Types of Loss/Residential/Ice Dams & Frozen Pipes

Frozen Pipes and Ice Dams Are Messy. The Estimate Shouldn't Be.

Meltwater backed under the shingles, or a supply line that split in an outside wall. Atlas documents every surface the water passed on the way down, from the roof edge to the floor below.

Request a Consultation 978-245-5920

Tell us what you handle and where. We'll tell you plainly whether Atlas is a fit, what it costs, and how it works.

Start a Conversation 978-245-5920

The Process

Ice builds at the cold roof edge, backs water up under the shingles, and drops it into the exterior wall and the ceiling below. A frozen supply line lets go on the thaw, usually while nobody is home, and runs until someone notices. Once the house is dry, Atlas walks it, follows the water from where it came in to everywhere it went, and writes the put-back in Xactimate® from a measured sketch: ceilings, wall finishes, insulation, trim, flooring, and the roof edge, top down and trade by trade.

Where Scopes Come In Short

The Wall the Water Ran Down

The ceiling stain gets scoped. The exterior wall between the eave and that ceiling, the one the water actually traveled through, does not. Its insulation and drywall are part of the loss, and the wet batt in that cavity doesn't get its R-value back by drying.

It Didn't Stop at the Ceiling

Water takes the path of least resistance, and a supply line that ran for two days found it. Every floor beneath the break gets inspected, along with the chases and the ceiling cavities between, not just the rooms with a visible stain.

Plaster, Not Drywall

New England ceilings and walls are often plaster over lath or blueboard. The skim coat and plaster lines price differently from drywall, and the estimate has to say which one the house has.

The Roof Edge, and What Goes Back on It

Lifted shingles and damaged drip edge at the eave are their own scope, separate from the interior, and the repair unit is the slope, not a few courses at the edge. Ice barrier and drip edge go back with it.

Code Note

Roof-edge repair at permit means ice barrier at the eaves to current requirement; insulation that goes back in an opened exterior wall is written to current R-value. Anything over what was there is on its own line as a code upgrade.

What Comes Back

Request a Consultation 978-245-5920

Ceilings, the wall below the eave, insulation, trim, flooring, and the roof edge written as one estimate, top down and trade by trade, with the plaster or drywall called correctly and every floor the water reached in the photo report. Measured sketch.

Other Types of Loss