de-icing gutters?

[shawnshred]

anyone have any tips? i need to do my house, and i was thinking about offerening the service iif i can ever figure it out, there is a lot of 100 year old homes with poorly insulated/ventilated attics in our area and it is not uncommon to see gutters with 10 feet of ice hanging off them. any suggestions?

[Pelican]

The best thing is prevention. You need to install heating wires on the bottom 3' of roof and in the gutters.

About the only way to de-ice without damaging the gutters is with hot water, and lots of it! I've tried chipping, it takes forever, and no matter how careful you are you'll dent the gutters.

[Spacejunk]

Pelican, you are half right. Prevention is the best way to prevent ice daming from causing damage, however your solution is only treating a symptom and not the cause of ice dams. Ice daming is caused by the temperature of the underside of the roof surface being above the ambient temperature of the outside air (below freezing). This causes snow to melt, water running down the roof hits the ambient air (below freezing) at the gutter line, causing ice. The only way to prevent ice dams is to lower the temperature of the underside on the roof structure. This can be acomplished through several means. Increasing the ventilation of the attic space is a no brainer, ventilation in the soffits to allow cool air in, combined with roof vents or ridge vents at the top of the roof to exhaust the rising air. Another is to increase the insulation in the attic. Insulation should be added above the ceiling, below the rafters/trusses. Another means is to seal any penetrations in the ceiling surface that allow heated interior air to excape into the attic, increasing the underside of the roof temperature. Once formed there is not much that can be done without damage. We have used calcium chloride to melt ice and reduce the weight carried by the gutters, with limited sucess.