This one you can try at home.

[Rod in Forfar]

My wife and I live in an old stone house attached to a larger Victorian brick number which dumps its snow onto our roof next to a dormer. It's a trap for snow and an eventual ice dam.

Climbing up there is hard on the roof and dangerous, so some years ago I developed a technique for dealing with the inevitable ice dam. It involves one of those resistor cords with which one normally wraps a pipe exposed to the cold. It plugs in to an extension cord, draws a couple of hundred watts, and has its own thermostat.

The problem was: how do I get the thing in place on the roof so that it can melt its way down into the ice dam?

I'm a bass fisherman. My heavy bait-casting rod with its braided 30 pound test line is perfect for the job. I tie on a substantial weight (about a 3/4" nut from the bench or small plumbing fitting) and cast the weight clear over the house.

Retrieve a mason's cord or light rope with the far side anchored to something like a railing or apple tree. Much shouting can be avoided at this stage with the use of radios or cell phones to co-ordinate crew operations.

Tape the heater-cord to the long extension cord (it will end up holding a substantial weight, so the tape will reinforce it as well as protecting it from water to some extent.

Pull the heater cord into place on the roof so that it can melt down through the dam. Don't forget to tie the rope securely to the railing on the other side of the roof.

Plug the cord in and wait awhile. A day later there will be a slit cut down through the ice accumulation and likely the cord and extension cord will have become a huge icicle. Doesn't seem to hurt anything to leave it that way. Unplug if necessary until the next time you need it.

Disassemble in the spring.

Or use your backhoe, if you have one. Loved that thread, BTW.

 

[Craig Clayton]

I suggested the same concept to someone who posted an ice problem on a roof with a build up of heavy snow. I do not know what they did.

Craig Clayton

 

[SandburRanch]

My wife and I live in an old stone house attached to a larger Victorian brick number which dumps its snow onto our roof next to a dormer. It's a trap for snow and an eventual ice dam.

Climbing up there is hard on the roof and dangerous, so some years ago I developed a technique for dealing with the inevitable ice dam. It involves one of those resistor cords with which one normally wraps a pipe exposed to the cold. It plugs in to an extension cord, draws a couple of hundred watts, and has its own thermostat.

The problem was: how do I get the thing in place on the roof so that it can melt its way down into the ice dam?

I'm a bass fisherman. My heavy bait-casting rod with its braided 30 pound test line is perfect for the job. I tie on a substantial weight (about a 3/4" nut from the bench or small plumbing fitting) and cast the weight clear over the house.

Retrieve a mason's cord or light rope with the far side anchored to something like a railing or apple tree. Much shouting can be avoided at this stage with the use of radios or cell phones to co-ordinate crew operations.

Tape the heater-cord to the long extension cord (it will end up holding a substantial weight, so the tape will reinforce it as well as protecting it from water to some extent.

Pull the heater cord into place on the roof so that it can melt down through the dam. Don't forget to tie the rope securely to the railing on the other side of the roof.

Plug the cord in and wait awhile. A day later there will be a slit cut down through the ice accumulation and likely the cord and extension cord will have become a huge icicle. Doesn't seem to hurt anything to leave it that way. Unplug if necessary until the next time you need it.

Disassemble in the spring.

Or use your backhoe, if you have one. Loved that thread, BTW.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
You're going to raise the hackles on the neck of some archers with your ingenious methods. That's competition of a long standing talent and now we have two sports involved.:laughing::laughing:

 

[Rod in Forfar]

Speaking of crossing skill sets, one time I had to run 450' of token ring cable across the top floor of our school to install a computer terminal. The only sensible way to do it seemed to be to borrow my son's remote-controlled off-road racer, tie the 30 pound test fish line to it, hand the rod to Gloria, a department member, and station another, Peter, at the other end of the corridor below a missing suspended ceiling tile. I used a ladder to pop up through the ceiling and drive the little car around light fixtures, cables and conduits, through to the other end where the car fell into Peter's waiting arms. I pulled several skeins of mason's cord back through the car's route with my fishing reel, then we hauled the cable into place. The IBM techs saw the job and nearly hit the floor laughing. This was early days of computer implementation. Someone suggested an arrow would have been faster, but I think it might have made a mess of the various systems above the ceiling. The RC car worked flawlessly.

 

[smiley]

Speaking of crossing skill sets, one time I had to run 450' of token ring cable across the top floor of our school to install a computer terminal. The only sensible way to do it seemed to be to borrow my son's remote-controlled off-road racer, tie the 30 pound test fish line to it, hand the rod to Gloria, a department member, and station another, Peter, at the other end of the corridor below a missing suspended ceiling tile. I used a ladder to pop up through the ceiling and drive the little car around light fixtures, cables and conduits, through to the other end where the car fell into Peter's waiting arms. I pulled several skeins of mason's cord back through the car's route with my fishing reel, then we hauled the cable into place. The IBM techs saw the job and nearly hit the floor laughing. This was early days of computer implementation. Someone suggested an arrow would have been faster, but I think it might have made a mess of the various systems above the ceiling. The RC car worked flawlessly.

Now that's good outside the box thinking, right on.

 

[mrcaptainbob]

A friend told me a story of how he was helping an old timer from decades ago work on stringing wiring for a ceiling that was pretty high up. Old timer brought in his Pooch. Tied a string to it's collar and let helper place it on one side of the ceiling while he called for Pooch from the other side.