Roof Waterproofing in Dearborn, MI before it leaks

Why Dearborn’s half stories grow ice dams

The story-and-a-half house is everywhere in Dearborn: a brick bungalow or Cape Cod with bedrooms tucked under the roof, sloped ceilings and short knee walls. Those rooms are cozy, but they put warm living space right against the underside of the roof, often with thin insulation and almost no room for air to move.

In winter, that heat melts the snow on the upper roof. The water runs down to the cold eaves past the knee wall, refreezes and builds a ridge of ice. The next melt backs up behind it, under the shingles and into the plaster, the walls and sometimes the window trim. Gutters packed with leaves from big street trees make it worse.

Shingles were never meant to hold back standing water. The fix is layered: ice and water shield at the eaves and in the valleys, tight flashing at chimneys and dormers, and ventilation that moves cold air from the soffits to the ridge, including through the sloped ceiling bays where we can. We look in the attic and knee-wall spaces, photograph what we find and explain what will actually stop the ice, not just melt it once.