Eave Ice Dams
Publication: Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 16, Issue 1
Abstract
Water seepage into interior spaces and the resultant staining of wall and/or ceiling surfaces is a common problem with eave ice dams. If the outdoor temperature is below freezing, the roof is poorly insulated, and if the roof snow layer is thick enough, the temperature at the bottom of the snow will be at freezing. A portion of the thermal energy goes into melting some of the roof snow, that is, meltwater is generated which flows downslope toward the eaves. Some of the meltwater refreezes at the cold eave, forming an ice dam. The potential for water seepage is related to the horizontal extent of the ice dam. Mitigation usually involves placing an impermeable “ice and snow guard” layer for some distance from the eave. This paper presents information on the horizontal extent of expected eave ice dams with various returns period for 15 U.S. cities. In addition a correlation between ice dam size and the 50-year ground snow load is presented which allows one to estimate ice dam size for any U.S. city.
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Acknowledgments
The research presented herein was supported in part by Grant No. UNSPECIFIEDCMS-0080219 from the National Science Foundation. The writers gratefully acknowledge this support. However the results and conclusions are of the writers alone and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Science Foundation.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 16 • Issue 1 • March 2010
Pages: 11 - 19
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 19, 2007
Accepted: Jun 3, 2009
Published online: Feb 12, 2010
Published in print: Mar 2010
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