Keep the snow on the roof or not?

why guess about it? I'd go up and look, see the depth of it on the roof. If it was a wet heavy snow, I'd want to pull some of it down with a snow 'rake' that are made for that purpose.
and yes, a pound of wet snow weighs the same as a pound of dry snow and the same as a pound of ice. Several inches of very wet snow is considerably much heavier than a dry snow.

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Here's hoping your septic vent isn't blocked!

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think about it this way if you have an attic with the proper venting wich granted only 50% do the snow is of no actual isulation value your attic should be within a few degrees of the outside temp .

if you have no attic and or improper venting/ no venting then yes it helps to keep heat in but quite likly at the cost of creating ice dams

an ice dam is when the temp in the attic or at lease the potion of the roof not over the eaves is warmer than ambient air temp and causes melting of snow but when the water from the melting snow getts to the eaves that are at or very nead ambient air temp as they do not get heat from the interior that water freezes causing a build up of ice blocking more of the water to stop and then freeze when temp drops

what these ice dams do is leave standing water trapped on your roof because it is standing it works under shingels and then freezes heaving your shingles and evenualy working in som cases under tar paper and damaging wood

this is why the adhesiveruber membrain material is placed over eaves in most new rooffing jobs in the north.before the tar paper and shingels go down

other ways of controlling ice dams besides properly insulating atic and properly venting so that it maintains within about 3 degrees of ambient air temp

resistance wire to melt the ice from the roof above the eaves

remove the snow before it has a chance to go thru multiple freeze and thaw cycles

remember that if you are trying to keep the atic not more than 3 degrees warmer than outside and idealy but not nessesaily possable cooler than outside air that way the sun and outside air will do the melting and not the escaping heat from your house

so if your are properly issulated and vented there is realy not much need to remove snow till it becomes a question of weight

and what i think Cabin Fever was trying to say basic physics tells us that if you have a ton of snow and melt it you have a ton of water if you freeze it you have a ton of ice so unless you put more snow water or ice on your roof it still weighs the same
nomatter what state it is in.

water does however have greater dencity than snow as the air between is removed
ice while less dence than water is stil quite dence (do to to it being cristalized)

Using snow as insulation for your attic is ridiculous. The ultimate goal is that your attic be the same temperature as the outdoor temperature. Why is this? It's because if your attic is warmer than the outdoor temp, the snow on the roof will melt and create ice dams at the eaves as many have already said. If you have major icicles or ice dams, your attic is too warm! You need more insulation or more ventilation or both.

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Cabin Fever! Thanks for the clarification. There has always been mystery around this, especially with some people saying one thing and some people saying the other. I'll be pricing roof rakes today at mernards

A door on the second floor with no outdoor stairs to it? Many houses in Holland had these. The reason was everything was so tiny there - small rooms, narrow stairways, sharp corners - a door on the second floor was used with rope and pulleys to get the furniture in and out of the second floor because there was no way it would go up stairs and around corners!!

Other locations - who knows? Perhaps a fire escape 'jumping off' point?

many times houses were desinged and sold as kits or plans the builder would build it as it then not add the stairs to save $

how many farm houses have you seen with no stairs to the front door
i have seen several

i even watches a show on pbs once about the sears homes they were catalog order every thing was delivered to the nearest rail yard then most every thing was pre cut right down to the trim in some casses just follow the instructions and the pree labled boards and you had a house.they talked in the show and showed many a picture where the front door was there but no stairs


on many old houses there is a door there but at some point the inside got remodeled and the walled right over it.

but yes it would be handy to have a second story door with the way they made many of the stair ways

although i have seen a lot of new houses around hear they have a stanard,french or sliding glass door that opens out to what should be a deck set over the walk out basment so it is 10feet up in the air they build the house but the deck isn't calculated in the price to build the house to save money but the board is there for the deck
many of these houses are near 10 years old now and still no deck
now just imagine you had a situation like this with the plan to build this nice 2 story porch and then the depression hit or WWII or some other hard time
it just neaver got built.

We had an ice storm about a month ago that gave us a solid coating of 6in of ice & about 2in of snow. We had quite a few flat-roofed structures like carports & sheds collapse from the weight. One of my neighbors chipped a 1sq ft piece of ice & snow off of his driveway & weighed it. From that he calculated that his 25x20 ft carport was supporting about 6 tons of ice on its slightly sloping metal roof. He parked his vehicles in the driveway untill the ice melted!As has been said,collapse from too much weight is the main danger, but ice daming...which forces water & ice under shingles can cause a lot of damage too. I'd think that it would be better to have a sound roof, that was keeping your attic insulation dry. My thought would be to remove excess snow... but how do you remove 6in of solid ice from a composite shingle roof without ruining it?

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