Seasonal

Ice Dam Removal, Snow Slides and What Winter Does to Gutters

By Columbus Gutter Repair & Replacement · October 28, 2026 · 8 min read

Early November, the maples in Clintonville are down and the first hard frost has been through. From here until March, your gutters stop being a rain problem and become a weight-and-ice problem. A lot of the gutter damage found in March and April happened in January and went unnoticed until the first real rain, and some of it came from a hammer during an ice dam removal in Columbus, Ohio that went wrong.

This isn't a to-do list — the October prep list is that. This is what is physically happening up there, so the March invoice makes sense.

Ice is heavier than you think

Water weighs 8.3 pounds a gallon. A 5-inch K-style gutter holds roughly a gallon per running foot when it's full. Freeze that and you have about 8 pounds hanging off every foot of gutter, plus whatever snow is sitting on top of it and whatever ice has built up along the roof edge above it.

A 30-foot run holds around 240 pounds of ice. That run is held to the house by hangers. If it's a 1990s house in Hilliard or Grove City with spike-and-ferrule hangers every 32 inches, you have about eleven nails carrying it. Each one is a smooth 7-inch spike driven into finger-jointed pine fascia that has been swelling and shrinking for thirty years.

They don't fail all at once. Every winter each spike backs out a sixteenth of an inch. Then one February you get a rain-on-snow event, the trough fills, freezes overnight, and three spikes let go.

Freeze-thaw is what kills seams

Columbus doesn't have a steady cold winter. It has a winter that crosses 32 degrees and back again constantly — central Ohio sees dozens of freeze-thaw cycles in a normal winter. That cycling, not the cold itself, is what destroys sectional gutters.

Here's the sequence at a slip joint:

1. A thaw puts a little water in the joint behind the caulk.
2. Overnight it freezes and expands about 9 percent.
3. The caulk bead lifts a hair off the metal.
4. Repeat dozens of times over a winter.

By March the joint that was tight in November is weeping. This is why sectional gutters wear out faster in a freeze-thaw climate, and why resealing five joints on a twenty-year-old sectional run rarely makes sense — the other fifteen are the same age. That math is in repair vs. replacement.

Snow sliding off the roof

Columbus averages somewhere in the high twenties of inches of snow a year, and it usually arrives in 2–5 inch events that partly melt. On a steep asphalt roof, a warm afternoon releases a slab of wet snow that hits the gutter's front lip on the way down.

You can read the damage from the driveway:

• Front lip rolled outward or dented in a straight line
• The whole run tipped forward so the front edge sits lower than the back
• A gutter torn loose entirely under a steep section or below a dormer

Metal roofs on garages and additions are the worst for this, and low-slope porch roofs are the second worst, because snow sits there until it slides all at once.

Ice dams and ice dam removal in Columbus, Ohio

An ice dam is a roof problem, not a gutter problem — heat escaping the attic melts snow up high, the water runs down to the cold overhang and refreezes. The gutter is a victim, not a cause. It fills with solid ice, gets heavy, and gives the dam something to build on.

The homes most prone to it in Franklin County tend to be 1950s–60s ranches and story-and-a-halfs in Whitehall, Reynoldsburg and the older parts of Worthington: shallow attics, insulation that has settled, and often no soffit venting. Attic air sealing fixes it. Heat cable manages it. Cleaning the gutter does not. The heat cables and de-icing guide covers that in detail.

Removing a dam that is already there is where gutters get hurt. Chipping at it with a hammer, an axe or the edge of a shovel cuts shingles and dents or splits the trough below. The gentler approach is steaming ice dams: low-pressure steam melts channels through the ice so meltwater can drain, without the force of a pressure washer. If you hire it out, ask that the work be done from a ladder or the roof, never by leaning on or standing in the gutter, and ask how the contractor protects the gutter while the ice comes off.

Questions to ask before anyone works on an ice dam

1. Will the work be done from a ladder or the roof, with nobody leaning on or standing in the gutter?
2. Is the method low-pressure steam, or chipping and pressure washing?
3. How will the shingles and the gutter's front lip be protected while the ice comes off?
4. Will the downspout outlet be opened so the meltwater actually drains?
5. Will you point out any hangers that pulled loose, so they can be fixed in spring?

A clear answer to all five is a good sign. Vague answers about "knocking it loose" are a reason to keep looking.

What the March repair list looks like

A house that comes through a hard winter with three of these on it is a $400–$700 morning. A house where the same three things have been happening for six winters is usually past that point.

The one that costs real money

The expensive winter failure isn't the gutter. It's the downspout that stayed frozen through January while frozen gutters above it kept collecting.

When the outlet is plugged with ice, the trough overflows and the water goes straight down the wall. On brick in German Village or Bexley that means saturated masonry and spalled face brick when it freezes. On vinyl siding in Powell it means water behind the siding and into the sheathing. And on Franklin County's clay, it means several hundred gallons pooling at one spot against the basement wall, which is the whole argument for downspout extensions and drain lines.

What to do in November

Two things. Make sure every downspout runs clear and every extension is screwed on and pointed away from the house, so meltwater has somewhere to go. And if any run already sags, get it re-hung before it holds ice, because a run with a belly in it is the one that comes down.

If your gutters are old sectional and you're planning to replace them anyway, do it in February or March. Contractors are usually least busy then, before the April rush, and 6-inch seamless with 3x4 downspouts handles an Ohio winter in a way 5-inch on spikes never will. The cost page has the ranges.

Common questions

How do you remove an ice dam without damaging the gutter?

Don't hack at it. Hammers and picks cut shingles and crush the gutter's front lip, and the gutter is often the part holding the most weight. Low-pressure steam is the method that melts the ice without striking anything. If the dam keeps coming back, the cause is attic heat, and that is a roofing or insulation question rather than a gutter one.

Is steaming ice dams better than chipping them?

Usually, yes. Steam opens channels through the ice and lets it drain without impact, so the shingles and the gutter come through intact. Chipping is faster and cheaper, but it is the method most likely to leave you with a gutter repair in March. Gutter steaming done carefully from a ladder is the safer choice on an older aluminum run.

Can rain gutters warp?

Aluminum gutters don't warp the way wood does, but they do bend and deform. Ice inside the trough, wet snow sliding off the roof and a ladder leaned against the lip are the usual causes. A run that looks wavy or tipped forward after winter has usually been pushed out of shape by load, and its hangers deserve a look too.