[RE-wrenches] Sheets of snow vs ice breakers

[Will White]

Drake,

We deal with issues like this in New England all the time.  Yes there are times when a large buildup of snow will overshoot the ice breakers.  We just had 2'+ of snow and I had one array with a pitch similar to yours where the snow overshot an Alpine Snow guard and ripped half the snow guard off the roof (not the guards fault, the rafter tails turned out to be rotted).

Every year someone loses a gutter to snow but it's usually because the gutter was poorly installed in the first place.  Usually if you replace the gutter with something more substantial and better attached you won't have problems.

Snow is also another reason you don't see a lot of gutters in Vermont.

That's my .02

Thanks,
Will


__________________________________________________________________________________________
Will White
Regional Field Operations Manager - New England

Real Goods Solar
64 Main St.
Montpelier, VT 05602
Tel: (802) 223-7804
Cell: (802) 234-3167
www.realgoodssolar.com<http://www.realgoodssolar.com/>



From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Drake
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 11:07 AM
To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Sheets of snow vs ice breakers

Hello Wrenches,

We are trying to understand what will happen on a fairly steep roof (34 degree pitch) when snow comes off a large array and hits ice breakers on the metal roof.  Before the ice breakers were installed on the bottom couple of feet of the roof, the gutters experienced damage from sheets of snow and ice sliding down.

The concern is that large sheets of snow coming off the array could overshoot the ice breakers and take down the gutters.  The proposed array will be approximately 22 feet along the direction of the pitch.

Does anyone have experience with this issue or any possible solutions?

Thank you,

Drake


Drake Chamberlin
Athens Electric LLC
OH License 44810
CO License 3773
NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer
740-448-7328
http://athens-electric.com/
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