Why use a roof rake to clear snow on edge of your roof?

If you live in an area of the country that gets any sort of snow accumulation you should own a roof rake for preventative maintenance on your roof.  It really isn’t very hard either as seen in the video.  You can significantly lessen or eliminate ice dams from forming before they become a problem and possible back up into your house in the form of a leak.  Even if your roof was installed perfectly to code and with the proper amount of ice and water shield this can happen.

IceDamnNew roof installation leaking due to ice damn?  No your roof is not defective or failing.

Contrary to popular belief shingles are NOT WATERPROOF.  They are designed to shed water that is flowing.  The problem when you have an ice damn is that the trapped water actually stops flowing and is prevented from doing so due to the ice.   If the ice damn back up past your ice and water shield or even simply sits for too long on the edge of your roof water infiltration can happen.  This is a sign of heat loss on your roof which than gets down to the edge of your roof where it is still cold and the water freezes.

Two Options – Properly insulate and ventilate OR treat symptom with a Roof Rake

Ideally you should properly insulate and ventilate your roof.  If you need help with how to do that check out the below pages.

Roofing Insulation        Roofing Ventilation

What type of roof rake should I get?

While there are a wide variety of good options I will give you the basic criteria and than make a specific recommendation if you would rather order online.

1)  Get an ALUMINUM roof rake;   aluminum roof rakes have two big advantages to other rakes made of steel or wood.  First off they are LIGHT and easy to use overhead which you will certainly appreciate.  Secondly, they do not corrode or rust naturally.

2) You want a roof rake with “roller wheels” of some sort.   These wheels protect your roof shingles from scraping damage.  Nothing is worse than finding out that your roller wheels on roof rakewere hurting as much as helping and having to replace shingles after a bad winter.

3) Get a roof rake with many handle extensions;  While most of the time raking only the first two feet of your roof or so in just fine there are occasions after a consistent snow build up that you may want the extra reach to remove all the snow or you simply may have a high roof.

This is roof rake I use and it not only works good but is pretty cheap.