The key is to avoid sodium chloride or rock salt.
Using salt to melt ice on roof.
Here are four reasons salt pucks are bad for your roof.
Rooftop snow and ice accumulation.
Calcium chloride is the best salt to use on ice dams according to handyman glenn haege.
Place this vertically on your roof near the edge so it will melt a section of snow and ice creating an area where the water can leak off.
Salt pucks are supposed to eliminate the need to climb onto your roof and are designed to melt snow and ice before ice dams can form.
Gently toss the tied off pantyhose onto the edge of your roof to begin melting the snow.
Is it safe to use salt on your roof.
Provided you use the right type of salt yes.
Again for the most part you don t want to throw any type of ice melt product on your roof.
But if you ve let your ice dam fester for so long that you can t even get a credible ice dam company to help you because they re booked solid salt may help you emerge from your diy ice dam removal adventure as unscathed as possible.
It is not as likely to stain or cause corrosion as sodium chloride but it can damage wooden gutters.
Purchase sidewalk salt also called calcium chloride from your local hardware or big box store.
It will damage the roofing siding gutters and downspouts and the poisonous runoff will kill foundation plants.
Sodium chloride or rock salt is highly corrosive.
But are they doing more harm than good.
Rock salt contains corrosive oxidizing agents making it best suited for removing ice on harder surfaces like concrete.
Most salt pucks use calcium chloride to melt ice which can cause numerous issues down the line.
It melts ice faster than sodium chloride does works at lower temperatures than sodium chloride and also melts larger volumes of ice.