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Radiant Barrier Reduces Ice Damming

Ice DammingWinter will be here before you know it and that means you need to be prepared for snow and ice and the potentially damaging effects it can have on your residential home. 

While the visual effects of an ice dam are undeniably beautiful, the physical effects to your roofing system can be extremely damaging to a roof, gutters, paint, drywall, and your underlying framing structure.  This damage can also eventually lead to the growth of dangerous molds.

How An Ice Dam Forms

ice dammingDuring the colder months of the year, warm heat from your home rises up into your attic space heating up the roof decking and rooftop shingles above.  This WARM rooftop surface melts any accumulated snow and ice resulting in water running down the roof.  But this water doesn't merely run all the way off the roof like rain water in warmer months.  During these colder months, once the water reaches the lowest part of the roof that extends beyond the warm attic space, the water freezes because this section of roof is cold.

As more and more snow melts near the top of the warmer roof, more water runs down to the ice dam making it larger and more damaging to the stability of your roof structure.  This ice dam can also cause water to collect and build up which then can seep through roof materials causing water damage and mold.

Radiant Barrier Reduces Ice Damming

By installing a RadiantGUARD® radiant barrier to the underside of the roof rafter, any heat within the attic space is reflected back down into the attic/home keeping the roof above the attic space COLD.  With a cold roof, you reduce the chance of snow and ice melting creating water runoff, thereby reducing the risk of the formation of damaging ice dams.  

Additional benefits of installing a radiant barrier in your attic space include a warmer house during colder months, a cooler house during warmer months (our radiant barrier blocks 97% of the radiant heat from the sun from entering you attic space), and lower monthly utility bills year-round.

Rhonda Franklin is a managing partner of RadiantGUARD. With a passion for educating others, Rhonda brings 20 years of experience in the reflective insulation industry with a drive to explain benefits and best practices in easy and understandable ways. In her free time, Rhonda enjoys mentoring high school young women as a small group leader in the Student Ministry at Frisco Bible Church in Frisco, Texas.

Because radiant barriers redirect radiant heat back through the roof, it's logical to think your roof will get hotter and damage your shingles or void your shingle warranties.  But don't despair, radiant barrier don't harm roofing materials or void shingle warranties.

R-Values for double bubble insulation products vary based on the thickness of the overall product itself. Most double bubble insulation products have an average R-Value of 1. But you can achieve a much higher R-Value for your application by the addition of enclosed dead air spaces. However, double bubble insulation shines in applications where radiant heat transfer needs to be controlled and therefore, reflectivity is a much better indicator of a double bubble insulation products effectiveness than its R-Value.

Winter will be here before you know it and that means you need to be prepared for snow and ice and the potentially damaging effects it can have on your residential home. 

While the visual effects of an ice dam are undeniably beautiful, the physical effects to your roofing system can be extremely damaging to a roof, gutters, paint, drywall, and your underlying framing structure.  This damage can also eventually lead to the growth of dangerous molds.

While researching radiant barrier insulation online, many consumers are coming across paint products erroneously marketed as radiant barrier paint which are intended to be sprayed to the underside of the roof rafters to lower the emittance of radiant heat from the roof decking into the attic space.  While these products do help to lower the amount of heat that radiates into the attic space, the use of the termradiant barrier paintis false advertising and these products don't offer near the protection against radiant heat as a radiant barrier foil insulation product.

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