of the hallway rooms that the stove just doesn't heat well.  The boiler does an ok job, but even with doubel height baseboards around the great room side walls and two fan forced kickspace heaters, it still cannot keep that front room warm...before we got the stove the living room zone used to run almost around the clock when nightime temps were single digits or lower...there were days when literally the heat did not actually switch off.  At today's heating oil prices I'm not sure I could afford to keep my house if I went back to using oil exclusively...rather live with the ice.
> 
> ...



Actually, I think your house looks really cool. There is a great view out those front windows?

But all that glass is hard to offset in getting the place warm. Those windows are like a radiant heater in reverse.

There is radiant film for windows meant to hold heat in during winter time, with only a slight change in the transparency.  Is there any sort of coating on them now?

The original architect should have done all these calculations, based on the home site, the local temps, the snow pack, the roof pitch, etc. He/she was probably not taking into account the possibility of a hot wood stove in the great room sending hot air to collect against the ceiling. Or else he/she should have put the doors under the gable ends of the house, and not the eaves, for just the reason you've discovered.

One other thing. If you have any sort of fan or blower on the stove, you might consider leaving it off. You'd want to encourage the radiant aspects of the stove, and diminish the convective aspects.


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## woodgeek (Jan 13, 2011)

Instead of building out the roof over the deck, just divert the water coming down to both sides.  You'll still have ice on the deck, but you will be able to open the door.

The nicest way to do this would be to build a little gable over the doorway (i.e. a peaked roof with its ridge perpendicular to the main roof ridge).  You could make it 4-5 feet wide at the base.  The gable could be shingled with the same shingles as the roof.  Also keep a torrent off you when you are going in and out in the rain. This gable could extend past the current eave (to provide a little shelter when you are fussing with your keys) or you could just make the vertical gable coincident with the current drip edge.

The cheapo version that I have seen is just some flashing type material worked under the shingles to form a ridge 2-3" high, perpendicular to the plane of the shingles, to divert the water sideways.  Not too clear here, sorry, but basically a low profile metal 'v' which kicks the sheet of water running down the roof to both sides. For the ice/snow problem, it is not clear that it wouldn't just dam up too, might need to chase it with a little heating wire also.  Not elegant, but easy and cheap.


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## Lighting Up (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> maybe I just need to find a better way to keep the air at the peak of the inside to circulating better. I have no ceiling fans that high so the air is largely stationary...plenty of opportunity for it to seep through and get to roof warmed up...even just from solid material heat exchange.




I think you just answer your problem...need to move that heat. To prove it if your stove is cold and your heating system is heating your house do you have this problem? That warm air up there needs to be move down with ceiling fans. 

Something to try with box fans maybe if there is a landing face the fans out to try to get the warm air moving.
md


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## maverick06 (Jan 14, 2011)

I have a very shallow pitched roof and although I havent had any problems, am paranoid about it. I have been thinking about getting a roof shovel: http://www.amazon.com/Suncast-SRR2100-24-Inch-Shovel-20-Foot/dp/B0007NY3DA 

This will get the snow mostly off the roof. It will be good enough tha tthe little left will not post a problem.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

OK, did some photographs, took some temps and did alot of thinking last night.  Since the board software here seems to reorganize pics in alphabetical order, I'll jsut amke several posts so I know the descriptions go with each pic.

Pics attached of the South side showing icicles, these icicles between both light fixtures were non existent Wed about dinner time, so when the photo was taken they had about 30 hours to grow to this size...the others were not knocked off earlier so they're several days growth, mabye a week.  The discolored icicles are in direct line with the chimney.  The entire south side of the house is ike this...some spots like below the MBR skylights have longer icicles (like that huge group to the far right is directly under the skylight above my wife's side of the bed).


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

I still am thinking alot of my problem is solar and poor sealing around doors and windows and NOT heat loss directly through the roof.  Here's why.  Next photo is of the north side of the house.  No icicles have been touched on this side of the house all winter long.  The grouping of large icicles on the dormer are directly below a third skylight, the group directly below that is formed by the water dripping off the top group.  Note the steep part of the roof to the right...that is the dining room section of the great room, the very same room with the woodstove and the T&G ceiling.  If i were heat soaking the roof right through the ceiling I'd expect to see at least some icicles on this part...there are zero.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

Moving inside, here is the interior of the main entryway.  Borrowed the IR temp gun fromwork and ran some tests.  

- Dead center of the cross on the left hand (operable) door reads about 55 degrees, same spot on the other door reads 65.
- All around the frame the left side consistently reads significantly lower than the corresponding part on the other side of the frame.  Temps were slightly higher on the frame than the door on the left...2-3 degrees, on he right the difference was tenths of a degree.  Center divider that runs vertically is part of the inoperable door and what the operable door latches to.  The bar read as the coolest part of the door...about 57 degrees at the top, a stunning 28 degrees at the bottom.  Thats not a typo, an interior part of the main entryway of my house is reading below freezing on the inside of the house...about 10-12 feet from the woodstove.

Log walls were consistently reading in the upper 60's, mainly hovering between 66-68 surface temperatures all along that wall.  Seams read the same as the center of the logs which tells me I have a decent seal and no air gaps on that wall.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

Other interior shot, looking towards the core of the house from the SW corner of the great room.  Shows the stove, hearth, chimney and the height of the celing.  One ceiling fan shown, there is another one adjacent to me.  I run the fan in view pushing air down, which gets some of the warm air down off the ceiling and goes down the hallway to the back 2 bedrooms and first floor bath.  Ceiling fan not shown I run up (which may be part of the issue) to create an air current that moves hot air towards the back wall and (hopefully) through to the master bedroom.  There's a good 8 feet of wall above the top of the MBR door, so I installed a smalling, decorative air grate near the ceiling to let some of that air into the MBR that stuck in the ceiling between those two huge glulams.  Those glulams are the main roof support and there are steep support posts in the basement directly below them, anchored to the foundation...verticals are 6x6, horizontals are 6x12.  The peak of the inside of the ceiling is a good 26 feet above the floor of this room.  

Lat night I had just the rear fan going for some reason and I noticed that the temps at the peak of the ceiling were in the mid 70's and the air temps were fairly consistent feeling when I walked from the MBR to the loft...normally there is an extraoridinaryly sharp heat spike when i walk out of the MBR, like what feels like 8-10 degrees to (never measured it), also normally I run both fans at either low or medium speed.  I need to collect more data points on the relationship of temperature relative to fan operation.

Wall temps throughout the room were pretty consistently in the upper 60's and gradualyl rose up to the mid 70's the higher I went.

Those are NOT my pink and white boots in front of the stove.

That IS however all of my own labor to build the hearthpad and all the finish work in the room.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

Shot of the interior of the great room ceiling looking out (West) from the MBR doorway.  Its about 4-5 vertical feet from the bottom of the glulams to the top of the peak I'd say...and a good 6-7 feet between the glulam inner edges and about 22-24 feet in length.  That air volume between those beams is huge...probably as much air in that space as in a medium sized bedroom.  Surface temps all laong there, even along the top window frame are in the mid to upper 70's...nowhere near as hot as I said earlier, but still alot of warm air thats not doing any work for me.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

Interior of the master bedroom looking out towards the front of the house.  You can see the grate I installed...I think it helps, but its so small that its really almost decorative.  I've been thinking a squirrel cage fan mounted up there and a clear plastic deflector to direct the air downwards would make a huge difference in moving some of that hot air trapped between the glulams through the wall and into the MBR.  My wife is always cold and complains that its cold in the MBR, even whent he thermostat (you can see it in the lower right hand corner) shows 68-69 temp readout.

Same roof/celing height, same roof thickness and insulation as the great room.  No T&G in here, just 3/8" sheet rock.  Two skylights are to the left of the photo.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

This si our neighbor's house across the street...about 250-300 yards away (my camera has a great zoom function).  Its a nearly identical house in terms of layout, construction type and proportions.  Note the large front deck that wraps around the side like mine does.  About 4 years ago that side was an open deck like mine, the prior owners extended the roof and amde it into a porch with a mudroom/vestibule encapsulatiing their main entryway, which is a single door, not a double like mine.  This is basically what I was thinking of doing, with or without the mudroom.

My shed dormer is on the opposite side of my house.


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## woodgeek (Jan 14, 2011)

If you want a front porch, extend the whole roof.  If you want a mud room but not a proch, you could put a shed roof on, and have the new exterior door on the side of the bump out, or put a gable roof on it and have the new exterior door be on the far end.  If you want neither, you could still build a dormer like gable roof ending at the current drip edge, could make it 6' wide to keep the existing double door (pretty entryway) intact.  The new enclosed space inside this gable (only a couple feet high) could be dead space--you would not need to touch the interior ceiling plane or trimwork.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

> Actually, I think your house looks really cool. There is a great view out those front windows?



Thanks, I really like how the palce looks.  Wife and I spent a couple years planning it, modifying plans and arguing about it before we built.  Pic attached is the winter view.  You can see the houseon the left if the neighbor's house thats similar in design.  The left hand house is at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, my property line ends right at the edge of the circle.  I'd say there's about 75 vertical feet between my house and the neighbors across the street.  My driveway is the snow covered arc that goes left to right, I designed it to be as long as possible so the curve is gentle and the elevation changes are left to as shallow a grade as possible, which helps keep winter access alot safer for us and company.  The snow covered stripyou see above the house on the right is the lake we live near, its about 3/4 of a mile away as the crow flies, 1.5 mile drive.

Alot of the view out of the yard is obstructed when the leaves are on the trees and I'm planning on thinning as I make future firewood, but I need to be careful because while its nice to see the lake, I don't want to lose all of my existing privacy.



> But all that glass is hard to offset in getting the place warm. Those windows are like a radiant heater in reverse.



I've always thought that too, except I took out my ladder to check for drafts and air leaks and I was shocked that when i put my palm on the dead center of the rectangular window, it was warm to the touch...as warm or warmer than the walls between the windows.  Those windows were custom cut, double pane low e glass from a very reputable local glass shop...cost me a small fortune.  There's about an inch of vacuum between the panes and the panes themselves are at least a half inch think, if not more...they may be low grade anti-ballistics grade.  The glass has to be that thick if you think about it...each of those panes is 6 feet wide, the side panes are about 10 or so feet tall and they must weigh an absolute ton.



> There is radiant film for windows meant to hold heat in during winter time, with only a slight change in the transparency.  Is there any sort of coating on them now?



They're low-e and basically clear.  I've been kicking myself for 7 years for not paying for them to be tinted from the factory.  I need to get them tinted to reflect some solar heat out in the summer...in the afternoon we all have to wear sunglasses in that room and its greenhouse hot in there some days.  



> One other thing. If you have any sort of fan or blower on the stove, you might consider leaving it off. You’d want to encourage the radiant aspects of the stove, and diminish the convective aspects.



No blower on the stove, its 100% radiant.  The moving shadows the fans throw around the room give my wife a headache, so sometimes they're both off for several hours...we get alot of heat up in the loft when that happens and the front of the great room and especially the dining room get surprisingly cold.  Cold enough that you can feel it when you move from one end of the couch to the other.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

Lighting Up said:
			
		

> mayhem said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes, we had this same problem for several years before we put in the woodstove.  South side has always been an icicle factory and the side deck has always had major ice collection problems.



> That warm air up there needs to be move down with ceiling fans.



Unfortunately there is no electrical wiring up in the peak, so to get a celing fan up there will cost me a pretty penny.



> Something to try with box fans maybe if there is a landing face the fans out to try to get the warm air moving.
> md



I tried putting an pedistal fan up in the loft once and pointed it basically right up in the tray area, turned it on high and let it run for a few hours.  Didn't seem to do much.  Problem is, from the floor of the loft to the bottom of the glulams is about 10 vertical feet.  I think alot of the force of the air was largely dissipated by the time it got there so it couldn't do mcuh work for me.  Maybe I need to play with it some more.  

Maybe there's something to installing a couple passthrough squirrel cage fans up there to pull the hot aire out of the great room and into the master bedroom, and another to pull air into the master bath, master abth is located behind the wall to the left of the pic here.  It too has a high ceiling and its actually just about the coldest room in the house now because convection just doesn't take the air in there very well.  If I blew some of the hot air from between the glulams into that room it mgiht make a big difference.

Anyone recommend a decent, queit fan that might do what I want to do?


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

I just can't believe that degree of melting on your roof is due to the sun. First of all, unless your winter weather is vastly different from mine, there must be days/weeks where the sun doesn't shine very much or for very long. By now, you'd have noticed a trend toward the icicles during sunny periods, and no icicles during overcast periods. But you say the problem occurs every day.

Also, you pointed out that you neighbor's house is very similar to yours, yet I see no icicles on it. What side of their house faces south? Are there icicles there we can't see?

Lastly, my house has a huge section of roof that points due south, and I'm farther south than you, meaning our ambient temps and our angle to the sun are greater than yours, so solar heating would be more noticeable here. Yet I never, ever have icicles at any time from that roof section. 

I hate to say it, but I think your stove is most or all the problem. Were you getting icicles back before you had the stove? Did you check any of the temps on the ceiling last night?


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> I still am thinking alot of my problem is solar and poor sealing around doors and windows and NOT heat loss directly through the roof.  Here's why.  Next photo is of the north side of the house.  No icicles have been touched on this side of the house all winter long.  The grouping of large icicles on the dormer are directly below a third skylight, the group directly below that is formed by the water dripping off the top group.  Note the steep part of the roof to the right...that is the dining room section of the great room, the very same room with the woodstove and the T&G ceiling.  If i were heat soaking the roof right through the ceiling I'd expect to see at least some icicles on this part...there are zero.



But the icicles that ARE there, shouldn't be there at all. They shouldn't be there, especially on the north side of the house, because you can't blame solar heating of the roof there at all. They're proof that heat is getting out through your ceiling somehow. Whether it's worse on the south side of the house because of the sun (which I doubt) or because of the stove being on that side of the house, is hard to know for sure. Depends on how many sunny days you have there, and whether the solar heat gain is high enough to offset the low ambient temp, which I doubt is true most of the time, where you live.


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> Moving inside, here is the interior of the main entryway.  Borrowed the IR temp gun fromwork and ran some tests.
> 
> - Dead center of the cross on the left hand (operable) door reads about 55 degrees, same spot on the other door reads 65.
> - All around the frame the left side consistently reads significantly lower than the corresponding part on the other side of the frame.  Temps were slightly higher on the frame than the door on the left...2-3 degrees, on he right the difference was tenths of a degree.  Center divider that runs vertically is part of the inoperable door and what the operable door latches to.  The bar read as the coolest part of the door...about 57 degrees at the top, a stunning 28 degrees at the bottom.  Thats not a typo, an interior part of the main entryway of my house is reading below freezing on the inside of the house...about 10-12 feet from the woodstove.
> ...



Surface temps are helpful, but not always reliable. If the stove is on and cooking, nearly everything equidistant from it is going to read about the same temp, due to continuous radiant heating. You'd need to remove all sources of heat, and see which surfaces start to cool the fastest, to know where the real problems are. Or use a thermal camera.


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> Other interior shot, looking towards the core of the house from the SW corner of the great room.  Shows the stove, hearth, chimney and the height of the celing.  One ceiling fan shown, there is another one adjacent to me.  I run the fan in view pushing air down, which gets some of the warm air down off the ceiling and goes down the hallway to the back 2 bedrooms and first floor bath.  Ceiling fan not shown I run up (which may be part of the issue) to create an air current that moves hot air towards the back wall and (hopefully) through to the master bedroom.  There's a good 8 feet of wall above the top of the MBR door, so I installed a smalling, decorative air grate near the ceiling to let some of that air into the MBR that stuck in the ceiling between those two huge glulams.  Those glulams are the main roof support and there are steep support posts in the basement directly below them, anchored to the foundation...verticals are 6x6, horizontals are 6x12.  The peak of the inside of the ceiling is a good 26 feet above the floor of this room.
> 
> Lat night I had just the rear fan going for some reason and I noticed that the temps at the peak of the ceiling were in the mid 70's and the air temps were fairly consistent feeling when I walked from the MBR to the loft...normally there is an extraoridinaryly sharp heat spike when i walk out of the MBR, like what feels like 8-10 degrees to (never measured it), also normally I run both fans at either low or medium speed.  I need to collect more data points on the relationship of temperature relative to fan operation.
> 
> ...



Imagine the stove to be a giant light bulb. Everyplace that gets "lit" by the stove is being radiantly heated, a lot, if you are running the stove hot and often. But notice the south ceiling "sees" the stove, and most of the north ceiling does not. I'm pretty sure that's why your south roof melts the snow much more than your north roof does.

BTW--your neighbor in the pic, what does he use to heat his house?


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

The severity of this issue has not changed since we put the stove in, its been like this since we built the palce in 2002/3.  I'll go back through my photo archive and find some pics from before I had the stove and confirm that, but I know I've been fighting ice in that spot since the day we moved in and we've been forced to use the basement entry every year since we moved in.  

This issue does not occur when its really cold.  For example, the icicles have not changed noticably from when I got home from work yesterday afternoon till this morning, yet they grew to 18-24" length in a single day.  That day was sunny and definitely warmer...mid to upper 20's if I recall.  Yesterday afternoon was still sunny but a cold front blew in and we were down in the single digits overnight.  I'll reshoot that same angle tonight when I get home and see how it differs.  

The neighbor's house is showing the NNE side, so that side is definitely facing away from the direct sun.  I'll drive past the South side when i go home and see what it looks like.

I just can't imagine its my woodstove/roof combination simply because the norht side of my house has no icicles and its the same room the entryway is in.  How could that be?

Woodgeek, I think my ideal is a full length porch covering the deck on the side, that would keep all the ice off the side deck and it would remain passable throughout the winter.  I like the idea of a mudroom, but only from an energy efficiency poit of view in that it would be reducing my dependance on the crappy seal double doors...might make more sense to rip them out and replace them with a good quality single doorway with a couple of nice big sidelights and an outer storm/screen door.


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## daveswoodhauler (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> OK, did some photographs, took some temps and did alot of thinking last night.  Since the board software here seems to reorganize pics in alphabetical order, I'll jsut amke several posts so I know the descriptions go with each pic.
> 
> Pics attached of the South side showing icicles, these icicles between both light fixtures were non existent Wed about dinner time, so when the photo was taken they had about 30 hours to grow to this size...the others were not knocked off earlier so they're several days growth, mabye a week.  The discolored icicles are in direct line with the chimney.  The entire south side of the house is ike this...some spots like below the MBR skylights have longer icicles (like that huge group to the far right is directly under the skylight above my wife's side of the bed).



In this pic, is the length of the icicles consistant from the front of the house to the rear? or do they vary?
MY MIL has a open plan Gambrel, similar climate (NOrth/Central Mass at about 1100 elevation)T & G on the ceiling, and half the south facing roof is open, with the 2 ends being occupied as bedrooms....the entire roofline has many icicles on it from left to right....all the same size....steep roof. I thought she was loosing heat through the T & G ceiling, but the 2 bedrooms upstairs are closed off and not heated....but the meling/icicles is consistant throughout the roofline..
She does have gutters on the north and south side, and the heat strip seems to work pretty well in the area where she has it (ON the back deck due to access to the Jacuzzi)


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> The severity of this issue has not changed since we put the stove in, its been like this since we built the palce in 2002/3.  I'll go back through my photo archive and find some pics from before I had the stove and confirm that, but I know I've been fighting ice in that spot since the day we moved in and we've been forced to use the basement entry every year since we moved in.
> 
> This issue does not occur when its really cold.  For example, the icicles have not changed noticably from when I got home from work yesterday afternoon till this morning, yet they grew to 18-24" length in a single day.  That day was sunny and definitely warmer...mid to upper 20's if I recall.  Yesterday afternoon was still sunny but a cold front blew in and we were down in the single digits overnight.  I'll reshoot that same angle tonight when I get home and see how it differs.
> 
> ...



There's a solid structure blocking most of the radiant heat on that side, looks like the floor of the loft and the supports. It absorbs all the radiant heat and won't let it get to the ceiling.

And you do have some icicles on the north side, proving that it is not the sun leading to at least those icicles. 

I believe a sunny day could make your problem worse. I do not believe the sun is the biggest cause of your trouble.


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## billb3 (Jan 14, 2011)

I'll get icicles in the valleys of my hip roof (double  L-shape).
The ice grows on top of the snow like a crust and will flow right  over the snow built up in the gutters.
I have a valley on both the North and South side and the south side is worse, but they'll both do it when the snow/rain/ice /temps are just right.

Heaters in the gutters helped melt the snow so it wouldn't grow over the gutters , then I had plastic gutters for a couple of years.
Those didn't work out so well so we put up oversized commercial gutters. ( with the over sized  overhangs on the hip roof eaves they actually look good).
So far - no icicles, but I also don't have  gutter covers and have had to keep cleaning the leaves out .


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

dave11 said:
			
		

> But the icicles that ARE there, shouldn't be there at all. They shouldn't be there, especially on the north side of the house, because you can't blame solar heating of the roof there at all. They're proof that heat is getting out through your ceiling somehow. Whether it's worse on the south side of the house because of the sun (which I doubt) or because of the stove being on that side of the house, is hard to know for sure. Depends on how many sunny days you have there, and whether the solar heat gain is high enough to offset the low ambient temp, which I doubt is true most of the time, where you live.



The only icicles on the north side of the house are directly below the lone skylight on that side of the house.  I agree 100% that I'm losing heat through that spot and that is the cause of my icicles...but on the south side they go clear across the whole roofline, even where the roof isn't in the radiant range of the stove and the ceiling is sheet rock, not T&G.  Icicles on the south side grow 10x faster and longer above the doorway and below the skylights...across the roof section in the great room between the doors and front of the house I've got 12-18" long icicles, but they've been forming undisturbed for a good week or more since we got our last smowfall.  The icicles above the doors formed in a single day.

I've lived in this area my whole life...I find it odd that there shouldn't be icicles...doesn't fit in my brain with it being winter and having snow.  Now I have to start paying more attention when I drive home and see how many houses I see with them and on what side of the house they are on.



> BTW—your neighbor in the pic, what does he use to heat his house?



Pellet stove and oil.  Not sure of the location of the pellet stove or how much they depend on it for heat though.



> In this pic, is the length of the icicles consistant from the front of the house to the rear? or do they vary?



They vary.  The longest icicles form quickly above the green doors, another batch forms below the skylights in the MBR.




> You’d need to remove all sources of heat, and see which surfaces start to cool the fastest, to know where the real problems are.



I can tell you this aint gonna happen so long as my wife doesn't go away for a week...and since she hasn't in the last 16 years I'm going to assume she won't start now.

I really appreciate the help by the way, sorry if I'm coming across as argumentative.


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> Lighting Up said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Actually, if you're not running a blower on your stove, there's probably not much use in adding any sort of fans up high. The stove is heating the ceiling radiantly, not the air in between the stove and the ceiling, so all you'fd be doing is blowing cool air around. 

It might help, a little, if you blew fans directly across the ceiling, to try to move heat from the warm surface and into the air, but such fans would look strange and need to be high volume, and running all the time.


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## woodgeek (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> The severity of this issue has not changed since we put the stove in, its been like this since we built the palce in 2002/3.  I'll go back through my photo archive and find some pics from before I had the stove and confirm that, but I know I've been fighting ice in that spot since the day we moved in and we've been forced to use the basement entry every year since we moved in.
> 
> This issue does not occur when its really cold.  For example, the icicles have not changed noticably from when I got home from work yesterday afternoon till this morning, yet they grew to 18-24" length in a single day.  That day was sunny and definitely warmer...mid to upper 20's if I recall.  Yesterday afternoon was still sunny but a cold front blew in and we were down in the single digits overnight.  I'll reshoot that same angle tonight when I get home and see how it differs.
> 
> ...



Ok: While youre saving for the new roof, a rain diverter might be a quick/cheap fix over the door:
http://www.dannylipford.com/installing-a-rain-diverter/
as before, might need to chase it with wire to keep it from damming.


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> dave11 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Icicles only form for two reasons: 

1. Cyclic heating/cooling due to fast changes in the ambient air temp combined with solar heat gain, or 

2. Because heat is escaping from inside the structure and getting under/onto the roof decking, melting the snow on the roof, creating water which drips downhill and refreezes when it gets away from the heat.

The first process happens rarely in most areas, usually at the transition into or out of winter, which we are not in. The second process happens all winter, in structures which are not properly insulated or air-sealed, or in structures in which the internal heat overwhelms the insulation of the structure. The second process can be aggravated by the first. 

You see icicles commonly in the winter, but as I've said before, you don't commonly see them in well-insulated, air-sealed houses, unless the first process is at work. For example, my house never has icicles anywhere, even on the south-facing roof, except for a few days in Feb/March, as we approach the thaw. Then they're gone. That's it. 

My neighbor's house, however, has icicles nearly all winter, on all sides. 

How about going back to the boiler for a week, and see if it makes a difference?


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

The air is getting heated bigtime up in the loft area, Most evenings when i walk out of the bedroom into the loft, I can feel the temperature go up a significant amount...like what feels like 10 degrees.  You can also feel the temperatures rise as you go up the staircase.

I'm reasonably certain I'm not just heating surfaces, I'm also heating the air inside the house and warm air rises.  The surface temperature of the T&G on the inside of the loft ceiling, totally out of line of sight of the stove is as higher than a corresponding bit of ceiling on the south side of the room, in direct view of the stove.  The only way that section of ceilingf is getting heated is from prolonged exposure to warm interior air.  There are no icicles at all on that part of the house at all.

When I run the ceiling fan closest to the stove and stand under it, I can feel warmer air washing down over me, that air isn't coming from heat radiated off only the ceiling area thats line of sight to the woodstove...its coming from the large mass of warm air that being pulled down from the warm air that exists above the fan.  Likewise when the stove is cranking and all the fans are off, you can feel cool air washing down from the ceiling at the front of the great room, cool air that muct be being displaced by warm air rising up in a column near and above the stove.


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## dave11 (Jan 14, 2011)

mayhem said:
			
		

> The air is getting heated bigtime up in the loft area, Most evenings when i walk out of the bedroom into the loft, I can feel the temperature go up a significant amount...like what feels like 10 degrees.  You can also feel the temperatures rise as you go up the staircase.
> 
> I'm reasonably certain I'm not just heating surfaces, I'm also heating the air inside the house and warm air rises.  The surface temperature of the T&G on the inside of the loft ceiling, totally out of line of sight of the stove is as higher than a corresponding bit of ceiling on the south side of the room, in direct view of the stove.  The only way that section of ceilingf is getting heated is from prolonged exposure to warm interior air.  There are no icicles at all on that part of the house at all.
> 
> When I run the ceiling fan closest to the stove and stand under it, I can feel warmer air washing down over me, that air isn't coming from heat radiated off only the ceiling area thats line of sight to the woodstove...its coming from the large mass of warm air that being pulled down from the warm air that exists above the fan.  Likewise when the stove is cranking and all the fans are off, you can feel cool air washing down from the ceiling at the front of the great room, cool air that muct be being displaced by warm air rising up in a column near and above the stove.



But that's how radiant heat works. The solid surfaces are being heated first by the stove, then radiating to your skin. The warm solid surfaces heat the air secondarily, and to a lesser degree. So the ambient air temp might be 68, but you will feel much warmer. 

The only issue really is the actual temp of the ceiling surface. The ceiling, being in line with the stove, is likely much warmer than the air, and its the heat of the ceiling that's the problem, not the heat of the air, so blowing the air around might not help prevent the snow melt very much. You'd have to blow loads of air ACROSS the ceiling, trying to cool it, to make much of a difference with fans.


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## daveswoodhauler (Jan 14, 2011)

billb3 said:
			
		

> I'll get icicles in the valleys of my hip roof (double  L-shape).
> The ice grows on top of the snow like a crust and will flow right  over the snow built up in the gutters.
> I have a valley on both the North and South side and the south side is worse, but they'll both do it when the snow/rain/ice /temps are just right.
> 
> ...



I think the oversized/commercial gutter Bill mentioned would be a good scenario to check out in your application. You would only need one run on the south side of your home, and you might be able to find something decorative to match your nice home. (Actually went to a Lincoln Logs seminar about 17 year ago and the Valcour Island was one of the plans we liked the most)
I think you would still need some heat tape/strip...but I don't think the gutter would be too expensive.


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## mayhem (Jan 14, 2011)

Had to go out for an errand and while out I took a good look at houses and their roofs.  There are almost no exceptions.  Houses with roofs facing either south or west have icicles all along the edge of that roof face.  Look on the opposite side of the street and I see houses with zero icicles on the north or east sides.

So either we have a significantly different weather here up north, we have an extraordinary number of houses with poorly insulated roofs or we have alot of solar melting.

I don't recall witnessing much dripping off the icicles during the night, only during the day.



> The ceiling, being in line with the stove, is likely much warmer than the air, and its the heat of the ceiling that’s the problem, not the heat of the air



Then why is the warmest surface temperature on my ceiling out of line of sight of the stove?  Why do I not have icicles forming over that section?


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## Lighting Up (Jan 14, 2011)

Icicles only form for two reasons: 

1. Cyclic heating/cooling due to fast changes in the ambient air temp combined with solar heat gain, or 

2. Because heat is escaping from inside the structure and getting under/onto the roof decking, melting the snow on the roof, creating water which drips downhill and refreezes when it gets away from the heat.

The first process happens rarely in most areas, usually at the transition into or out of winter, which we are not in. The second process happens all winter, in structures which are not properly insulated or air-sealed, or in structures in which the internal heat overwhelms the insulation of the structure. The second process can be aggravated by the first. 

You see icicles commonly in the winter, but as I've said before, you don't commonly see them in well-insulated, air-sealed houses, unless the first process is at work. For example, my house never has icicles anywhere, even on the south-facing roof, except for a few days in Feb/March, as we approach the thaw. Then they're gone. That's it. 

My neighbor's house, however, has icicles nearly all winter, on all sides. 







+1 
let me add, it sounds like you have a lot of steady cold air coming in that house sending the hot air up. You have the problem w/or w/ out the stove but when your furnace only was heating you say it was very cold and it ran never shutting off. 

I think you need to stop that cold air coming in first and put all ceiling fans on reverse with some other fan on your landing facing at your stove or down. I also think it would be worth having a energy audit with a thermal camera. 

Also if I'm reading this right, the hot air could be escaping at the chimney pipe roof exit and that's why your ice is larger in line with the chimney pipe over the door, if I understand your pictures. 

Great looking house keeping thinking you'll figure it out.
md


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## colebrookman (Jan 15, 2011)

Next time there is little snow on the roof ask the local fire chief to bring the thermal camera up and scan the outside of your house.  Do it at night and make sure your wood stove is burning.  You should be able to see where the heat is escaping and which areas to concentrate on.  A small donation to the donut fund goes a long ways.  He may even like the idea and use it as a fund raiser for the dept.  Be safe.
Ed


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