Winter Problems! Denver house, ice dams, water leaking

[Travis Hatch]

I am in Northglenn Colorado (Denver), and it has been snowing a lot this week and very cold. There are ice dams building on my roof, and the gutters are totally full. With the sun out, and it rising close to 40 degrees it's melting but not able to flow through the gutters.

I have some sort of plastic / vinyl material for my soffit and it appears that water is leaking and traveling across the soffit until it hits the outside wall of the home. It seems it's not properly sloped away from the house to the gutter. The water is then dripping down the outside wall of my house / kitchen window.

I do not see any water in the house yet, but i am concerned that it will find its way inside and cause much more damage.

A few things I think I can do are:

1. 1. increase insulation in the attic to stop heat escaping to the roof and melting the snow un evenly.
2. 2. add heat strips on the gutters to melt the gutter ice (once the ice has melted and I am free to install them)

I'm looking for advice on:

1. 1. Any other ideas to help protect against this in the future?
2. 2. Based on the description, what should I do now?
3. 3. Is there a risk if water getting into my house?

Other ideas: what do you think?

1. 1. remove soffit / re balance and slope away from the house
2. 2. remove gutters
3. 3. Add insulation to the attic, leave it alone and wait for it to melt this week (hoping there's not water damage) and then install heat strips in the gutters for next time

All advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you

[John Mocker]

Travis
a few years ago we had a bad winter with a lot of Ice Dams happening. One thing we did to get the melting water into the gutters was to fill a nylon stocking(to approx. 8-12 in length) with Potassium Chloride. We then positioned the stockings on top of the ice on the gutter and perpendicular to the direction of the gutter. The potassium Chloride eventually melted the ice and gave a channel for the water to go into the gutter