ice dam, that is. actually, dams. plural.
suck.
this is not an unusual phenomenon in minnesota, but we've had such un-minnesotan winters the past few years that they just haven't occurred.
it happened once to us, at the old house. we had a bunch of snow and it just never melted. and where there was a little heat loss through the roof, the snow would melt and trickle down toward the gutter line, and then re-freeze there. then it would back up and find little openings, and then when the thaw came, there were streams of dirty water running into our dining room through the cottage windows above the built-in hutch. it was horrifying.
well, deja vu.
the front of our house, from the entry to the bedrooms, is covered with icicles. big, long, nasty ones. and the back of the house, from henry's room to the corner by the sun porch, then on the other side of the sun porch to the garage. there are even icicles coming through the vent in the fascia.
that can't be good.
yesterday i was outside shoveling and saw our old neighbor at his house, scraping at the roof. there was another truck with some sort of generator running and a hose across the yard.
sean came walking over and i asked him what was up. he said the renters in his house called because there was water running in his kitchen through the cupboards. he'd hired a guy to come clean off the roof and get rid of the ice dams before they caused any more trouble. so far, the guy had racked up a $600 bill.
and, apparently, when he met my neighbor, he mentioned that while his ice dams are bad, his neighbor's (ie our house) are worse.
um, no. no no no. does the universe not know we're trying to SAVE money right now???
so sean and i chatted. he went back to scraping and i went back to shoveling. and half an hour later, the doorbell rang and it was the roof cleaner, dropping off his business card.
awesome. but, i guess, necessary. better to spend the money and take care of it now versus gamble and have potentially a far greater disaster when the sun comes out.
on one hand, i'm loving that this is a real winter. loving it. we missed the major snow at christmas ... nearly 2' of the stuff, which would have been amazing to see. but it's been so cold since then that the snow - and the nearly foot of it from before the holidays - has just not melted. add to that the few inches here and there, and then the 9+" we got over the past two days, and we have quite the little pile-up going on. the kids have had so much fun playing in it, i've loved looking at it. however ...
it always seems to snow when marc is traveling. which, really, the odds fall that way anyway given how much he's gone. shoveling has never been a big deal to me; i actually kind of like it. but this year, there is so much of it that the piles on the side of the driveway are about as tall as i am. to lift and throw a shovel full of snow, basically, over my head is getting old. especially the heavy, icy stuff at the end of the driveway where the snow plow pushes all the stuff from the street. today i went out to tackle the fresh 4" and gave up at the curb. i just couldn't lift it up that high.
(marc will be home early afternoon tomorrow, too, so why deprive him of the shoveling fun? i'm a good sharer.)
i was crouching down, but you can see how high the pile is behind me.
it's piled up nicely on the deck, too.
speaking of the deck, someone (ahem ... not mentioning any names ...) didn't catch my memo that the deck furniture needed to be moved under the deck before it snowed.
whatever. at this point, i can't even worry about that anymore.
march is a month away, right?