Repairing water stains and eliminating mold inside your home caused by ice dams

The water on your roof that pools above ice dams and then seeps down onto your ceilings and between your inner and outer walls typically causes two related problems: 1) ceiling stains and 2) mold, which is a serious health risk.

Ceiling stains and mold

If the stain is yellow, it’s dry and can be treated, but only if there’s no mold behind it. Look at the entire floor of the storage area or attic above the stained ceiling. If there’s mold, you’ll probably see it. Don’t disturb it. Spray the affected area with bleach, but don’t soak it.

Next, apply paint blocker to the stained area, let it dry, and apply a coat of white ceiling paint. (If on first inspection the ceiling stain hasn’t yellowed, it’s not dry, and there is still a leak. Find out where the water is coming in, repair the “port of entry,” wait for the stain to dry, and then refinish.

Paint the repaired area with the original color that you had left over, if it still matches the rest of the ceiling, and if you’re not working in a bathroom—where there is too much moisture, which affects wall and ceiling colors—or in a kitchen, where ceilings, due to cooking vapors, lose color more quickly over time than elsewhere in the house. If you need to repaint the entire ceiling, used painter’s tape on the wall where it meets the ceiling. And it’s always a good idea to remove the furniture, or at least move it to the center of the room and cover it with plastic, especially if you have a sand-textured ceiling, which tends to splatter paint.

Mold between the walls

Begin to determine if the ice dam leak has caused mold to form between your inner and outer walls by looking to see: 1) if there are stains on the interior wall; 2) if there is peeling paint on that wall; or 3) if there is a pool of water on the floor (formed as the ice dam melts). If you see any of these conditions, you had best look between the walls because, where there is moisture, mold usually forms.

The least invasive way to check for mold between the walls is to call in a company that uses special instruments to measure moisture. This is expensive, and won’t tell you what you want to know about mold if the moisture has dried up by the time of testing. A second way is to remove the baseboard molding where the leaking has occurred, exposing the sheetrock or blueboard (plaster) behind it, and check for mold. At the same time, check the backside of the baseboard molding.

If neither procedure provides signs of mold, a more invasive procedure is necessary. Remove the sheetrock that’s just behind the molding, usually 3-4 inches—the height of the molding—and about a foot laterally. Do you see mold?

If it’s determined you have mold between the walls, hire the contractor to perform mold remediation, which includes: 1) removal of the baseboard molding, sheetrock or plaster wall, and insulation; 2) treatment of the exposed studs (whether wood or metal); 3) reconstruction of the wall; and 4) application of a finish to match the color of the rest of the wall.

Never paint over mold in an attempt to mask it! If you do, it will continue to grow and spread. Mold must be removed in order to eliminate the health risk.

Health note: Mold above the ceiling is usually in full view, so you don’t have to disturb it to find it. But the invasive procedures needed to deal with mold between walls means that you have to “encapsulate” the work area, because any mold you encounter, once disturbed, will become airborne and pose a health risk. That’s why you also have to wear a filtering facemask. Mold can cause illness not only in the person doing the work, but also to the rest of the household, whether or not any of them suffer from pre-existing respiratory problems. So it’s best to bring in a qualified contractor to check for mold and take a sample for a controlled test. He’ll identify the strain of mold, too, which is important to know if any of the residents suffer from respiratory problems.

Lonergan Construction, a licensed Massachusetts corporation, builds new homes and remodels existing ones. We offer design and architectural services as well as work in concrete, general construction and demolition, plumbing and electrical systems, heating-ventilation-air conditioning (HVAC), septic systems, roofing, painting, cabinetry, and flooring (wood and ceramic), as well as residential (home) and commercial (office) repairs and remodeling.

Our business comes almost exclusively through referrals, and our only advertising is word of mouth.

Lonergan Construction

508-875-0052

www.lonerganconstruction.com

Ice Dams

What Causes Ice Dams on Your Roof?

Distressed by ice dams that have cause so much water damage during this especially severe winter, homeowners want more than ever to know exactly what causes them and what can be done to prevent them.

The Cause

The problem begins with snow on your roof. Daytime outside temperatures melts some of it, and heat radiating from inside your house contributes to the melting. So does sunlight— when strong enough it melts the snow from above, even if the outside temperature is below freezing.

The cycle repeats: melting water flows into the gutters during the day and then freezes at night. It doesn’t take long for the ice buildup to reach the level of the eaves. As more daytime melting reaches the face of the developing dam and freezes, the dam creeps up the roof. (Clogged gutters and the presence of gutter helmets accelerate the process).

Why don’t higher daytime temperatures or heat radiating from inside the house melt the ice as it moves up from the gutters? First: the eaves receive no heat from your living space. Second: daytime temperatures are not strong enough, alone, to melt the ice that has formed on them.

Now you begin to notice the effects. Snow higher up on the roof continues to melt during the day thanks both to the sun and the heat escaping from your living space below.  But because the water is melting over the warmer part of the roof, it doesn’t freeze. Instead, it backs up against the ice dam and then drains into cracks and other openings in your roof covering—thousands of nail holes for example. The water then flows into your attic, down your exterior walls and through your ceilings, winding up in your living space.

Note that un-drained or inadequately drained “valleys” in many roofs, as well as obstructions to water flow that are often built into roofs, provide conditions for the development of additional ice jams. I’ll speak about these as well as ice dam prevention in Part II of this bulletin.

Lonergan Construction

508-875-0052

www.lonerganconstruction.com.