The expansive world of snow retention

By Emma Peterson. 

Effective snow management helps prevent property damage, improve safety and protect building occupants, making it a critical element of cold-climate roof design. 

When we think of managing weather in relation to a roof, often what comes to mind is rainfall or high winds. But another crucial element that must be considered in roof design is snow. In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, we explore how to design roofs for snowfall with Brian cross and Dylan Quirk of Rocky Mountain Snow Guards. 

Brian, who manages sales and operations at Rocky Mountain Snow Guards, kicked off by highlighting the leading snow management roof product – snow retention. He explained how this works:  

There are a couple of different systems that fall under the snow retention category, but they’re all focused on putting friction on a roof. The main goal of it is to maintain and stabilize the snowpack on the roof so that it doesn't slide off and damage property or harm people underneath the eaves.  

There are two main types of snow retention – guards and fences/bars. Brian explained the difference, “Snow guards are going to be individual pieces that go on in a specific pattern that are going to maintain the snow. As for snow fences and snow bars, they're essentially barriers that'll go across the eave to hold the snowpack stable.” 

And even though they create that friction and stabilization in different ways, the key to success with both of these types of snow retention is proper design. As Dylan, who works on Rocky Mountain’s design and estimating team, described:  

When you’re working with snow retention, there are a lot of factors at play. Some of the major ones are going to be roofing material, roof pitch and geographical area (which helps us determine the snow loads). If you don’t account for all these different variables and just throw something up on the roof with no design, you can’t be sure that it will actually retain snow safely. 

The need for managing all these variables is why Rocky Mountain created a free, customized snow retention layout and design service to aid contractors installing these crucial systems. 

Learn more about snow retention and other services by Listening to the whole episode, Watching the recording or visiting www.rockymountainsnowguards.com.