Minnesota winters are nothing, if not cold. The question is never whether snow will arrive; but rather, how much ice will come along for the ride. Therefore, most Minnesota homeowners are acutely aware of the dangers of ice dams from heavy precipitation and freezing temperatures. Many know to stay on top of cleaning their gutters during the fall months to avoid water buildup that can turn into ice during the winter. The job is tedious, should you choose to do it yourself, or can be costly if you hire someone to assist you. While seamless gutters will not prevent debris from collecting in your gutters, it can help prevent water backing up, which can cause those pesky and dangerous ice dams.
What Are Seamless Gutters?
To better understand seamless gutters, it may be important to first understand the standard gutter system. Most gutters are sectioned off. As a result, each section has a seam or an exit point. These systems include downspouts next to the seam in the gutter line. Each section of gutter has its own seam and potential downspout. They do not connect, but they do drain together. Therefore, if one downspout is blocked, that gutter can retain water while the other gutters are continuing to properly release water.
With seamless gutters, there are no endpoints (or seams) with any of the gutters. It is a continuous structure with downspouts that collect water from the entire system. Therefore, if one downspout is clogged, the water can then travel to another downspout, thereby allowing the seamless gutters to consistently drain.
Back to the Ice Dam
Now that a visual idea of gutter systems has been created, it is time to understand what this means for the winter. With regular gutters, if something blocks one of the downspouts, an entire section of the gutter can overflow with water. As a result, the water can begin to freeze and cause an ice dam to form. This can lead to the ice dam causing numerous problems. First, they are a physical danger to anyone walking by your home. While
icicles are pretty to view from afar, they are quite dangerous and can cause severe injury or even death to anyone who is struck by one.
Second, ice dams can begin to cause damage to the exterior of your home. They can become so heavy that they can begin to rip the gutters from your home. Depending on the way the gutters are installed, and if there are any obstacles in the way, these ice dams can even destroy parts of your home connected to the gutter or within close proximity to it.
Finally, as an untreated ice dam begins to melt, it may begin to cause damage to the walls and interior systems of your home, including electrical outlets, thus creating a fire hazard. All of these problems can potentially be avoided by keeping the gutters clean and paying higher premiums to remove ice dams properly once they are formed.
The alternative, of course, is to install seamless gutters. As mentioned above, seamless gutters are a continuous system with no beginning or end point. Therefore, water cannot really build up unless all of the drain spouts are clogged, which is often unlikely. Seamless gutters may be an easy, cost effective way to keep your home safe and your family even more safe during the winter months. If you would like to learn more about the benefits of seamless gutters, contact the experts at R&R Remodeling at (952) 856-0575.