RHS Roof & Valley Snow Melting Mats – Ice Dam Prevention, American-Made, Black, Melts 2” Snow/Hour (15’ x 13”)

These work great. Have had them installed for 2 years in valleys of home. 5 feet long. Work great. No longer need to have them shoveled causing roof damage. Low consumption of electric & only plugged in during snow storms. Would have liked 8 ft units but could not deliver to my address.

I am using the RHS Snow Melting System I purchased from amazon, which is attached to my roof under the lower edge of my solar panels to start the melting of snow anytime the sun is shining and there is an accumulation of snow on the panels, but only for my southern exposure panels, since only they produce much energy during the winter months. I incorporated this snow melting system with my solar panels, since I can’t stand to have a ZERO solar power day, after having payed good money to have the panels produce power.The heater sections through amazon are available in five and ten foot lengths. My southern panel array requires 20 feet of heater in three segments, which uses one kilowatt of power if run for an hour, but is quickly regenerated when the panels are exposed to the sun. This method of heating the solar panels does not void their warranty, since the panels are attached to the roof and do not physically touch the solar panels.The heat from the RHS Snow Melting System rises under the panels and slowly warms them at the bottom, but I only activate the heater when the sun is breaking through the clouds. This heating works in tandem with the sun, which starts the snow melting process at the top of the panels. The heater is run for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on snow thickness and melting progress, which melts the bottom snow accumulation and removes the snow backup resistance from the accumulation above, which allows the snow to completely slide off much sooner than waiting for the sun to get the melt going at the bottom.I live in Utah and before I started using the heater, it took most of the first day of bright sun to remove about 80 percent of the snow, but that pesky bottom snow just usually hangs on until the second day of sun finally melts it off.I haven’t been able to find a countdown timer that will run during the day, since they are generally designed to come on at sundown and run for a specified time for lighting, so what I do is switch the heater on using the Dewenwls ODT12B Outdoor Light Sensor Timer with its remote control, which is from amazon and then set a manual kitchen timer to remind me to look at the panels and turn off the heater as soon as the snow has melted. There is no set time to power up the heater, so programmable timers are not useful, either. If the sun breaks through at 12 noon, that’s when I activate the heater to work along with the sun’s energy.How you design your heater system for power control has to be what will work for you, so take time to consider the options that fit your needs. A WiFi controlled power switch is another option if you want to have control remotely from work or other locations. A camera setup to view the solar panels where the heater is installed would be good to monitor the melting progress to know when to turn off the heater.If your panels are exposed to a lot of wind, it works well to wedge foam rubber strips in just at the top of the heater segments under the panels to encapsulate the rising heat, which increases the effectiveness of the heater and prevents the wind from blowing the heat away. After the snow season is done, the foam should be removed, since the panels require air flow for cooling in hot weather.

I have had great results with my 2 valley runs up front! Installed them early & produced as planned. We have 2- 15' pads on 1 circuit this winter starting...Results were great up front, but failed later. We noticed a default in our GFI switch, due to the "overload" , which wasn't expected. We decided it was too much load & am splitting it between 2 circuits now. It may be that if you put a load on even 2 circuits having had a heavy snow load, that the 2 circuit will NOT maintain! We'll see! That's our experiment for today! Really, the specs aren't well defined- which we need! In the end, I'm hopeful that if we must turn on the pads early, before they're overloaded with heavy snow, & expect less for a simple 120V output. let me know what u think?!

It is not cheap. But it did work, really well. We had tons of ice build up on our roof this year (MN winter) and could not keep it clear even with raking etc. So we ended up with ice dams. Also a huge ice pile under the eaves on our back patio. When we first got this pad, I thought it was not working, so I left it on the ground overnight on the huge ice pile, more by accident than anything because I wanted to see if it would flatten out. In the morning, it had Marleen down through like 6 inches of solid ice. Back on the roof it went, no stakes, I just set it on the ice dam. It melted completely down through that in the next 24 hours. So I moved it a bit and it ended up making a huge melt path on the roof, no more issue with the ice dam. I would love to get another one but they are so dang expensive. I'll try moving this one around again next year. It did the job. Bought one for my mother as well, she has a harder time raking the roof and this helped with the ice dams at her place as well. No water in the house. I'm a happy camper.

Got this to test as a way of controlling the large amount of snow I get. Installation was very easy, but in the end, pointless. It does not heat barely at all. There is very little temperature difference between when it is plugged in and running for hours, and what it first comes out of the box. I had it plugged in and working all night, about 10 hours, and it melted MAYBE 1 inch of snow total

In winter we like to use our outdoor spa, which is fully exposed to the west, the direction of storms, and we sought to minimize snow shoveling of our deck between the door and the spa. We adapted this roof mat for our Gaco-covered (silicone) deck at our 7000-ft altitude home in the Sierra Nevada mountains. (We did not fasten it to the deck; we simply laid in down.) We also have installed Summerstep mats, but bought this product because of its length. Compare the photos of the RHS and Summerstep mats after many hours of snow. Both are rated to melt snow up to two inches per hour. The RHS mat is a little heavier and thicker than the Summersteps, which work pretty well, but the RHS melting performance was outstanding in an all-night and all-day storm that blew in over the last 24 hours. Perhaps the volume of snow was greater on the west side than on the north side, where we installed the RHS mat, but you can see for yourself how much snow accumulated on either side of the RHS mat. I'm very pleased with my purchase.I cannot evaluate the durability of the RHS mat, which was newly installed.

This five foot long ice melting mat works but the power cord is very stiff and still retains the bends from when it was originally folded and packaged. Also the insulation on the power cord has started to separate at the point where the power cord connects to the mat. This is after only a couple of weeks of usage and moving it around a handful of times. I suspect it’s not going to last very long.