Ice storm: what it does to a cottage in 48 hours

Environment Canada has issued a freezing rain warning for the Eastern Townships and Montérégie. In Montréal, it just means slick streets. At the cottage, on the side of a mountain, every branch, every wire and every roof edge is coating over with ice for hours. Here’s what happens over those two days, and what you can do from a distance.

What to do — before, during and after

1. Before: get the house ready to ride out an outage

If the warning comes while you’re there: check the propane or oil level, make sure you know where the main shut-off is, put away anything loose on the deck, and confirm backup heat works. If you’re away, give a heads-up to whoever can go by after the storm.

2. During: don’t go

Don’t hit the road to check the cottage in the middle of freezing rain. Mountain roads become impassable, and ice-loaded branches come down without warning. Follow the situation on Hydro-Québec’s site.

3. Stay away from downed lines

If anyone reports a wire on the ground or a branch resting on the house’s electrical service wire, nobody goes near it. Hydro-Québec says to call 911 to report a downed line, keep your distance and never use anything to try to move it: even a tree branch conducts current.

4. After: get someone there as soon as roads allow

Once the rain has stopped and the roads are sanded, a quick visit shows what the ice did: trees, roof, gutters, access, heat. Ask for photos.

5. Stay off the roof

Nobody climbs onto an icy roof — not you, not a helpful neighbour. If the roof or gutters are damaged, call an RBQ-licensed roofer.

6. Document it for your insurer

Dated photos of fallen trees and any damage to the roof, gutters, siding or fence. Call your insurer or broker: after a big ice event, claims lines get swamped, and opening a file early helps.

What ice does, hour by hour

The first hours: ice builds up

Rain falls as liquid and freezes on contact with cold surfaces. Everything gets a shell of ice that thickens as long as the rain keeps up: branches, wires, railings, steps, the roof, gutters, propane tanks, wall exhaust vents.

During the storm: trees and lines give way

Ice adds enormous weight to branches. Hardwoods and birches bend, limbs snap, whole trees come down. Along the wooded roads of Sutton, Potton, Frelighsburg or Brome Lake, they land on power lines: outages start, sometimes across whole areas. The longer the event runs, the more the southern Québec grid takes.

The outage: the heat stops

With the outage, baseboards, heat pumps and most furnaces stop. So do the well pump and the sump pump. The house starts to cool, and connected devices go quiet.

The roof and gutters

Ice weighs down the roof edge and the gutters. Gutter sections can pull loose under the load. Icicles form over doors and walkways. Where ice blocks drainage, water from the next thaw can back up under the shingles.

Access

A sloped driveway turns into a skating rink. The snow-clearing contractor can’t always get up, a tree may block the road, and the propane truck can’t make the climb. A cottage nobody can reach is a cottage nobody can check or refuel.

The next day and the days after

Even once the rain stops, weakened branches keep falling, especially with wind or at the thaw. Melting ice on the roof runs down, refreezes overnight and forms dams. And if the house got cold during the outage, it’s when the heat comes back that a split pipe starts to leak.

Prevention: what you can do, and what belongs to the trades

What an owner can do:

• Have branches over the house and the electrical service wire trimmed — by an arborist, not you; near Hydro-Québec’s lines, only an authorized company does the work.
• Follow Environment Canada’s freezing rain warnings and plan a visit after every event.
• Keep the propane or oil tank well filled heading into winter.
• Keep sand or ice grit by the front door.
• Know where the main shut-off and the key breakers are.

What belongs to an RBQ-licensed contractor:

• Repairing a damaged roof, flashing or gutters (roofer).
• Installing a generator with a transfer switch (master electrician).
• Repairing a service mast or electrical entry torn off by a branch (master electrician, coordinating with Hydro-Québec).
• Fixing a pipe that split during the outage (plumber).

In an empty house, how long before anyone notices?

After an ice storm, damage to the cottage can’t be seen from Montréal or on an app. A tree on the roof, a gutter torn off, a breaker tripped when power came back, a blocked driveway: they sit there until someone goes up to look. How often someone stops by — and how quickly they get there after the storm — sets how long those problems get worse with nobody knowing.

What we look at on a visit

After an ice storm, we first check that the house can be reached: driveway, parking and path passable. We walk around looking at trees and branches near the house and over the electrical service wire — never touching them: we report. We look at the roof from the ground, all the way around, then at ice and icicles along the roof edge, and at the state of the gutters and downspouts. Inside, we confirm there’s power.

If anything’s damaged, we call you the same day with photos, and bring in an RBQ-licensed roofer, electrician or plumber if needed.