Althouse: At the Icicle Café...

January 8, 2013

At the Icicle Café...

... we're all dammed.

32 comments:

rhhardin said...: Get Meade up there with pink attic insulation batts.

Ohio homes don't have real attics, just ceiling tops and insulation and a maze of roof trusses.

NJ homes have attics you can put old stuff in, out of the way.

It's one of the mysteries of home tradition.

Like where vent windows went in cars, another mystery.; 1/8/13, 2:54 PM
ndspinelli said...: vent windows placement in cars were for smokers and car thiefs.; 1/8/13, 2:57 PM
ndspinelli said...: NJ homes have attics for spooky relatives to live out of the way.; 1/8/13, 2:59 PM
Bob_R said...: The New Jersey home I grew up in had a cedar closet which was great for hide and seek.; 1/8/13, 3:12 PM
Big Mike said...: If those icicles are over a doorway, as seems to be the case, doesn't that make them potentially dangerous? And am I not looking at an ice dam, which can lead to damage to the roof?; 1/8/13, 3:17 PM
edutcher said...: If it warms up any more (and it's supposed to), watch out the dam doesn't burst on your head.

PS Not just Jersey, but homes all up and down the East Coast.

rh is right, though, OH homes do not have attics and a great many don't have cellars.

Weird.; 1/8/13, 3:18 PM
kjbe said...: We've got warming wires in some of the gutters to keep this from happening...; 1/8/13, 3:28 PM
rehajm said...: I moved my house closer to the Equator to keep this from happening...; 1/8/13, 3:37 PM
kentuckyliz said...: A bestie's dad was blind in one eye from...you guessed it...looking up at icicles and one fell.; 1/8/13, 3:54 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Hell has frozen over. We're all dammed.; 1/8/13, 3:55 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: They don't have real attics here either. Basements are unusual too, but that's likely because the ground is so full of giant rocks.; 1/8/13, 4:29 PM
Unknown said...: When it comes to warming wires on roofs you're dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.; 1/8/13, 4:31 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Is that where are we now?; 1/8/13, 4:31 PM
Clyde said...: @ Lem

Apparently. Rather strange song, but very Bowie. Having lived in Berlin myself helped me to catch the references. Potsdamer Platz, for instance, was a huge commercial intersection until the Wall went up in '61, turning it into a no-man's-land and shuttering all of the shops. I painted graffiti there before I left the city in January of '89, ten months before the Wall came down. It was one of the deadest intersections I'd ever seen, and the transit lines didn't even go through there, so you couldn't catch a train from there if you wanted to. And yet, when the Wall fell, it sprang back to life like those plants that pop up after a desert rain.

KaDeWe, which also got a shout-out in the song, is the Kaufhaus des Westens, the Department Store of the West. It is the largest store on the European continent; only Harrod's in London is bigger. If you couldn't find something there, you were unlikely to find it at all.; 1/8/13, 4:55 PM
Humperdink said...: Insulate the attic, but be sure to ventilate from the eves to the peak of the roof. You want the attic ice cold in the winter so as not to melt the snow on the roof. If you fail do both (insulate and ventilate), snow will melt on the roof and re-freeze on the eves. Presto, ice dams. Does make for a photo though.; 1/8/13, 5:13 PM
Rabel said...: Always learning something here at Althouse. Now I know what an ice dam is.

The upcoming post on Argentina should be most enlightening. I can hardly wait.

Oh, and next time Meade is on the roof, please have him take down the old antenna.; 1/8/13, 5:20 PM
JAL said...: Didn't one of those kill the bad guy in The Lovely Bones? (Ooops! Was that a spoiler?); 1/8/13, 5:24 PM
JAL said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/8/13, 5:24 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Icicles are nature's way of saying,

"this is how you make perfectly clear ice."

"Now, look. Look. Look, I said. Closer. That's it ... jab !; 1/8/13, 6:00 PM
virgil xenophon said...: Ky Liz, if you don't quit showing those legs and that apple derrier...I AM but a poor Cro-Magnon man, after all..; 1/8/13, 6:40 PM
Sydney said...: Ohio houses don't have attics or cellars? Maybe not the newer ones, but all of those I spent my childhood in had both.; 1/8/13, 6:52 PM
bagoh20 said...: I can't believe having icicles like that is still legal.

M.A.I.D. = Mothers Against Icicle Death; 1/8/13, 7:23 PM
chickelit said...: There are three types of ice: ice, dammed ice, and stalactice.; 1/8/13, 8:12 PM
Sydney said...: I've been mulling over the assertion by President Obama to Mr. Boehner that our economy is in trouble not because of excessive spending, but because of our healthcare system. Can anyone explain to me how that works? Isn't it the spending on healthcare and other entitlements that has us in trouble? How does the healthcare system in and of itself put us in economic danger?; 1/8/13, 8:14 PM
chickelit said...: Can anyone explain to me how that works?

It's a tacit admission that the economy sucks because businesses won't hire because of HCR uncertainty.

He had to avenge his mom's death somehow so he chose a nation instead.

She would have approved.; 1/8/13, 8:19 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I can't believe having icicles like that is still legal.

They will be phased out under the Global Warming provisions of Obamacare.; 1/8/13, 8:31 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: But then again...

According to Bill Clinton, ice is good for post trauma to the lip.

Save it for the rape-kit.; 1/8/13, 8:45 PM
Known Unknown said...: Cuomo negotiating more gun control laws in New York.

“I think it’s necessary with everything that’s happening,” Mamaroneck resident Gail Nubile added. “With the recent things that have been going on it does make you think that things to be happening, so you have to be extra cautious.”

By limiting the rights of your fellow law-abiding, sane individuals, no doubt.

Even gun-control advocates have a hard time stating any clear benefit to the previous assault weapons ban.; 1/8/13, 10:00 PM
Known Unknown said...: Cuomo’s move comes as Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Gun Violence released a new commercial to push for federal action. It features Roxanna Green, the mother of Christina Taylor-Green, who was killed two years ago Tuesday in the Tucson, Ariz., massacre.

“How many more children must die before Washington does something to end our gun violence problem?” Roxanna Green says during the ad.

Legalize narcotics and watch gun violence numbers fall in urban areas.; 1/8/13, 10:02 PM
tiger said...: '... we're all dammed.'

Heh.; 1/8/13, 10:13 PM
AllenS said...: If you're having problems with ice dams and maybe need a new roof, consider putting a steel roof on. One of the best things that I've did to this 100+ year old house.; 1/9/13, 6:40 AM
AllenS said...: I've did

originally I said I've done, but no, no I had to change it.; 1/9/13, 7:12 AM