Making A ToolFor Getting SnowOff The Roof

Dateline: 11 February 2015

That's a full foot and a half of snow. 

The snow around here is getting high enough that many people are concerned about the weight of it on their roof. A heavy snow load can collapse a roof, and there have been plenty of instances of that around here over the years. 

I’ve never been too concerned about the weight of snow on my house roof because I built it and I know it is built well. Besides that, the roof does not have a low pitch and is in a place where it doesn’t seem to accumulate as much snow as some other roofs hereabouts.

But our second house, a factory-manufactured “doublewide” just down the road, is a different story. The roof pitch isn’t much, and the house is so sheltered that the snow really piles up, as the picture above shows.

To make matters worse, weather reports were predicting freezing rain here a few days ago. Snow on a roof holds rain water like a sponge, and the weight load really skyrockets. It’s a recipe for possible disaster. So I needed to get the snow off that roof for sure.

I could have just shoveled the whole roof off by hand, but I was intrigued by several clever snow-removal devices that I saw on YouTube. This Video of a tool from Finland was the first I saw, and it sure was inspiring. I watched videos of many other snow removal tools and came to the conclusion that This One (also from Finland) was the most intelligent and effective design.

With that in mind, my middle son and I spent last Saturday morning making a prototype tool for roof snow removal. It was a collaborative effort. 

I told my son that if we figured out a good design, I would help him get it to market (for next winter). We would sell them through Planet Whizbang and he could keep the profits. My business and workshop would serve as an incubator for his own start-up business. That would please me to no end. So we made our prototype and here is a video of it in action (on the roof of my workshop)...

That first prototype was encouraging, but it had some problems. We modified the design and it worked better. But a whole new, improved prototype is in the works. Maybe we can get that together by next weekend.

By then, I will have the 24-foot Graelick, telescoping aluminum extension pole I ordered. The pole is much lighter than the two sections of 1” diameter steel conduit we were using in the video. I used the conduit because I had several lengths on hand (I use them when making My Garden Trellis Spans). A lightweight, 24-foot extension pole could prove to be a handy tool for other homestead tasks.

Even with the heavy handle and not-yet-finalized design, our snow removal tool did a truly remarkable job of removing most of the snow from the doublewide roof. 

This first push up the roof shows how nicely the tool slices through and releases the snow.

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There is yet another (and much simpler) way of getting a lot of snow off a roof. This Video is also from Finland and it is well worth watching if you have an interest in this subject.