Snow wipes out chimney.

[JKlender]

I have a 40X80 pole building with a medal roof. I have a woodstove chimney halfway down one side that get wiped out each time the snow slides off of the roof. The chimney exit's out the side wall and 90's up past the eave. Have any of you had this problem and found a way to make something to protect a chimney from about a 22X80 slab of sliding snow? The chimney is braced to the eave as it passes the roofline. Either the pipe gets bent or the brace gets yanked out of the 2X6 it's laged to. I'd run a cable up some on the roof to brace it, but I don't want to put any holes it the roof unless you think it would work. Thanks.

[DocHeb]

In the snow belt of Michigan many roofs are metal to actually let the snow slide off. This is done to decrease the weight on roofs of >300 inches of snow a year. In areas where they don't want the snow to slide off and fall on things below (as example, over doorways), they install metal pieces ~4"x6" on the roof, and this prevents the snow from sliding off. You could use these pieces above the vent from the eave up to the ridge. This would prevent only a small column of snow from slipping, yet wouldn't load your roof too much.

A couple web sites about this problem:

CBD-228. Sliding Snow on Sloping Roofs
Choosing a Snow Guard for Metal Roof Applications

[JazzDad]

Hello, JKlender, and welcome to CBN. Would a small cricket on the roof work? Something to divert the sliding snow around the pipe.

[GaryM]

Good idea! You could probably bend something up and fasten it to the roof with pop rivets or similar. Use the closed end rivets to prevent leakes. Roofing cement might work too.

[Inspector507]

I was thinking a cricket too.......just couldn't remember what it was called [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Bird]

We've got plenty of crickets in Texas; always figured the brown ones are good fish bait and the black ones are worthless, but never heard of using one on a roof. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

In other words, I have no idea what ya'll are talkin' about. [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[JKlender]

Thanks for the ideas. I was thinking of adding a few skylights to cut down on the lighting costs. Maybe I will put one above the chimney about a third of the way down the roof, and a cricket down about 2/3's down. The barn is three years old, and when it was heated regularly, it didn't have this problem. This winter it wasn't heated, and it shed it's snow load about 3 or 4 times. About when the snow got 14 or so inches deep. Thanks again.