Me, my ESEE-3, and a rubber mallet vs a serious ice dam

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Sunbstance-p

Joined
Jan 1, 2010
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I was in the part of the mid west that was slammed with an ice storm a month or so back. The ice built up so badly on my roof that we started to have some problems (moisture in the garage, gutters staring to hang, etc.). Specialized salt helped some, but there wasn't enough salt and there was way too much ice.

Finally, I decided that I had to strategically chip ice off of the ice dam to help the water run off. This meant that over the course of a few days, I was spending about 6 hours on a ladder with my ESEE-3 and a rubber mallet, chipping away at ice.

This is the hardest I have ever had to use a knife and the ESEE worked like a champ. Here are some after pictures of the knive
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My favorite part of this story is that I had just purchased the ESEE at a gun and knife show a week before the ice storm. This small fixed blade was perfect for the task (although, I never thought I would need a knife to take on an ice dam when I purchased the ESEE).
 
Glad it worked for you, but I have to ask: why use a knife (even a 3) for that particular task? Surely a big screwdriver or as adaman indicated, a cold chisel would have worked as well. Using a chisel, you have a dedicated striking point for the hammer. Just wondering . . . .
 
BenchmadeBoy said:
Glad it worked for you, but I have to ask: why use a knife (even a 3) for that particular task? Surely a big screwdriver or as adaman indicated, a cold chisel would have worked as well. Using a chisel, you have a dedicated striking point for the hammer. Just wondering . . . .
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I should have prefaced this with saying that we were iced in and I couldn't pick up any additional tools beyond what I had at my disposal and I didn't have any chisels (they would have been better for sure). This ice was beyond a screw driver sized problem. I went slowly and the ESEE and allowed for precision when needed.

I wouldn't recommend this as a way to tackle the problem if you had better resources available; rather, this was an example of how some knives are up to the task to be used as tool they weren't designed for when other options aren't available.
 
Sunbstance-p said:
I should have prefaced this with saying that we were iced in and I couldn't pick up any additional tools beyond what I had at my disposal and I didn't have any chisels (they would have been better for sure). This ice was beyond a screw driver sized problem. I went slowly and the ESEE and allowed for precision when needed.

I wouldn't recommend this as a way to tackle the problem if you had better resources available; rather, this was an example of how some knives are up to the task to be used as tool they weren't designed for when other options aren't available.
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Gotcha! In that case, way to improvise, adapt and overcome:D
 
Bottom line is as long as it worked and got you out of a jam, then thumbs up!
 
formtight said:
Ahhhhhhh. You're right. I prefer those in my glass and not on my roof!
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:D My parents down in southern Florida were reminding me of how a cold day for them was in the 60s.

I am used to the occasional large snow fall-but this was something else. Kids were ice skating in the street as it was a solid sheet of ice. The dam was about 4 feet deep and about a foot tall at its tallest point.

Luckily,I was able to chip off large chucks and then use the little salt I had to help melt what was there. The hardest part was that we had about 10 days where it was a high of 20 and the wind chill was well below zero, so the ice wasn't going anywhere on its own.

Rest assured we have stock piled some salt for next year and I have a set of chisels on the shopping list.
 
Sunbstance-p said:
Rest assured we have stock piled some salt for next year and I have a set of chisels on the shopping list.
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Skip the chisels and salt and pick up a heater cable (also called a de-icing cable)

We had a really bad ice dam build up this year that led to water coming though the roof right above the dam. We threw the cable onto it (after my uncle who works in construction recommended it to us) and the problem was solved in just a few hours. Some people i guess seasonally mount the cables to their roof, but we just laid it on top of the dam (in kind of a loopy zig-zag) and it very quickly melted all the way through opening channels for water to flow through.
 
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