Insulating properly goes along way to prevention of ice dams and there are many other expensive engineering solutions, but most of them kinda make you think about the story of the truck wedged under the bridge and how nobody could figure out how to pull it out until a little boy said, “Why dont you just let some air out of the tires and drive it out.” Well, why don’t you just melt a hole with an ice melt sock so the water can drain off the roof instead of backing up to leak into the house?