If you've been raking your roof every winter and still getting ice dams, more raking isn't the fix. Ice dams form because warm air escaping into your attic melts snow on the upper roof, that meltwater runs down to the cold overhang, and it refreezes there into a ridge of ice that backs water up under your shingles.
The fix is keeping the attic cold, and that requires air moving through it — in at the bottom, out at the top. The intake is your soffit. On a huge number of Twin Cities homes, that intake doesn't exist anymore. Original wood soffit gets painted over until the vents are sealed shut. Blown-in insulation gets pushed into the eaves and blocks the airflow. Or the house simply never had vented soffit to begin with.
We see this constantly on 1950s and '60s homes in Fridley, Columbia Heights, Mounds View, Crystal, and Roseville. The homeowner has added attic insulation, added a roof vent, maybe added a fan — and nothing changed, because there's no intake air for any of it to pull.
When we replace soffit and fascia, we're not just covering up rotted wood. We install properly vented aluminum or vinyl soffit, make sure the insulation isn't choking the eave, and wrap the fascia so it stops absorbing water from behind the gutters. That combination is what actually breaks the ice dam cycle.
The best time to do this work is while the siding is already off, because the scaffolding is up and the roofline is accessible. If you're planning a re-side, get the soffit and fascia handled at the same time — it's cheaper as one project than as two.
Call All Siding MN llc at (763) 302-9215 for a free soffit, fascia, and siding inspection anywhere in the north metro.