A brown stain on the ceiling in Manchester, NH
Usually ice, occasionally plumbing
A tea-coloured ring appearing on an upstairs ceiling in the middle of a New Hampshire winter is almost always an ice dam, not a burst pipe. Understanding the difference matters, because one of them is fixed in your attic and the other is fixed by a plumber, and repairing the ceiling before either one is dealt with means paying for the same ceiling twice.
How an ice dam puts water on your ceiling
Heat escaping into the attic warms the underside of the roof deck and melts the snow lying on it. That meltwater runs down to the eave, which is cold because there is no heated space beneath it, and refreezes there. Do that for a few days and you build a ridge of ice at the roof edge with a pond of water backed up behind it. Water sitting still on a sloped roof gets under the shingles, soaks the sheathing, wets the insulation and eventually shows on the ceiling below, typically as a stain near an outside wall rather than in the middle of the room.
Telling it apart from plumbing
Ice damming stains appear within a foot or two of an exterior wall, arrive during or just after a thaw, and often show up in more than one room along the same side of the house. Plumbing stains appear under bathrooms and kitchens, do not care what the weather is doing, and tend to grow steadily rather than in bursts. If the stain is directly beneath a shower, treat it as plumbing until proven otherwise.
Sealing versus cutting it out
Board that has dried out and is still firm can be sealed with a stain-blocking primer and repainted; water tannins bleed straight through ordinary emulsion, which is why people paint these twice and watch them come back. Board that is soft to a fingertip, sagging, or crumbling at the edge of the stain has lost its integrity and has to come out along with the wet insulation above it. Wet insulation is the part people forget: compressed, saturated fibreglass has almost no R-value, so leaving it there guarantees a worse ice dam next winter.
The bit that is not our job
We do not insulate attics or fix roofs, and we will tell you plainly when that is where your money should go. The permanent cure for ice damming is air-sealing the attic floor so heat stops reaching the deck, adding insulation, and making sure the soffit and ridge ventilation actually work. Do that and the ceiling repair is a one-time expense. Skip it and we will be back.
Timing the repair
The instinct is to wait for spring, and it is usually the wrong one. Wet material left in a ceiling cavity through February keeps the insulation flattened and gives mould a warm damp place to work. Opening the ceiling in winter is a nuisance but it stops the damage progressing. The job we turn down is close a ceiling back up while ice is still forming above it.
What the finished job involves
Damaged board out to the nearest joists, wet insulation bagged, the cavity given air and time, then new board — five-eighths on a ceiling, which resists sagging in a hot attic far better than the thinner sheet. Joints taped and built up in passes, sanded, primed with a stain blocker regardless, and the ceiling texture matched if the room has one. Ballpark figures live on what it costs.
Often turns up alongside
People dealing with A brown stain on the ceiling usually also ask about our a hole in the wall service, professional cracks over doors and windows and a ceiling that sags or bows services — call and we'll tell you which one your job needs.
Towns we cover
We take this work across the Merrimack Valley, including drywall repair in Bedford, Goffstown drywall repair calls, serving Hooksett, drywall repair for Londonderry property owners, Derry, drywall repair in Auburn, Candia drywall repair calls, serving Merrimack, drywall repair for Litchfield property owners, Bow, drywall repair in Concord and Nashua drywall repair calls, and the surrounding communities.
Send a photo of it
A photo of the damage is usually enough for a number the same day.
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