Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

I'm looking for something that would be good for doing our roof. obviously the big 2 stage Toro won't be able to do it and would be a PITA to get up a ladder or out a window.

We have a new roof so I don't want to hurt the roof but the snow is really built up out there and it tends to melt very slowly. We are heading into Feb and lots more snow so I need something light enough and easy to manuever to use up there. The roof is pretty steep and in one section windows are mounted in the roof so that area might not be possible. They want a fortune to clear it and only the lesser section so I need something. Electric would probably be ok but it has to have enough power and the roof is pretty steep and high.

Any ideas?

I use a roof rake to get what I can from the ground.  Then I fill up some of the wife's old pantyhose with MgCl ice melter and place them strategically along the first row of shingles, so that any snow melting off the roof on warm days (we've had two days above freezing in the last month) stays melted until it moves out of the gutters - good for preventing ice jams.  My roof is ventilated enough that I don't get snow melt until we get warm sunny days.

That being said, last year I had over three foot of snow on the majority of the roof, including the backside and the peak that I couldn't reach with the roof rake.  I got up there with a snow shovel and worked carefully to get the majority of it off, always making sure I had plenty of traction.

As mentioned, the snow that falls off the roof does turn into "concrete".  It was pretty hard on my Craftsman 928, so I just used the Garant snow scoop to move it off the driveway - worked easier and faster than the snowblower in that case.

Btw, if you ever need to build an igloo or snow cave for survival purposes, the best way to do it is to throw the snow up into the air and let it fall into a pile.  Doing so makes the snow "hard-pack" like when it falls off your roof.  Once you get a big enough pile made, you can start digging out a cave.  Proper way to carve out the cave is to use sticks pushed through the mound as a guide, but I'm getting off-topic, so just do a websearch for building a snow-cave.

longboat wrote:

The roof rake is a good idea but no way it would be long enough for this house. Maybe some of the lower section. Our house doesn't have a steep angle to it and our living room has a 23.5 foot ceiling. I kid you not we used to have 18 foot Christmas trees in there! I have a pic but no way to scan it. Anyway a roof rake would have to be at least 40 feet long to work. Gutters are useless here the ice just rips them off every year. To reach the peak of the house wouldn't be possible from the back, it'd be a bit easier from the front. but it's hardpack up there and then the trees drop and compact even more snow.

Thankfully I should be retiring early in 8-10 years and then the only time I'd ever see snow again is on TV.

Thanks for the info on snow caves, maybe my wife will want to build one, she likes things like that.

Steve_Cebu wrote:
I'm glad that I don't have your heating bills.

Paul7 wrote:

This year even with the living room closed off we are spending over $1,000 a month for heating oil!

Steve_Cebu wrote:
Ouch!

We live in a modest 1800 square foot house with 14' high vaulted ceilings in a couple rooms.  We situated the house to capture as much solar heat as possible in the winter.  Lots of south facing windows and no shade.  Temps can dip to -40F.  We seldom see gas bills over $200.00 a month during winter and my wife likes it fairly warm. 

borat wrote:

This house is easily larger than yours. It was originialy designed for big parties and a lot of people. 2 Presidents have been in this house Carter and Ford, plus a lot of other political big shots over the years. That was when it was my uncles house. It's such an impractical house tho. The glass in the living room is all R1, so .5 better than a screen door.  Plus most of 2 walls are mostly glass with no sun hitting them.

We have the biggest sliding glass doors I've ever seen in a house. 8-9 feet so over 4 foot for each panel! This house has 3 sliders like that. We also have nothing but shade here so nothing melts until late in the season. The plus side is we almost never need A/C it's cold even in the summer. It'svrey cold here too. If we lose power during a cold spell we will usually lose the pipes, that's happened 4 times in the past 15 years!

Steve, Time for a standby generator. I got myself a 12kw from generac with automatic transfer. I have gotten plenty of use as we have our share of power outages.

hirschallan wrote:

I was going to get one last year but my aunt lives here with us and she is terrified of things like that so we can't get one. If you had an 86 year old hysterical Greek woman living with you you'd understand.

Steve_Cebu wrote:
Well, if you're going to live in an 7000 square foot house, I guess you're going to have to live with proportionately larger heating costs.    

That's why my wife and I selected an energy efficient style of home on a south facing lot and built it to the size specifications we wanted.   We could have easily built something much bigger but, we're not ostentatious.   That's not our style.  We probably have one of the smaller homes on our street.  We don't complain about heating nor cooling the house.   It's a very easy place to live with. 

If we have a power outage, there are two very large, high efficiency, zero clearance fire places in the house and I have about four cords of seasoned wood in a shed out back to carry us through a couple months if necessary.  I do have a back up generator though.          

borat wrote:

This house was in our family and my aunt had it built to her specifications. She's into "Modern" which of course is extremely outdated now. I would never have built a house like this, it's too huge and impractical. That said most of our neighbors have much bigger houses.

This house has no attic so a lot less insulation there, The rooms have angles, it's kinda funky. I won't mention the blaze orange rugs with orange and yellow foil wallpaper or what used to be Blue foil wallpaper in the Master bedroom!

Oh and she wanted an oil furnace to replace the electric heat so she had the burner installed right in front of the downstairs garage door, so that is now unusable! It's a real Frankenhouse. The kitchen while measuring a whopping 22'x25' looks like Pee Wee Herman designed it IN THE '70's! I need to redo everything and I mean everything but I'll likely just sell it and move elsewhere. Smaller is better nowadays. I do like the quiet and all the wildlife we have around us. You can walk in the back woods for a long time. It's all dead land back there. no one is going to build on it, ever.

Your house sounds really nice.