Originally published at: Snow falling off roof in neatly-sized bricks | Boing Boing
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The crescendo is most satisfying
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I wish I were musically inclined. I would love to assign each of those snow bricks a note and see what melody comes out.
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Applause strangely absent.
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I think a background in image processing is more important for that project than one in music. After all it wouldn’t be you who is making the melody.
This is what snow guards are for. I see my neighbors scraping snow off their roofs, but it’s actually better to retain it.
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didn’t expect the ending so quickly, glad i watched long enough to see it. bravo!
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That’s very dependent on the insulation and ventilation already in your roof space.
If your roof space is conditioned space, and there’s adequate insulation with small venting between the insulation and roof deck, then keeping snow would be good.
If your roof space is unconditioned, vented, and hence cold, with adequate insulation to the floor below, then keeping snow would be good.
But, the vast majority of people who are clearing roofs do not have adequate insulation (at least in the US). Instead they have heat loss through the roof that’s actively melting the snow from below. Creating water flowing down the roof to the eve where there isn’t the same heating and it freezes. Building ice dams that back up and prevent additional water from running off the root. The extra backs up, forces it’s way under the roof material and causes havoc as it enters the house.
Snow retention isn’t going to help those houses, they need to fix the heat loss issues first. I’m sure it’s costing them more in the long run with the extra heating costs, but clearing the roof and the heat loss are slow, major renovation to fix the heat loss is an expense all at once.
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I know, this is my field. But the time and energy spent clearing the snow year after year could be spent air sealing and insulating their attic, and then they never have to scrape snow again. 
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Agree, definitely better in the long run. But, if you don’t have the money now, then you don’t have the money now. Clearing the roof is “free” if you do it yourself. Pretend lost heat is $250 a year and repairing the insulation is $2,000. An 8 year break even. In this example, fixing the root issues is definitely better and the cost is the same over 8 years. But, if someone doesn’t have the money now, it doesn’t matter much.
But really, my point was only that there’s many reasons to clear snow off a roof, it’s may not be better to leave it there if the rest of the roof system performance isn’t in sync with leaving the snow there. Creating an entire roof system that includes keeping the snow there for it’s advantages is a good goal though.
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Yeah, no one recognizes the slow trickle of money from lost heat and the damage being done by ice dams. My own uncle “knows” that he needs new windows, but there’s no insulation in the walls. Whatchya gonna do?
Mr. Linkey and I nerd out about this. We drive around town doing “low-tech” infrared evaluations just by looking at the snow melt patterns on the roofs.
Would be cool if energy modeling software was sophisticated enough to convert the melt patterns to lost $$$.
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I was thinking the same thing, it looks like a piano-synth visualization. I imagine that this will be fed into something before long…
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But like Ravel’s Bolero, it’s over just as it was getting great.
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An 8-bit soundtrack would be perfect.
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“Snow retention is important” says article at website of company that sells snow retention roof addons.
Other ways to insulate your roof:
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What’s the R value of a goat? Coverage doesn’t seem very uniform…
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Love it! I was looking for photos of the traditional “rocks on the roof” snow guards used in parts of northern europe and eastern Turkey but didn’t find any.
What they lack in uniformity they make up in BTU’s 
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It’s the new Ronco Roof! It slices, dices and juliennes! Plus you can make mounds of cole slaw!
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Perfect for Igloo building!
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That would be the baaarrr value. At least, for pirate goats.
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