What do you know about ICE DAMMING?

We haven't gotten as much snow as we did during "snowmagedden" a few years back, but I thought our inclement weather lately was a good chance to share the Perryman family's experience with ice damming. Have you ever had to deal with this?

We moved into our new home in the fall of 2010. We immediately went into Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. We did our best at unpacking, but still it did not feel like home yet.

THEN the worst blizzard in Oklahoma history came upon us and our home suffered ice damming. It was shocking to have our ceilings and walls falling down because of water damage. We repacked our things, moved furniture to the center of the rooms, covered everything with tarps and so began our 2 month stay at a hotel. Eight weeks people. We learned A LOT.

The BEFORE

PART ONE

I woke up and headed to the kitchen to fix breakfast and immediately noticed a huge brown stain on the ceiling about 3'x3'--it was dripping. Then I looked over at the kitchen table and see that it is covered with water from another leak. Since it was it was dripping only in those two rooms and it happened to be above the two bathrooms, we were confident that a pipe froze and busted.

We turned off the water and waited 2 days for a plumber to arrive at our house--because all 20 that we called were snowed in and could not make it to our home. While we waited things only got worse. The kitchen ceiling fan began pouring water in a stream, the light fixture over the dining room starting streaming and room by room, water started dripping out the ceilings.

Here is what was weird, since we had no damage to the second floor, we could not figure out where the water was coming from.

The plumber came and tore a hole in the kitchen ceiling and confirmed that it was not a pipe. He said to call a roofer. We did and he suspected that we had "ice damming". We headed to the internet and after looking at pictures and seeing how the rooms were being effected we did indeed have ice damming.

Basically ice damming is where solid ice prevents water (the snow that is melting) from running off your roof. Instead, the water is forced up under the shingles. The water was running down the walls and pooling on the first floor ceiling.

PART TWO
We called our insurance company and they had a restoration team come out to take a look at it. We decided to go ahead with the removal of the wet sheet rock and we were totally shocked.

Here is what we saw in every room wall and ceiling...

OUT ---> and  OUT   ----> and MORE OUT ---->

Then they began covering everything with tarps from top to bottom.

Dining Room

Bathroom

Then they started tearing it out!

This is our kitchen ceiling.

Dining Room

Living Room: wall and ceiling

Foyer: wall and ceiling

Home School Room: wall and ceiling

In the end, all rooms but two had either a wall or ceiling removed or parts of both.

Another Disaster Strikes
Some of you know of our raccoon saga. We found out when we moved in that we had raccoons living in our attic. We had them removed, but they left behind tons of damage to the insulation and piles of feces. We knew that we needed to have it all removed and replaced, but just couldn't jump because of the expense.

As the guys started tearing everything out, they noticed the soggy poo insulation and they had to stop. Raccoons carry a bacteria that can cause meningitis and even kill you. They returned in protective gear to suck out all the old funk in the attic, remove the final ceilings, blow in new insulation, re-sheet rock, trim and paint every room.

Our insurance covered most of this damage. It did not cover any roof damage as it was a new roof and was installed to code. It did cover the removal of the insulation and putting new in, but not the sanitation. It covered all the inside construction work. And the cherry on top for me, they had the carpets cleaned once the job was done. Hallelujah. All in all, after we paid our deductible, Adam and I felt that we have been very well taken care of by everyone involved and we can see God's provision and working all this restoration of our home for our good.

We could not stay in the home due to raccoon feces, fans blowing and other construction issues. We expected to have a little vacation; the kind where you don't have to wash your own towels, which I like very much. But as I mentioned above that mini-vacation extended into a two month stay.

The After

During that time we had two major family crisis', everything broke and really, I could go on. But the Lord sustained us through it all.

And my reward feels sweet. Here is my new kitchen!

We went with bold Sealskin colored walls and in my dining room, I painted the scripture, "He brought me to His banqueting table and His banner over me is Love." It is indeed feeling like home!

The Perryman's live in Tulsa, OK with their three children and Natasha blogs about life, home, cooking and more at: http://perrymanfamily.blogspot.com.