Icicles can do real damage to your home

Here’s a winter quickie – icicles are a sign that snow is melting from a hot roof rather than a sunny day.

Since we’ve been talking about DIY energy audits, this is one of the easiest ways of seeing if you’re losing too much energy out your roof. If you’ve got lots of icicles or notice the snow melting unevenly, usually in vertical strips, then you are almost certain to have some major energy loss. Often, this can be fixed quite easily since the icicles and snow melt will tell you where the heat loss is. In fact, this works at least as well as the expensive thermal camera that we use in energy audits. I call it the 30 second energy audit! Continue reading →