Ice dam removal is tough, whether this is your first year of doing it professionally or you've done it for many years. That is inevitable, given that the job involves steaming thousands of pounds of ice off of a roof. Even so, you need to make ice dam removal easier and more sustainable.

We've removed ice dams professionally since the mid-1990s, before there even was an ice dam removal industry and before we made steam the industry standard. But we still run into challenges; and it's our experience that helps us navigate each tricky new situation. The temporary paradox is that you can't benefit from experience if you don't gain experience in the first place. Your time in the ice dam removal space may be very brief if someone gets seriously injured, a customer's property is damaged extensively, you're overwhelmed with cancellations or refunds, your company is sued, you fail to turn a profit, or you can't hire enough technicians.

Many business owners make an already-tricky wintertime profession even trickier by skipping steps. That's true of specialists in snow and ice removal and of non-specialists (e.g., roofers who start offering ice dam removal services). They may skimp on researching and buying the proper equipment, hiring technicians to reasonable standards, training, proper insurance, or effective communication or fulfillment. The results are one rocky job after another and an ice dam removal season that nobody cares to repeat.

If you take your time to build your team and establish good processes over a few years, you'll be safe enough and profitable enough that you can do it again next year.


As you accumulate that experience, though, what specific challenges can you lessen? If you consider adding ice dam removal as part of your snow removal business, how can you make ice dam removal a little easier, without sacrificing safety or quality? Here are a few processes and common sticking points that can become non-issues with just a little work on your part:

Avoiding some customer types

It's unlikely you can satisfy a caller who insists you guarantee a certain number of hours, quote a certain dollar amount, promise when the roof leaks will stop, or promise that the ice dams won't come back later in the season. It's also unlikely you can help someone who seems not to understand that you may have other jobs scheduled, or that snow removal is a prerequisite to steaming the ice dam, or that you can't know how big the ice dam is until you've removed its blanket of snow and sized it up.

It's not hard to identify these customers over the phone, but it's still hard to say no (politely) to them. Saying no is especially difficult if they seem to need help now and may be short on options. Still, you need to explain in your own way that you'd rather turn them down than let them down.

You can help these callers by explaining that if they can simply keep their roofs mostly snow-free (at least along the overhangs), there's a good chance that they will never need ice dam removal. At that point you can offer tips on raking or - for larger buildings - shoveling the roof. You can suggest your own snow-clearing service or refer them to a trusted third party. Whatever you do, don't make promises in your cozy office that your technician can't keep on the icy roof.

Ice dam removal techniques

You can save a lot of time and pain by committing not to steam ice dams top-down, but rather to cut off one small-to-medium chunk of ice at a time, nudge it off of the roof, and repeat. Start the chunk-cutting technique at the edge of the roof and work your way up toward the ridge, rather than the other way around.

If your technicians consistently apply that technique (or possibly another one) rather than improvising or "winging it," they'll complete more jobs in a timely manner, the process will be less frustrating for them and for customers, ice dam removal will be more cost-effective for customers, and your word-of-mouth referrals and online reviews will grow accordingly. The word-of-mouth factor is especially powerful when you do commercial jobs, because business owners tend to know each other and trade recommendations.

Expanding outside your market

If you want to offer ice dam removal far beyond your home base, you will need a smattering of technicians who live in other parts of the country. Even though your main crew may be willing and able to travel far, eventually they will run out of time or energy, or simply won't be able to camp out in two winter wonderlands at once.

To fill in the gaps, you will need a few technicians who don't need to drive as far. Finding good technicians all over the country can be tricky, but you only need to get lucky a few times. As you put out feelers and pick up a tech here and there, you'll develop more of a system, and you'll take pressure off of your other technicians to drive great distances.

Meanwhile, if you routinely encourage customer reviews, you'll have an online paper trail of happy customers. Those happy customers and their reviews will help you attract more customers the next time your crew returns to the area. You'll develop a relationship with the place and the people. Your history there will serve as an advantage over would-be competitors who aren't familiar with the terrain.

Retaining the best technicians

It's usually easier to keep a reliable, customer-friendly technician than to cultivate a new one. It's also easier to keep good people when they know that you have low turnover and want to keep them rather than try to replace them.


Whether it's an issue of pay, workload, days off, latitude to turn down excessively dangerous jobs, or last-minute requests to pack up the truck and travel far, think of what's most likely to keep this technician wearing your jersey for more seasons. The fewer techs you need to spend time finding, hiring, training, getting to know and learning to manage, the more time you and they can spend on helping customers, making solid money along the way, and enjoying the journey.

As the saying goes, "Experience is the best teacher," but it doesn't need to be your experience 100% of the time. What someone else has learned from years of professional ice dam removal can help you string together a few good years, and then some even better years. 

Ice dam equipment checklist

You don't need five of everything, but you do need backups. All that gear may sound excessive, and often it is, but it's better to have it and not need it. You'll have fewer day-ending breakdowns and frustrated customers if you adopt a checklist like this. As you get more and more jobs under your belt, you may consider modifying the checklist until it's just right for you. Learn more about ice dam removal at icedamremovalguys.com/learning-center/.

• Poly-edged roof shovels (2)
• Heavy-duty metal grain shovel
• Steamer wands (2)
• 100' high-pressure steamer hoses (2)
• 100' garden hose (2)
• Heat gun
• 100' extension cord
• Climbing harness
• 100'section of climber's rope
• 24' extension ladder
• 8' step ladder
• Roof rake
• Fire extinguisher
• Roll of thread tape
• 5-gallon antifreeze bucket
• Gallon of CLR
• Empty 5-gallon bucket
• 50 lbs. of granular ice melt
• Box of assorted O-rings
• Small toolbox
• Small tote of spare steamer parts
• Flashlight
• Headlamp
• Digital camera
• 5-gallon diesel cans (2)
• 5-gallon fuel can
• Traffic cones
• Roll of "Caution" tape
• Proper PPE
  
  

View a short video here on how to remove an ice dam with steam.  

Joe Palumbo is president of Ice Dam Guys, LLC, a subsidiary of Palumbo Services, Inc. in Forest Lake, MN. Contact Joe at joe@icedamguys.com or icedamremovalguys.com.