Drake, We deal with issues like this in New England all the time. Yes there are times when a large buildup of snow will overshoot the ice breakers. We just had 2'+ of snow and I had one array with a pitch similar to yours where the snow overshot an Alpine Snow guard and ripped half the snow guard off the roof (not the guards fault, the rafter tails turned out to be rotted).
Every year someone loses a gutter to snow but it's usually because the gutter was poorly installed in the first place. Usually if you replace the gutter with something more substantial and better attached you won't have problems. Snow is also another reason you don't see a lot of gutters in Vermont. That's my .02 Thanks, Will __________________________________________________________________________________________ Will White Regional Field Operations Manager - New England Real Goods Solar 64 Main St. Montpelier, VT 05602 Tel: (802) 223-7804 Cell: (802) 234-3167 www.realgoodssolar.com<http://www.realgoodssolar.com/> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Drake Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 11:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [RE-wrenches] Sheets of snow vs ice breakers Hello Wrenches, We are trying to understand what will happen on a fairly steep roof (34 degree pitch) when snow comes off a large array and hits ice breakers on the metal roof. Before the ice breakers were installed on the bottom couple of feet of the roof, the gutters experienced damage from sheets of snow and ice sliding down. The concern is that large sheets of snow coming off the array could overshoot the ice breakers and take down the gutters. The proposed array will be approximately 22 feet along the direction of the pitch. Does anyone have experience with this issue or any possible solutions? Thank you, Drake Drake Chamberlin Athens Electric LLC OH License 44810 CO License 3773 NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer 740-448-7328 http://athens-electric.com/
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