Driving around the Madison area in the winter is an interesting exercise for someone who focuses on home energy efficiency and comfort. After a heavy snowfall a bare spot on someone’s roof is a red flag that the home is experiencing an energy issue. It pains me to no end to see people installing heating coils, using roof rakes, adding ventilation, etc. when none of those things actually gets at the underlying issue.
A customer of Piping Plover’s had their house on the market for a year and hadn’t been getting many bites. They had been experiencing persistent ice damming and had several thousand dollars worth of damage from it. That, along with a few other unique features, was preventing the home from attracting any serious buyers. So they hired us to try to prevent future ice damming.
Though ice damming can happen on even the best of homes under the perfect conditions, we can do a very good job of addressing the problem at its source — heat escaping into the attic. I won’t delve too deep into where that heat is coming from or why ice damming occurs most of the time — I’ve done that in a previous post. We originally tested this home in February and it was approximately 75 degrees in the attic. In this home, there were three major factors:
1) Improperly vented boiler flue — this home had an older, low efficiency boiler that naturally drafted through a flue. The flue ran straight up the chimney chase until it got to the attic and then ran horizontally for about 15 feet until it drafted out of the other chimney. This flue was hot to the touch and was dropping a ton of heat into the attic.
Boiler Flue - Before and After