As it says really. Any ingenious ideas for clearing the 12″+ snow from our roof which has made a couple of creaking noises over the past 48hrs. Not that i’m paranoid or anything… 😯

Have tried a stick on the end of a rope, but as the roof is 3 stories up, and the snow has started to ice up, it just drags a few flakes off.

Prizes* for the best suggestion

*My undying gratefulness

remove loft insulation and crank up the heating

Hand grenade.

I’ve used a pressure washer with the jet attachments to blast snow off roofs before now. Takes a while though…

Yodelling?

I’d leave it up there, Its good insulation.

Really long rope over the top and pull it off cheese wire style 🙂

YouTube has some very instructive ‘how not to’ videos 🙂

Hire the A-Team to urinate on it from a helicopter they made in a shed.

Hire the A-Team to urinate on it from a helicopter they made in a shed.

My heath robinson idea of lashing together a load of brush/broom sticks is too flexible dammit. The cheese wire idea is good, but the snow is too sticky – the wire just pulls through and gets stuck.

*Goes off to see what else is in the shed…*

Ballons filled with car de-icer thrown up there and then ‘popped’ with an air rifle.

Throw salt up there or put a blow torch on a long pole?…

Set fire to the top floor.

Nuke it from space.

Throw salt up there or put a blow torch on a long pole?…

I think we may have a winner!

Will try this when l clock off this evening, and report back post haste!

couple of those oil filled mini radiators in the loft, leave them on full. get the kids to stand where the snow will slide off, film it and make the money you’ve spent on heating back from you’ve been framed.

best to keep your roof clear of snow – as my old landlord found out when i called round to say – our gutters had been taken down by the massive amount of snow. thawing and sliding off the roof bringing the gutters with it.

same had happened at his gaff.

Neither of us had scaffolding to get up to the roof to clear it.

A couple of winters ago I helped my parents out by shooting icicles off their guttering with an air rifle (the icicles were deforming the guttering quite a bit so it wasn’t just an excuse to shoot stuff…). All went great until a few weeks later and in heavy rain it was obvious I’d put quite a few holes in the guttering as well, oops.

Nuke it from space.

It IS the only was to be sure.

Simple one is to get the hose out and get watering the roof.

Wont take long before the snow starts to notb only melt but start slipping off the roof.

May have an ice issue afterwards though.

I’d also second the heater(s) in the loft idea.

Or a hose if you can get one up that high, but you will ice up the area surrounding your house quite a lot I’d imagine! If you don’t have a high enough pressure hose, you could try a jetwasher with the spray nozzle removed.

Move somewhere warmer?

MAKE – SURE – YOU – VIDEO – ANYTHING – YOU – DO!

Speak to you local TA unit and see if they have one of these (other hoofing great big guns are available) They are used with great success on the US to trigger avalanches

What could possibly go wrong?

other option is to check for surplus wood in shed and, if available, build a jump ramp on you driveway. Then, ‘borrow’ a snow plough from your local council and, with sufficient run up, you should be able to jump onto the roof to clear with conventional plough method.

I have some old fireworks in the garage. Suitably aimed they should do the job and are far more accessible than some of the suggestions above

As a STWer you are probably on trend as owning a relatively good quality hi-fi / seperates type sytem. Said said system up in the loft then pump out some bangin tooones with maximum base. Mr Boombastic by Shaggy should so the trick. You can then grind away whilst snow shakes off the roof.

Best to be careful how you get snow of the roof,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21928861

Hosepipe would be best idea and squitt water at it, but also check where the water will run to, you dont want to freeze the road just incase the fire brigade bneeed to get there

Tennis balls filled with petrol…

MAKE – SURE – YOU – VIDEO – ANYTHING – YOU – DO!

I have some old fireworks in the garage.

Hosepipe would be best idea

Wouldn’t that be the worst idea?

You dont want to have water backing up above the snow as it’ll pool upwards and over the tile.. possible then leaking through your undercoarsing and into your loft.
You’d also be adding a huge mass of water to the roof structure while you saturate the snow.

Best idea.. if it has to come off and no sign of thaw in the forecast would be long ladder, roofers harness and a shovel.

Length of rope attached to object, chuck over roof, one person grabs rope each side, pull tight, ‘slice’ into bottom layer of snow, move sideways, hopefully create slab avalanche type effect.

No idea if that would work, but it’s the sort of stupid thing I’d try.

EDIT: Just re-read the OP. Thought he meant 12′ of snow not 12″. Even so, turning the hose on it would saturate the snow and significantly increase its weight…

Borrow a long ladder from member worldclassaccident and rake the snow off… what could possibly go wrong

Make a long version of this:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=3NcmLaKTZMs&feature=endscreen[/video]

(and then get distracted by all the fail videos 🙂

Wait for spring.

12″ should not be an issue. It could be if you saturate it as that will become very heavy. If it was 12′, I’d be getting up there (tethered) and manually removing it.

I was working in a spinal unit once – teenager in there was left paralysed after being hit by snow coming off a roof. So please done get kids to stand under it while you knock the snow off.

Arguably you’re better off leaving an evenly spread load than knocking some off and setting up point loads.

How much will it weigh anyway? Don’t they say that snow occupies seven times the volume of water? So 12″ of snow is equal to about 1.7″ or about 45mm of water…. easy enough to calculate the weight of that little lot over your roof area. Remember to measure the floor area of the house not the size of the roof because the weight is vertical.

How my uncle did it.

1) make very long rubber band out of lots of smaller rubber bands. Attach it between the clothes poles in the garden
2) Make a paper plane. Cut a notch in the nose to attach the rubber band to
3) Attach fishing line to the tail of the plane
4) Use rubber band to fire plane over the house
5) Get your long suffering wife to run round the house and find the plane (at this point, every time without fail, regret using white paper)
6) By pulling the fishing line back and forth across the roof, dislodge snow.

Turn on heating and open loft hatch.

Alternatively start a hydroponic ganga factory, they never have snow on the roof.