Pickering conditions that change how ice dam prevention is done
If you mapped our Pickering service calls on a calendar, you would see the same shape every year: the problems are created in February and paid for in November.
Post-war subdivisions across Durham share the same construction generation, so when one street starts showing the same defect, the neighbours usually follow within a couple of seasons.
Range hoods and basement bathroom fans routinely out-pull an older flue, so the house depressurises and the flue reverses — a Pickering problem that looks like a chimney fault but starts elsewhere in the building.
Across Whitevale, Greenwood, Rougemount, Brougham and Rosebank, the housing stock changes street by street, and the correct method changes with it. A century home with a soft-brick stack does not get the same treatment as a 2010 build with a factory-built vent — using one method on both is how systems get damaged.
the practical takeaway is that a ice dam prevention visit should start with an assessment, not a tool. Any crew that begins work before telling you what they found is guessing on your behalf.