Winter forecast prolongs the pain of troublesome ice dams

As winter continues to take its toll on homes and buildings across Minnesota, residents are scrambling to get damage repaired.

In Minneapolis, Margie Commerford’s ice dam problem quickly became clear when her light fixture turned into bowl of water. 

“A lot of times with ice dams you can’t do much with it until the ice dam gets removed because if we open that up, more water can just do more damage,” 

As Restoration Professionals assesses the damage, Commerford works to get everything back to normal. The first step is always to remove the ice dam.

The second step is to tear back the walls, ceiling, drywall and whatever else in order to find the source of the problem and fix it for the future.

In some cases, people are opting to tear things apart immediately, while other homeowners are being advised to wait for weeks until winter runs its course.

“You’ve got to diagnose each case separately and go from there,” said Tony Yost with Restoration Professionals. 

Yost said his crews have already started to work with insurance companies, which have called in catastrophe crews from out of state to help with all the claims being made.

“The work that is going to come from this, it’s going to last into the summer. It might last into the next winter. We have probably six to eight months’ worth of work to put everyone back together that we’ve been dealing with alone,” he said.

Meanwhile, Commerford said she can’t live with a dripping light fixture and just wants the ice dams to dry up.

“I love the snow, it looks beautiful. You just want it on the outside,” she said.