Easy Heat ADKS-600 120-Foot Roof Snow De-Icing Kit

There is one area on our roof that because of the tree-shade, angle of the roof, and direction of the roof we always get an ice dam. We're talking 18" of ice that just builds upon itself all winter long until the melt. And that's when the problems start. There are many issues caused by ice dams, however, it's the back up of water that goes under the shingles and can cause inside leaks that is the most problematic. Shingles are meant for water to travel down the roof, not up (as is the case with an ice dam). So, if you don't want to climb-up on a slippery, pitched roof during the ice melt, then install this product and you won't worry next winter.We purchased 2, 120' heat-wire strips for about 15' of roof coverage. One strip was for the roof and the second strand was for the gutter, downspout, and drain pipe. It was a little overkill on length, but we made our herringbone pattern pretty tight. You can make the pattern wider for better coverage. We also doubled up on the gutter (not because we had to, but because of the excess wire).I certainly recommend running these wires through the gutter, downspout and out the drainpipe. At least, that's what I did and it worked perfectly this past winter.FYI, to run a wire through a drain pipe, I used a crumpled up thin plastic grocery bag attached to a string and used a shop-vac to pull it through. Then attach the string to the wire and pull it through. Same thing for downspouts, however, I found it better to attach the string to 2-3 heavy bolts and let gravity pull the string down the pipe (as long as the downspout doesn't have any areas where it could get hung up and you have access to it at the ground).I usually don't leave them on the entire winter here in Colorado. I plugged it into a remote controlled outlet (like you might use for your outside Christmas lights) and turn them on the evening before a snowstorm.I would call this a two hammer job. Make sure you plan out where you are going to plug in. Likely you will need an outdoor extension cord and some cable-management (tie-downs, clamps, stuff like that). Depending on the pitch of your roof, it could be dicy. Go slow and be safe.Incidentally, I had a spare run of the heat wire and decided to run it on a flat roof that seems to create a swimming pool because of the ice dam on the edges. It's not my best work, but in a pinch, it worked. Flat roofs don't have places to easily attach anything. And if an ice dam forms on the edge, it won't drain... Enter, heat-wire and a make-shift solution. Hey, it works!Also, I've decided to leave them up for the summer. Probably going to wear them out faster, but they were a bit of a pain to put up, so I'm not going through that mess each spring and fall, thank you very much.That's about all I can say about this product. Definitely worth it! Oh, one more thing, read and follow the directions. I found them to be helpful and thorough.

Our house was built in 1949 by a crazy person. There are so many weird areas between the first and second floor that we actually had one entire portion of the roof rebuilt just to prevent leaking two years ago. Our builder told us the only way to completely solve our ice dam problems would be to remove the second floor of the house entirely and rebuild. Instead we had a new roof installed, we had almost the entire roof covered in Grace Watershield and as a trial we put Easy Heat down the gutters on the backside of the house where the ice was the very worst. The first part of our winter was mild with 50 degree temperatures and hardly any rain, but lately it has been brutally cold with -40 degrees and two feet of snow on average and we have not had any ice accumulate. Zero ice. Usually at this point in the winter we would have two feet of ice in the gutters. Our garage, where we did not install Easy Heat has mild ice build up from the recent snow (photo attached) and the back where we have Easy Heat has water running out the downspout (photo).Some tips from the extensive amount of research that I did before we installed this product. First, we had an electrician come out and install a special outlet for this project. It was only about $100 and it has made the whole thing so much easier. Second, we did not install the tape in the loops on the roof like the instructions say. I did weeks of reading and YouTube watching and finally decided that simply running the cable once down the bottom of the gutter then attaching it to the metal posts on the top of the gutter was sufficient - that is two rows down each gutter - back and forth. (Remember we used to have enormous ice dams that leaked into our house and destroyed the ceilings in five rooms.) We made sure to run the cable all the way down the downspout in a double thickness (with the special metal clips between) so the water would have a place to drain. (This also allows for easy roof raking, which my husband has done multiple times without worrying about hurting the wires because they are inside the gutters and not on top of the roof.) Third, we took the time to install it properly and use extra clips so that no wires would touch along the way (we used a crazy amount of clips). Fourth and most importantly, we turn the cable on BEFORE it starts snowing and we leave it on until it stops.Our neighbors have the same heat tape on their roof except they have the loop pattern, only. Right now they have ice hanging off their gutters with nice empty patches of snow melted off their roof where the cable has done its job, but because they don't have cable in the gutters the water doesn't have anywhere to go so it simply freezes again. Placing the cable inside the gutters and all the way down the downspout is the true solution to this horribly annoying problem. We purchased extra cable when it was on sale last year and in the fall we will be installing it on the garage so next winter we won't have the ice and snow build up on the front of the house.