When alter ego acts dubious, Just Say NO

Heard a great bad idea lately? Just Say NO

Every now and then I'll have a stellar retarded geriatric moment.

An idea will pop right into my head and turn into something really great!

This page is not about that moment.

This is about one of those "other" moments.

Another "What not to do" Lesson.

Page Topic: Just Say "NO!"

2021

Everybody knows that in the Northern States of the U.S., it generally does not rain in the winter as it does during the other months of the year.

In Ohio, it does this thing called snow.

You can see some of that snow in this photo. You might also notice that somebody has been expending a lot of energy and effort to dig that snow out of the area of the building and more importantly, the gutter.

Moving mountains of snow around is sometimes a mentally blank moment when real-estate space is limited.

So there the snow was, packed up against the building, and more importantly, the gutter.

More What-not-to-do.

Yes, It's winter-time in Springfield Ohio, and the temperatures are in the teens outside.

What the hell is this.

Two big snow storms dropped lots of snow on our roofs.

I decided to become proactive and do something about it!

Round One

Roofs are pretty strong, but take it from me, when they fall in on you (three or four times actually...and in separate States on the planet even!), you might develop a bit of phobia about how the roofs are made (and whether or not every nail and screw is actually doing its job properly).

Since I generally like it hot, the wood stove is usually fired up to produce around 80-90+ degrees. Snow But a hunk of wood inside of a firewood stove doesn't always burn the same as the log before, so getting perfect temperatures is not always possible. Ordinarily I would have to open a door or window to expel some of the excess heat that is beyond the threshold of my usual comfort zone.

However a few weeks ago it was decided to kill two gerbils with one frog and release some of the over-bearing heat given off by the firewood stove into the attic!

In fact, I thought it was such a brilliant way to remove the snow from the roof, that I purposely kept the stove fired hot and the attic door purposely opened.

By releasing the uncomfortable heat into the attic will accomplish not only bringing down the temperature in the lab,

but also it will melt some of the weight of the snow off the roof

atthesametime!

Ingenious, right?

Although I don't have any pictures to prove it, operation snow removal was a huge success.

";-)

Ready for it?

So, what happens when snow melts?

That's right, it turns into water.

And where does that water go?

That's right, into the gutter.

Round Two

So I "quickly" realized that there was a really thick slab of ice developing on the lower half of the roof.

I also noticed that the gutter might not be doing so great, and upon closer examination it was discovered that the gutters were like a rock with ice piled high above the gutter rims.

It seemed that there was more ice building up on the gutters and lower-half of the roof, and furthermore it appears to be growing from the day before.

See, the problem arises when the heat that is released into the attic and exits through the hip-vents, that the snow that is now water, rolls down the roof and although the water gives an earnest effort to make it to that gutter, when the weather is in the teens outside...well, you know.

Is ice heavier than snow?

I haven't a clue. But contemplating whether it is more important to keep a roof up or the gutters, great geriatric moment $2 was spawned.

So, realizing my error, I started to dig out the snow away from the gutter.

You might notice that the run-off water has turned to ice and encapsulated the lower portion of the upright gutter.

Model Nation? We can do better than this.

You might also notice that the frozen gutter went into two or three inches of ice (possibly from all that roof melting I was doing).

This kind of threw me into overload.

Round Three

So as you can see, the heater in the photos has thawed out the gutter (and even parts of the driveway!).

And aside from the infrequent periodic inspections (to see if the garage is on fire yet), I'd say there's a good .00009% chance that the rest of the gutter will get the drift and turn that ice back into snow before the weight of the ice takes down the gutters entirely.