How To Roof A Hockey Puck

Ask this old house general contractor tom silva explains the best ways to keep your roof and gutters free from those dreaded ice dams.

How to roof a hockey puck.

One of the more popular ways is to toss a throwable ice melting puck onto the roof. Eliminate ice dams safely from the ground no need for a ladder extension equipment or other tools. Salty chemical filled water will almost certainly leak into your home. See below for a shopp.

Over time salt pucks can discolor shingles and the runoff water can discolor your walkways too. These melted the ice dam from below allowing water to drain off the roof. Salt pucks and salt filled pantyhose are unwise approaches to ice dam removal. Roofmelt tablets work on contact with trapped water melting existing ice.

From roof rakes to hiring a contractor there are lots of ways to clear out ice dams. It is formulated similar to the ingredients in the roof melt tablets so it won t harm your driveway or landscaping. I ordered extra to have on hand for the future. Most roofing nails are made of galvanized iron and over time the calcium chloride in salt pucks will corrode these nails.

After doing as best i could i then placed more of the tablets in the problem areas with no improvement just holes where i had placed them. The roof melt tabs melt through the ice to the roof and then drains under the ice instead of backing up into the attic. These products are specifically designed to be thrown up on roofs to melt ice in hard to reach places. Potentially corrode roof nails.

The picture below is the ice dam that fell off my roof after melting from below. You can also purchase this at your local hardware store. The hockey puck sized pellets only melted a whole in the ice or snow resulting in no improvement to eliminating ice dams or snow from the roof. They rarely work and they damage your roof.

Calcium chloride is corrosive to certain types of metals. In the end i still had to remove the snow and ice. Today kids i m going to show you how to unfuck your roof from ice dams if salt pucks are not available or you have a very delicate roof situation. Ice melt is a good alternative.