We're seeing the same, Marj. Breaking them off is hazardous as they are overhanging a large picture window at my house. This would be a bad time for a broken window! In other spots, i just take a broom or shovel and break them myself.

I saw something on tv in the last few weeks, (may have been This old house or Ask this old house) where a guy filled a large tube sock with salt and then threw it up on the roof where the ice dam was. The snow causes the salt to break down, mix with the water and follow the path of the forming icicles, dissolving them. I've not tried this yet. Like you, I'm hoping the sun will melt them.

Barb

Every few years, I get an ice dam on a NE facing corner of the roof right over the front door that will leak into the house. I ended up putting down some of those plastic snow blocks that keep the snow on the roof to melt, not slide off, then permanent heat tape sorta woven around the plastic blocks and into the rain gutter. So the tape heats the ice and the ice melts into the rain gutters and down the spout.

Another thing you can do is toss the heat cable up there like a lasso, then plug it in for a few hours - it melts through, then throw it up again.

Example of heat tape:
heat tape

We have one area where two roof elevations join that is prone to this because the snow piles up and there is a ceiling (heat), with no attic beneath. I am normally proactive and clear the snow from this spot and the sun does the rest before it gets bad. But I let it get away from me in the past couple of weeks. We don't have any sign of damage so I'm going to hope for the best.

Sorry - I don't have any advice other than what has already been suggested, but good luck.

Thanks guys! I got some suggestions from some people at work as well. I thought we'd be ok for now as the front did have a bit of meltage today, as well as I was able (from the ground) knock off some snow (we only have about 6" or so thick on the roof) as well as some of the ice dams. But then I went into the kitchen and heard some dripping. Looked up and saw it coming in through the soffit and traveling down the pendant light. :( Quite a bit of the soffit is soft, so it's been dripping in there for awhile. We've also had a drip coming through the garage ceiling that my husband has been trying to pinpoint the location the water was coming from. It seems to be coming from one of the bathrooms, and he was thinking he needed to pull one of the tub enclosure panels and maybe the bathtub in order to get in there and fix the pipe. But now we are wondering if it's yet another area where the ice dripping off the roof has found it's way in.

Do you think that heat tape/cable would help now, David? We could try that if you think it's not too late to get rid of some of this ice now. It's not too expensive, so may be worth a shot. Definitely good to use in future - had a couple of other people suggest that as well.

Marj

It sounds like all you could do at this point is throw it up like a rope. We have one thats 75 feet long thats woven around and in the gutter, and thats way too long to throw up as a lasso. Shorter ones are easier to throw, they heat up faster and cut through the ice quickly.

I was warned that once its plugged in, not to leave it snarled up because where the cable touches itself, it can heat up enough to melt the insulation. Meh, I'm not so sure, mine barely gets warm to the touch. But passing along the warning just in case.

In the future, you might think of installing one before the winter, then all you need to do is plug it in. I'm using mine now after the last heavy snow, but I haven't plugged it in for maybe 3 years.

Oh, too bad. It is probably an insurance claim at this point if you want to go in that direction.

Whooo, My DH and I are tired!! Both of us spent a good part of the day yesterday (from about
7am to about 2:30pm) planning what to do about the ice
dams on the back side of the house, and then taking action (due to the drip in the kitchen, we
felt we needed to do something quickly at least there).

I'll start by saying
that my husband is very handy, careful, and knowledgeable when it comes
to things like this - otherwise, I wouldn't have let him attempt this!
So what he ended up doing was using a weed burning torch (has a metal
housing around the end where the flame comes out) to melt the ice on the
edge of the roof. He had to be on a
ladder to do it, but fortunately no mishaps! The ice was about a 9" or
so wide band along the edge, and several inches deep! He melted it as
much as he could without actually getting down to the shingles, and then
chopped through the remaining thickness to knock it off the roof. It looked to him that the gutter guards the previous owner installed were possibly the primary cause of the ice dam - the guard kind of tips up slightly, so he's guess is that they hindered the flow of melt from going off the roof. Great for keeping leaves out of the gutter, but not great for climates that get snow and ice!!

David - we did pick up a roof & gutter de-icing cable kit, but the
instructions said not to use it for melting existing ice as it's
designed only to make a channel for ice as it forms to allow a path for
it to drip through - might have been ok/worked, but we opted to not try using it at this point. But
definitely will install it after all this is gone so hopefully prevent
this from happening again!

My job was shoveling snow so we could get the ladder close and have some
walking room, hand him things, and to
keep a close eye on what he was doing for any signs of anything going
wrong! I also used our makeshift roof snow removal tool (no one had the
real thing, so we had to improvise) to try and get some of the snow off 1
ft or so from the edge. I did get some off, but thought it was a whole
lot more than what it end up being when I look at the roof from an
upstairs window - not worth it IMO for how difficult it was to maneuver
the pole that far away and get the right angle, etc.!! Maybe a real roof
snow tool would be better, but not so sure.

So no more drip in the kitchen - yeah!!! Now if mother nature will just
gives us more melting in between cold/snow days, it would be sooo
nice. Maybe a bit on Monday, and then Thurs. on is looking good.

I have a hanging planter on our front porch that says it all this morning
about how this weather has been here lately!

I would be hesitant to put salt on the roof as it seems possible that it might damage the roof. I have cleared some ice dams by connecting a hose, capable of holding hot water, to indoor plumbing and melting the ice with that starting at the downspout.

I have often noticed that the houses with gutter guards are often prone to having ice dams and ice overflows.

gjcore,

After I posted, I thought that a gardener wouldn't want salt leaching into their foundation plantings. Bad idea!