Rumble… Rumble… Roar… Crash… is accompanied by noticeable shaking of the house.
Hubby appears in the bathroom door, “Did you hear that noise? I wonder what that was?”
It is dark outside, so it is hard to see anything. Hubby dons his shoes and disappears out into the blackness. I am wondering if there has been an explosion or fire at one of the neighbors. He soon comes back in to report that it is much simpler than that. The temperature has been above freezing for the last few days and there has been a huge snow slide off of our new steel roof on the back side of the house.
The next morning, I am awakened around 6 a.m. to the same deafening noise again. My heart is pounding at breakneck speed as it attempts to prepare me to flee this terrifying event. Sleep has also fled away. As I peer out into the filtering light of day, there is a huge pile of snow on the deck and on the ground behind the house but nothing serious seems to be wrong – just another snow slide. Then I notice a strange sight. Small pieces of grated metal stick out of the snow at various angles. I soon identify them as the leaf guard sections that we had installed last fall on our eves during the installation of the roof. Well that lasted all of two months.
We have had eves on the house for most of the 23 years we have lived here. As the trees have matured around the house, plugged eves has become more of a problem. Last year, some well-developed trees sprouted high in the sky. The eves on the back side of the house are about 30 feet above the ground so cleaning them is a bit of a challenge. Standing on a ladder on the deck and shoving a garden hose down the length of the eves seemed to provide the most efficient means of cleaning. But there is always a hang up at the downspout. Of course, we had heard of leaf guards and decided that maybe this would be the perfect solutions to our problem. And why not have them installed while having a new roof put on. Problem solved, right?
Our winter came early this year. By early November, zero temperatures and a five-inch snow fall had arrived. A few weeks later, we had a weekend where it alternated between rain and snow for several days. It was just warm enough to produce rain intermingled with the snow. I noticed while looking out our large back window that the snow was melting into the eves just enough to freeze at night intertwined with the grating on the leaf guards. Then one day, I notice that the eve had stretched outward so that it was no longer U shaped but more of an L. Finally, the snow load must have provided enough pressure that it came crashing down, tearing off most of the entrapped leaf guards. I pick up the pieces and slam them on the stone walk to loosen all the ice pieces. With sadness, I dropped them into a garbage bag. I would say this experiment was a failure.
“I hope they didn’t cost very much,” remarks Hubby.
I don’t know and I don’t think I want to know. In the spring, I think the next project is to take the eves off completely and let the water run.
farmgirlwriter 