Here we are in the midst of another cold Massachusetts winter and like every winter here in New England many property owners will have major issues with ice dams causing roof leaks and shingle damage.
Although it may seem as though ice dams are an unstoppable force of nature, they are actually quite preventable. Attics and cathedral or vaulted ceiling areas that have been correctly incorporated into the overall building envelope don’t have problems with ice dams and icicles in the cold seasons. Through the use of proper insulation and ventilation techniques ice dams can be stopped cold (pun intended).
Here a typical scenario for the formation of ice dams:

1. A house has a build up of snow on the roof.
2. The temperature outside is below freezing.
3. The temperature inside the attic is above freezing, thus raising the temperature of the roof itself to above freezing.
4. Because of the warm roof, the snow on top of it begins to melt from the bottom up.
5. This melted snow water tries to run down and off the roof.
6. As soon as the water reaches the edge of the roof it gets exposed to the freezing air.
7. The water refreezes as ice instead of snow in the gutters, if present, and along the edges of the roof.
8. As more and more melted snow water continues to run down the roof it just keeps freezing behind and on top of the previously frozen run off, forming a bigger and bigger ice dam.

So How Do Ice Dams Cause Roof Leaks? 
The melted snow water doesn’t immediately freeze anymore after the ice dam has begun to take shape. Once the ice dam has built up a bit it literally creates a dam that traps the rest of the water trying to run off the roof behind it. While this trapped water will eventually freeze, it may take a while and during that time a portion of the shingles on this roof, behind the ice dam, are basically submerged in water.
Now of course your roof shingles are obviously suppose to protect your home from the weather i.e. rain and snow. However, most roofing materials are not meant to have a pond or river on top of them.
So What Can You Do To Prevent Ice Dams?
First and foremost you must recognize that proper insulation and ventilation is the key(see image on right). If we are talk about an attic area then typically this means that the insulation needs to run up the walls of your house then over the attic floor joists forming an ideal insulation envelope. In the attic scenario only the floor of the attic should be insulated, not the underside of the roof!
Proper ventilation is also required. Outside air needs to be able to enter the attic so that the attic temperature is the same as the temperature outside. You achieve this ventilation through the use of gable vents, soffit vents and a roof ridge vent.
In roof systems with attic areas below them it is fairly straight forward to have a contractor that knows what they are doing to correct any problems as far as proper insulation and ventilation. However, roof systems with a cathedral ceiling below them that have these issues are much more of a project to correct, but they can be corrected.
In order to have a properly ventilated and insulated cathedral ceiling the contractor must install baffles within each rafter bay before installing the insulation. These baffles allow air to flow between the soffit vents and the ridge vent which keeps the underside of the roof the same temperature as outside. If these baffles ore not installed in your cathedral ceiling then the contractor will need to remove the existing sheetrock and insulation from your ceiling in order to properly ventilate the area. This type of project will be more expensive than an attic project.
In addition to the ice dam issue, if your attic is warmer than the outside temperature you are also wasting lots of money heating that space. So basically you are paying extra money on your heating bill for the privilege of growing nice big ice dams and icicles that cause roof leaks and destroy your roof. Kind of makes it even worse when you think of it that way doesn’t it?
What Can You Do About Existing Ice Dams?
If it’s the middle of the winter and you have ice dams or through past experience you think they will be forming soon there are some measures you can take. First of all, if you don’t have experience climbing on a roof in the winter, especially with snow on it, don’t do it! Call a pro. What you can do is go to your local hardware store and buy a snow rake that has an extendable handle designed to pull snow off of the first few feet of the roof and attempt to pull some of that snow off, from the ground, before it has a chance to melt and refreeze along the roof edges. You can also do this once the ice dam has formed and keep it from getting any bigger and give it a chance to melt, hopefully.
Also, many roofing contractors, us included, work through the winter and often provide roof snow removal services in addition to their typical roofing services. This is a service we are happy to provide for our customers here in Massachusetts, for example. Again, please don’t try and do this yourself. Between icy ladders and slippery roof surfaces it is a recipe for disaster for the inexperienced.
There are also some products on the market that can assist in preventing ice dams before they form and melting them if they have already formed. You should be able to find a home improvement store in your area that sells a product that is basically a coated, heated wire that you fasten along the edges of the roof and then plug in when the conditions are right for the ice dams to form (see picture on right). These actually work pretty good, however, they aren’t solving the real problem which, of course, is ventilation and insulation issues. They may be right for some homes in some circumstances though.
Most home improvement and hardware stores also sell pellets or tablets that are designed to be thrown up onto the roof from the ground. These tablets then supposedly will melt the ice from the roof as they dissolve into the water that is running down the roof into the ice dam. I have no experience with these products so I can’t say for certain if they work as designed or not. However, some people say they have worked for their ice dam problems. A couple of things I would be worried about as a roofing contractor is potential damage to the shingles from the chemicals these tablets are made of (salt is no good for asphalt shingles), as well as possibly staining the roof with those same chemicals. And even in a base case situation this product is still just a band-aid for a greater problem.
Proper Roofing Techniques For Cold Climates
In addition to making sure that the roof has proper ventilation and attic insulation there is an additional level of security against ice dam issues and roof leaks that all responsible and ethical roofing contractors should be taking in cold weather climates with regards to pitched, asphalt shingled roofs. When a new roof is installed, these days, an extra layer of protection called ice and water membrane should be installed from the edge to at least 3 feet up the roof.
This added layer of protection will help prevent leaks if ice dams do develop along the roof edges. Ice and water membrane will not prevent ice dams it simply is added security to help protect the plywood sheathing beneath the asphalt shingles and prevent leaks should an ice dam form.

You’ll be surprised, most people do not put much effort into decorating their homes nicely. Well, either that or they don’t really know how to. Since most of us spend the majority of our time in the house, it would be beneficial to have a more aesthetically appealing home, wouldn’t it? A home that’s beautiful will not only make you feel more like coming home at the end of a long day of work, but is something you can be proud of and show off to your friends and family. Here is some quick advise for getting your house appeal in order.
Furniture can play a big part in the design of your home or room, so don’t underestimate the damage that bad furniture can do. You can tell from the people who have no idea about interior or home design – they tend to buy everything and everything when it comes to furnishings, making their home look more like a junk yard or second-hand store rather than a aesthetically pleasing living space. Beautiful homes will always be themed, or at least have some sort of coherent style throughout, both in decor and in color. When redesigning your current or new home, you should definitely keep this in mind.
When you’re shopping around for furniture for the home, you don’t really need to spend an extravagant amount of money. In fact, there’s plenty of second hand stores at which you can pick up some really great contemporary or antique furniture at very reasonable prices to decorate your home with. You can even go with lower priced furniture with large retail stores such as Ikea. The benefits of buying from these retail outlets is that their furniture range comes in sets, all in a certain theme and color co-ordinates. To start off on a good foot, you could purchase a lounge set or bedding set first, then buy the other pieces of furnishings that are built around that style and those colors.
To get further ideas on decorating your home, you can furthermore pick up informative magazines from a newsagent that specialize in interior design. These magazines will normally feature full-color photos which you can use to draw inspiration from, both in style and also colors.

TV furniture takes many different forms, ranging from full entertainment wall units to single TV cabinets. Your choice will likely depend upon the space you have available, although many people prefer a wall unit to a single stand-alone cabinet.
The reason for the popularity of entertainment wall units is simply that they take up wall space, and have minimum impact on living space. They also accommodate more than just the TV, and while it could be looked on as TV furniture with display options added, most regard it as a wall display unit, and perhaps bookcase, that includes room for the TV! There are two ways of looking at it.
If we look at individual pieces of TV furniture first, we can then see how that might be expanded in a more general form of entertainment furniture or leisure unit, so as to make the best use of the wall space you have available. Very few homes have no wall space free, and if even if not there is usually some form of existing wall furniture that can be replaced to incorporate television furniture.
Traditional TV furniture involves a simple stand or console that holds the TV on top, and with room for some boxes and DVDs on the storage shelves below. The shelves can be behind glass doors to keep out dust or remain open. Usually, such consoles are available in a range of widths according to the width of your TV set.
More intricate are TV consoles in the form of chests. There is a wide variety of these, fitted with cupboards and drawers, or a combination of glass doors and open shelving to accommodate not only the TV equipment and boxes, but also hi-fi equipment. These are still individual pieces of TV furniture that can be situated anywhere in the room – either against a wall or in an island situation, a common position being a bay window or alcove.
However, entertainment units are more substantial, and more than simply TV furniture. These can be built yourself by combining various pieces from a collection, designed to be used just for that purpose – the ‘sectionals’ of wall furniture if you like. These entertainment units will generally consist of a TV hutch, to contain the flat screen, with a cabinet below for the accessories and DVDs and so on.
To each side would be more cabinetry to house a hi-fi unit, perhaps some of the speakers and possibly an iPod dock, also attached to the speakers. Many people use the same set of surround speakers for all their equipment, though that would depend on the quality of the speakers.
Then, space permitting, there would be display shelves for curios or ornaments and perhaps even bookshelves. Now you can possibly see where a TV stand can be incorporated into your wall space, even if you have existing wall furniture in place. You could combine that or change it. Most people would purchase from new, and if you choose the right range of furniture you can do that in stages.
The TV furniture could be acquired first, and then you could expand the rest around it as you could afford it. It is better building slowly using good quality furniture than buying an entire wall-full of cheap furniture at once. The high quality pieces will match each other no matter when you purchase them. That’s one of the benefits you pay for when buying high quality entertainment or television furniture. This year’s purchase matches last year’s.
The Paula Deen Down Home entertainment console is a case in point. You can build this 126W x 84H inches unit from four pieces: a console, a TV hutch and two side display units. You could add to this over time to extend it over the whole of one wall if you wanted to. The same is true of large numbers of entertainment units: start with one piece of TV furniture, then slowly add to it until you have a complete entertainment center you can be proud of.
It might take time, but it will be worth it in the end. Of course, if you have the money you can do that all at once, and because you are building it up yourself you can have exactly what your particular room needs. Some people even put the hutch on a rotating bezel, so it rotates 180 degrees, with the flat screen one side and a display unit the other. You can have one side showing or the other depending on whether you are watching TV or not. But then you need room behind for the rotation!
There are many different types of TV furniture available on the market, and it’s best to check out what is online and then visit the showroom. That means you should choose the website of a furniture company that has a showroom close to your home. You can then see it in real life and decide if it’s for you or not.