We have had a couple of back to back blizzards here, and today the tempurature was 45 degrees. Of course there was quite a bit of snow on the roof. Today as it melted I noticed water at the plate line of my parents addition. The only damage was where the wall meets the ceiling along the eve line. For a little background, the entire house was re-modeled and added on to 4 years ago. It is an old farm house with an addition added to make it an ell shape. The addition is a great room with a vaulted ceiling. It is framed with sissor trusses and R-30 in the ceiling. There are 3 vents in the roof on the east side of the ridge and vented soffits all the way around. The ridge of the addition runs north and south and the water damage was on the east and west walls but as I said before it was right where the walls meet the ceilings. The roof was done up to local standards and we don’t normally have an ice problem in northern Nebraska but that is the only explanation I can come up with. Local standards are drip edge, 30# felt, 3 tab shingles and for a starter strip a row of shingles is put on backwards. Do you guys think this is caused by an ice dam, or should I be looking for some other problem? If it is an ice dam, what can be done to prevent damage in the future? I am a carpenter and while I was not in charge of this project I helped with most of it. Furthermore, since this project was done I have become an independant contractor. I don’t normally do roofs, but lately due to the economy I did several roofs this summer and don’t want any of them to leak either. To add to the puzzel a little more, My house has two layers of shingles, r19 in the attic with a flat ceiling and no soffits or drip edge and no leaks due to the recent storms. Should I tear off the shingles and put an ice shield membrane down? Does this really solve the problem, if it is an ice dam? Would a call back from the contractor who did the roof be in order as it was done 4 years ago and I can’t think of anything that he did wrong? The first picture is the innitial damage that I saw when I walked in the addition this afternoon. The second picture is after I shoveled the snow off of the roof. I shoveled as high as I could safetly reach from the ladder and got most of the remaining snow but of course the damage had already been done. At the eve line was a lot of ice and the valley was almost solid ice, everything else was soft but melting snow. The water seemed to be dripping off of the roof normally, The soffits were not full of snow and were dry when I looked at them and there was not a lot of ice or water on the siding, There was a few drips on the siding though, I can’t explain that unless it was just from blowing snow? Any usuful advice would be most appreciated. Like I said, I do this for a living and really want to get to the bottom of this and prevent it from happening again. Thanks.
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