An educational blog about rooftop snow management by Alpine SnowGuards, the maker of 50+ snow and solar snow management systems for all roof types. Est 1993 and employee owned.
On the final weekday of February, with a warm weekend in the forecast, the team at Alpine SnowGuards performance tested the two-rod variation of the ASG LedgeGuard. With spring encroaching and the winter snow depleting; we took the weather into our own hands, applying 6-8” of dense snow onto the ledge guard mock-up. The snow was covering all of the existing ledge at 11 am with the sun beating down.
Time Lapse Video: ASG LedgeGuard performance testing
As the snow melted away from the building, the mass migrated towards the edge of the ledge. Here’s where it gets interesting.
Just over an hour and a half after applying the snow, it was obvious that where the guards were applied, the snow melted behind them and never made it over the edge. However, where there was not ledge guard, the snow cascaded over in merely three hours.
This is a perfect example of why ledge guard is necessary for over hangs and exposures where snow and ice can accumulate. For those of you not sure what you are looking at, on the left side of the first photo you can see the ledge guard fastened to the edge. To the right of that, is an open exposure where the snow has no restriction to sliding off.
In the photo below you can see that the snow mass is being retained by the guards. The snow is melting in place and releasing off the roof as water rather than a large block of snow.
Demonstrating Snow Retention
For the remainder of the weekend the snow continued to melt away slowly as the sun beat down on the ledge. By Monday, March 1, the snow had completely vanished as it was supposed to. Another successful experiment with results that can be easily shown to customers in the quick time-lapse video above. Thus, showing the importance of snow retention.
Please visit www.alpinesnowguard.com for the most complete line of snow retention products on the market.
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Alpine SnowGuards designs, engineers, and manufactures snow management systems from our facility in Morrisville, VT. We work closely with leading roofing contractors, engineering firms, developers, solar installers and roofing manufacturers to ensure we deliver quality products that do what we say they’ll do. Alpine SnowGuards can help a building qualify for LEED® credits.
