Emergency Ice Dam Removal in Ontario

It doesn’t matter if you’re having an ice dam emergency in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Mississauga, Kingston, Niagara Falls, Windsor, or elsewhere in Ontario? The Ice Dam Guys® are available 24/7! Call Ice Dam Guys® at 1-800-423-3267 for same-day roof ice removal in southern Ontario. We’ve removed thousands of ice dams since 1995 and we’re the top-rated ice dam removal company in North America! We are properly licensed, bonded, and insured. En savoir plus en français canadien.

At Ice Dam Guys®, we understand the unique challenges of Canadian winters, especially in provinces like Ontario, where the proximity to the Great Lakes – Erie, Huron, Superior, and Ontario – creates persistent and challenging weather patterns. Notably, you can have “lake effect snow” that contributes to an average of 200 cm to 300 cm (equal to 80 to 110 Freedom Inches™) of snow each year! That’s a lot and these conditions regularly lead to the formation of ice dams, a common wintertime issue for Canadian homeowners.

This photo shows what appears to be a large mountain lodge or home with snow on the roof. There is a man up there with a shovel, shoveling snow off the roof to expose an ice dam below. He is preparing for ice dam removal in Ontario, Canada.

Thankfully, the Ice Dam Guys® have been your go-to experts for ice dam removal since 1995. In fact, we’re the top-rated ice dam removal company in North America! Our team is fully licensed, bonded, and insured, offering you peace of mind while we handle the delicate task of removing ice dams from your home.

What Causes Ice Dams?

Ice dams occur throughout the Northern United States and most of Canada. It has to be a cold winter with a lot of snow over a sustained period of time. To no one’s surprise, that describes Ontario and these big storms will usually produce more ice dams. However, not all homes, even those on the same block, will get an ice dam just because it snows. Ice dams happen because of several factors that can be exacerbated when two or more of them occur at the same time.

Attic Bypasses

Attic bypasses are unintentional ways that heated interior air leaks into the cold attic. Ideally, your home would retain all your heated air and none would seep into the attic. Not only because that would be more energy-efficient, but it’s also cost-efficient and friendlier to your wallet!

Finances aside, when that wasted air goes into your attic, it artificially or unnaturally warms the roof from below. This allows snow to slowly melt, but since it’s happening from below, the majority of the snow is still frozen and exposed to the environment. When that snow melt below reaches the frozen gutters, it has nowhere to go and refreezes – thus damming.

Common culprits for attic bypasses include attic access doors, recessed lighting, ceiling fans, air registers and returns (particularly ceiling or wall mounted), and any exhaust fans or vents. Hopefully, you have no attic bypasses, but if you do, it usually isn’t all of these. Most homeowners will have one or two and they can be relatively straight-forward to repair. But this leads us to the next culprit – improper insulation.

Water leak from an ice dam that the Ice Dam Guys® found at a customer's home.

Improper Insulation

Depending on the age of your home, you may have inferior insulation that needs updating. We’ll often see this on historic homes with ice dams that were built dozens, if not, a hundred years ago! Commonly, these older homes will have a chill in the air and that’s because building standards and methods were different back then.

If you’re unsure if your home has proper insulation, contact a local professional to come out and give your attic a look. While they’re up there, they’ll perform a home energy audit. Not only will this determine if your insulation is up to standards, but they should be able to identify any lingering attic bypasses you may have missed. This audit should give you the exact playbook to improve your home’s ventilation and insulation issues.

Clogged Gutters & Downspouts

When your gutters and downspouts are clogged it becomes much harder for water to exit the system. Even if your gutters aren’t 100% clogged, any back-up to the intended flow, will result in pooling. And when pooling happens in freezing temperatures we get ice dams. To avoid this, you need to inspect your gutters annually and get them free flowing. If you’re not comfortable on a ladder, call a professional vs. risking a fall.

Steam-Only Ice Dam Removal Near Toronto (GTA)

The Ice Dam Guys® have been climbing frozen roofs and removing ice dams since 1995, so we’ve tried just about everything! And the best method, hands down, is using 100% steam. Steam is so effective and gentle to use on ice dams, we actually created our own machine to do it even better – Steamzilla™!

What’s nice about using 100% steam for ice dam removal is that you ensure the homeowner’s property remains intact and safe. Unlike other approaches, our steam is non-abrasive and won’t harm your roofing materials by being too hot. Our technician will be able to effectively cut through the ice dam, kind of like a warm knife going through butter, to efficiently remove it as smaller pieces. You can see an example of this slicing and dicing in the photo below:

An Ice Dam Guys technician creates a grid pattern in a home's ice dam on their roof. He does this by using steam to cut the dam into smaller pieces that can easily, and safely, be removed from the roof.

A picture is worth a thousand words and the photo above demonstrates why using only 100% steam for ice dam removal is the best option. It’s so gentle to your home, relatively fast (all things considered), and it’ll get that ice dam off your roof ASAP!

Ice Dam Guys®: Ontario Ice Dam Removal Experts

For over 25+ years, North American homeowners and businesses have trusted the Ice Dam Guys® for their ice dam removal emergencies. And for good reasons, since we’re properly licensed, bonded, and insured with a General Liability policy to provide comprehensive protection to our clients. It’s because of this long-standing success and relationship with our customers that we’ve been able to branch out and serve Ontario and the lovely communities in this province. You can find us in the following towns when the next blizzard hits:

Hamilton, Kenora, Kingston, Lac la Croix, London, Mississauga, Montreal Falls, Ottawa, Richmond Hills, Sault Ste. Marie, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto (GTA), and Vaughan.

We know it’s hard to pick contractors and businesses online, as there seems to be countless options and hard to believe claims. Vetting prospective contractors is not a luxury you can afford during an ice dam emergency. That’s why we wanted to make it easy for you by linking out to our review platforms on the following sites:

Angi.com: 100+ happy customers,
BBB: an A+ rating for 10+ years,
Google: we’re the top-rated ice dam removal company in North America,
Yelp: we have 4.8/5 stars from all customers.

You can also search “Ice Dam Guys reviews” on Google or Bing to see even more! At the end of the day, you called us because you were having a problem that threatened the well-being of your home. Let us take care of it, so you can go back to enjoying your home without the threat of ice and leaks ruining your winter…and your wallet!

Call us now at 1-800-ICE-DAMS for same-day / next-day ice dam removal for your Ottawa-area or GTA home.