$#*&#*$&#!!!!!

[sleigh]

We had massive icicles on the house from the constant snow storms we've had in February -- as my friend Andy Miller remarked the other day on the icy stalactites handing from his house: "They're big enough to kill a whale."

Ours were immense as well. But late yesterday, Denise hear a sound like thunder as snow avalanched from our roof -- a fairly common occurrence at our place, since we have a slate roof and thus it has a very steep pitch. In fact, I can't get our car into the back of the house because the roof has dumped snow three or four feet deep on the driveway on the west side.

But this was the east side, and Denise said it was really loud.

There was a good reason for that. The avalanche took down the gutters along the east side of the house. Peeled them right from the house, tearing them off the downspout and ripped them in twain about halfway down the length of the house. Pretty spectacular. And I suspect, pretty expensive to replace, which isn't good. About the last thing Denise and I need to do is scramble to find another $500 (the deductible on the house insurance) to repair the damage. Damn...

I'd ask for Spring, but then we're likely to get a flooding downpour to fill the basement...

Anyway, for your amusement, here are the icicles on the west side of the house, as they were before I went and knocked them off lest the same thing happen on that side of the house...

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

This has become a common story here in PA, too. Someone pointed out that any time you get Giant Icicles of DOOOOOM, it's almost certain that your gutters are filled with frozen water, and therefore heavy, and therefore very likely to get ripped off the house when the roof thaws.

Which is obviously something you would have preferred to know a week ago, I'm sure.

Gutters are annoying. They're fragile and require frequent maintenance. But without them, you would have worse problems (according to an episode of This Old House I saw last week).

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry you have this damage to deal with.

On my house, icicles are a warning not just of possible gutter damage, but of water damage inside, if the ice in the gutters diverts snowmelt under the roof, so I'm diligent about knocking icicles off the gutters and dragging snow off the roof with a roof rake.

Massive Icicles?

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

We use little things like that for snow cones around here...

[jdonat.livejournal.com]

owowow! That sound had to be scary! We had someone clean out our gutters when we had a 'warm' spell in January -otherwise we'd have humongous icicles on the West end of the house, and of course right by the back door. Hope you don't lose any more -maybe some of the gutter can be salvaged. What's it made out of?

[jennlk]

I've heard that sound. Immediately followed by a thump slither -crash- as the raft of icicles bounced off the porch roof and landed on the new car. After that, we got much more vigilant at cleaning the roof edge off -- the bottom 18" of roofline on that house was sheet aluminum, in the hopes that the icicles would fall off before they got too big. Usually it worked.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I don't know how your gutters were attached, but it might be a good idea to watch for leaks on that side of the house when everything starts to thaw. The smallest little gaps can leak, as we discovered last week.