Lars Walberg and Zach Stopyro - 2025 National Snow Guards Safety Month - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Lars Walberg from Rocky Mountain Snow Guards and Zach Stopyro from DaVinci Roofscapes. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofer's Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here to talk about what is on everyone's mind across the United States for the last couple weeks and that is snow. But bigger than that, we're here to talk about safety and why snow retention is so important. And in fact, we've got some really big exciting news. For the first time ever in the month of March, is going to be the first annual National Snow Guards Safety Month. So we wanted to get the experts here to talk about that and to talk about snow retention overall. We asked our friends at Rocky Mountain Snow Guards to visit with us. Lars, Zach, welcome to the show. Welcome back.

Zach Stopyro: Hi, howdy, it's nice to be back.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think I, okay. I'm gonna start that again, cause I lost you a little bit there Lars. Can you talk? Okay, there we go.

Lars Walberg: Sorry, there's a problem. Zach's not worth Rocky Mountain Snow Guards. He's Da Vinci.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's right.

Zach Stopyro: Yeah, we would. I was gonna say that, but I didn't know to say that in the middle.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Zach, we had that. knew that was right. Tell me. I saw this here and I was like, okay, has something changed? I should have asked.

Lars Walberg: And Zach, yeah, so Lars from Rocky Mountain Star, that's Zach, Da Vinci Roofscapes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Zach, you're with DaVinci, right? Yeah. Okay.

Zach Stopyro: Yep, yep. I mean, I would work with Laura, say at Mountain Snow Guards, but it would be a new thing, not current employment.

Lars Walberg: Yeah, yeah, we should probably make that right.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oops.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're starting that over. Okay, perfect. And Zach, you say your last name, Zopro. Zopro, okay, Zopro, okay.

Zach Stopyro: Stop row, so the Y is silent. Yep. It would be easier if it was written stop R-O-W, but it's not. That's the joy of my ancestors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, stop bro. Well, I saw that.

Lars Walberg: I, you know, all these years later, I still didn't quite have it figured out. I'm glad you said to stop, Ro.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That stuff. Yeah.

Zach Stopyro: Everybody massacres it and everything. I just say, listen, take out the Y and just row. Stop rowing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Stop Row. When I read this earlier, I was kind of like, wait a minute. And I read it a couple of times. So thank you for stopping us. We're starting over again. Okay, guys.

Lars Walberg: Probably put DaVinci Roofscapes in there too.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Scapes.

Zach Stopyro: Yeah, see the one I've got, whatever outline or headline or whatever I've got is really, it's got it on there already. So, Kathy sent me something. One of the seven different outlines I have.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, perfect.

Lars Walberg: But this is the one that was included with the invitation.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, this is the one and this is the one that goes out. So I wanna make sure it's right. So.

Lars Walberg: Are you looking at that one, Dan?

Zach Stopyro: Now, where are we, where is this at?

Lars Walberg: So if you go to your calendar invite, you'll get a link and then you can watch. Yep, and you can watch Heidi edit it live.

Zach Stopyro: Okay, that's just if I click on that link, that's what comes up.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Make the changes, which I just did.

Zach Stopyro: That's what I need. but it took my pretty camera away. Now I can't see both of your faces.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So yeah, so if you have any changes to that, just let me know. But okay, we're gonna start fresh. Here we go. Right, Adam, Zane, whoever's listening to this, here we go.

Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofer's Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here today to talk about something that is on everyone's mind right now and that is snow. We have snow across the United States in places that's never had snow before and we wanted to talk about something that is so important when it comes to snow and that's snow retention. And make a little bit of a fun, not a little bit, starting over and make a big announcement. That is all about the first annual National Snow Guards Safety Month. Yes, this is going to be something that really brings attention to the importance of safety with snow retention. So we asked the experts from Rocky Mountain Snow Guards and Da Vinci Rousscapes, Lars Wahlberg and Zach Stoprow to come visit with us today to really talk about this great new safety month, Snow Guards Safety Month and snow retention overall. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Zach Stopyro: Thanks, Heidi. Nice to be here.

Lars Walberg: Thanks, Heidi. Great to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So good to see both of you. I'm very excited. So let's start out with some introductions. And Lars, if you could introduce yourself and tell us about your company.

Lars Walberg: Yes, hi, I'm Lars Wahlberg. I'm the president of Rocky Mountain Snow Guards. We're one of the leading snow guard manufacturers in the United States. We sell product across the United States, into Canada and up into Alaska.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. And Zach, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your company?

Zach Stopyro: Sure, Zach Stockrow, I'm the Director of Technical Services and Installation with DaVinci RoofScapes. I've been with DaVinci on and off about 16 years and been in roofing all over the US, close to 35 years at this point.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Perfect. Zach, I'm gonna have you get closer to the microphone. You're a little bit far, yeah, just you're a little bit soft. Boy, I'm giving our editors quite the day today. We're gonna have a little bit of editing going on, Okay. Thank you both so much for being here. Let's start out by talking a little bit about what's gonna be happening coming in March. And that is going to be the first annual National Snow Guard Safety Month.

Zach Stopyro: Okay.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's pretty exciting. It's gonna be a month long focus on safety and snow guards for roofers and really looking at making sure homeowners and building owners really understand it. Lars, you had the idea and basically invented National Snow Guard Safety Month. Let's start with you. Why did Rocky Mountain really look at creating this special month and what's it all about?

Lars Walberg: Well, Heidi, there's a couple reasons why we started this. As we've been in this snow retention industry for quite a while, and I'm always surprised at how few roofers understand the danger of sliding snow. Same with homeowners. People just don't realize that the stuff that's going to come off the roof is not the same stuff that fell from the sky.

And once it packs down a little bit and congeals or compresses into kind of a blanket when it comes off the roof all at one time, it's very dangerous. So we want to help rovers understand how to explain the need for snow guards to homeowners in certain geographic areas to keep their customers safe from avalanche in snow.

And we want to educate roofers about the safe way to install snow guards in both new situations, when they're installing a new roof and in what we call retrofit situations, which is where they're installing snow guards on existing.

Oftentimes there's a misunderstanding. You can edit that out. Okay. We also want to explain what types of roofs are more prone to snow avalanches and create awareness for homeowners, property owners, roofing contractors, builders and others in construction industry about the safety roles snow guards play on struck.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, you know, it is, it is so important. I live up in the mountains of Oregon and we see the slide of snow and we see what it does, obviously to plants, but with animals, people, it's just so dangerous. So as you're creating this awareness Lars and really looking at it, this will all include during the month, a lot of education for both. Can you just talk just a little bit about what are some of those best practices? What are some of the safety rules? What are some of the things that people will get from this safety month?

Lars Walberg: Okay, time to edit. I'm a little bit lost here because I see best practices and then I'm not exactly sure where I'm supposed to go.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yep, I'm on.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. So what I was going to just have, where I was going there is that what it's all about of just creating awareness with homeowners, property owners, plus educating roofing contractors on best practices. Kind of that number C, what it's all about. Let's just have you say that again. We'll probably edit out some of those, but I just want to make sure people are really clear on what the National Snow Guard Safety Month is. So let me rephrase that and we'll start fresh.

Lars Walberg: Okay, so I'm going to start from C and read one and two then and basically just read them. Okay.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, okay, okay, okay. So Lars, I just wanna make sure everyone out there, mean, this is really cool. First time ever that we're gonna have a National Snow Guards Safety Month. What's it all about?

Zach Stopyro: You

Lars Walberg: Well, Heidi, it's about creating awareness for homeowners, property owners, roofing contractors, builders and others in the construction industry about the safety role snow guards play on structures. Plus, educating roofing contractors on the best practices for selection and installation of snow guards to assure they function successfully.

Zach Stopyro: You

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's, mean, right there, that capitalizes it. That is exactly what needs to happen and this is gonna save lives. But you know what? I think a lot of times people may think, that nice fluffy snow, it can't hurt anybody. That is not the case. In fact, there are some really informational nuggets that Lars, you and I have been talking about going back and forth, but I'm gonna let you kind of share what is really, when you look at the weight and can you kind of go through that? What snow can do and how harmful it can be.

Lars Walberg: Well, Heidi, are... Okay, well, Heidi, on average, there's about a one and an eighth gallon of water in gallon of water weighs a little more than eight pounds. So you can imagine a 12 inch snowfall that would weigh a little more than nine pounds per square foot of area on the roof. So if you run the math, and I'll do it for you, if we're talking about an area that's five squares, that would be a roof area that's roughly 25 feet wide by 20 feet from the peak and that's a pretty common size of a roof deck. That five square of snow on that roof, had 12 inches, would weigh more than 4,600 pounds. If it was just six inches of snow, it would still weigh more than a ton. Now, if it's heavy snow and we get a lot of that in Colorado, especially in the springtime, it can be easily double that weight.

And in the mountain areas where snow hangs around on roofs throughout the winter and compresses, it can weigh up to seven times that of average snow. So the bottom line message is to keep the snow from avalanching off the roof.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, because that's a lot of weight falling on someone's head. That is dangerous. So let's talk a little bit about the need for snow guards to help prevent that buildup of snow and then to be able to prevent the avalanche. So Zach, stay tuned. I'm coming to you next, but Lars, I would love to start with you on this on just what types of roofs need snow guards to help prevent buildup of snow. And then avalanching or releasing of snow. Can you kind of talk about that, the types of roofs?

Lars Walberg: Sure, so we're concerned about snow sliding on slippery roof surfaces pretty much anywhere where it snows. And those slippery roof products would be standing seam or other types of metal roofs, composite shake and slate shingles, single ply membrane roofs. We see a lot more of the single plys being applied to slope roofs where snow slides on them.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Lars Walberg: Solar panels are slippery, no slides on solar panels. We do a lot of work with the solar industry to keep the snow from coming off the panels and onto the ground below and natural slate. So those are slippery products on the roof, but we're concerned about those pretty much any place where it snows. Less slippery roofs would include cedar shakes and shingles, asphalt shingles and concrete and clay tiles.

Those types of are not quite as slippery, but if you're in an area where you get a lot of snow or if you have steeper roofs, then you can still end up with an avalanche situation.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. And you really want it to just, I mean, I know we have a lot of steep slopes around us and you really want it just to melt slowly and not avalanche down off that roof. But I also know that with the more slippery products, it doesn't take as much to start having that big slide happening and definitely with composite roofing. So Zach, talk to us a little bit about

Why does composite roofing need this type of snow retention? DaVinci is a leader out there. Your products are beautiful. And I have to say, snow retention, very pretty on your roofs too. So let's talk about why.

Zach Stopyro: Sure. So as Lars said initially, it is a slipperier type of roof. It is definitely in the realm of what roofers and homeowners would consider a more slippery surface. The reason for that is a non-porous material. And with non-porous materials, they don't absorb water. This means that snow and ice have nothing to hold onto or grip to. When snow begins to melt from the warm attic area or the air underneath, the heated surface underneath the roof, a thin layer of water will form and that snow load becomes so tremendous that it tends to break free all at one time. And that's really what we're talking about and why snow retention is so important is as you were saying, Heidi, it's all right if you have little pieces or uniform melting coming off the roof. But unfortunately, when you get those large full plain breakaways where a big chunk of ice or snow comes off the roof, it can not only damage plants and surrounding landscaping, but also we've seen it damage

AC and heating units. We've seen it damage cars, decks, all kinds of things from not having properly installed snow retention systems. It's with any type of non-porous roof. And as Lars said, we always want to recommend not just in areas like Colorado where snowfall is so prevalent, but anywhere you have snowfall, if you can get that one snowfall that's going to be tremendous for that area and you don't have that proper snow retention system,

It only takes once to lose something important or something in a large time.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Let's just look at California the last couple of years. mean, the amount of snow that they've had up in the mountains, I know they get snow every year, but not like it's been. I mean, you just and you may think, oh, it's just only happens every once in a while, but now it's happening all the time. So, you know, about when we look at the national month that we are celebrating and we really look at,

Lars Walberg: All right.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: The National Snow Guard Safety Month. It's about educating contractors on where to put the snow retention, how it works to get the best positioning. So Zach, I would love for you to kind of take that on a little bit, especially talking around composite roofs of how can snow guards help them and where should those snow guards be located or installed?

Lars Walberg: Okay.

Zach Stopyro: Sure, and that's probably from a roofing manufacturer standpoint, that's probably the most important thing. The most common thing in the roofing industry is for a roofer to go into an area and recommend snow guards or snow retention, but have no idea what that means or how it's properly installed. And so you can have a roof that is very large, very steep and a roofer will come out and look at the house and go, well, we want to protect the front entrance, for example.

Let's put up a few snow guards and put up five or 10 snow guards and they look pretty and everything looks great. Unfortunately, unless you have or you're in the industry of manufacturing snow guards and no snow loads and no the weight and things like Lars was saying initially, those snow loads will break five to 10 snow guards very easily.

Especially in Colorado, but in anywhere where they get snow. And that's where it becomes a big issue is that homeowners go by who they think is a professional and they may be in the world of roofing, but snow retention and snow guards are a completely different aspect of just regular roofing.

So from our standpoint, we want companies like Rocky Mountain Snow Guards and companies that put together professional guidelines or professional guidelines and services because they can go through and find the snow loads in the specific areas where these properties are being done or these roofs are being completed. And then they can give the advice on this is what you need.

This is what we would say is required for the system to work properly. And that way you're protecting the home, the grounds as the homeowners want or what they believe they're getting paid for.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that makes so much sense. Lars, I know that this is top of mind for you and your team at Rocky Mountain talking about determining where the snow guards are placed on the roof surface. Can you tell us about how your company likes determines where the snow guards are placed on the roof surface and how that works?

Lars Walberg: Sure, Heidi. We look at a number of different factors when we determine the type of pattern and the density of snow guards for a roofing area. We look at the slope of the roof, what roofing product it is. So that would be the slipperiness of it. Obviously, with roof slope, the steeper the slope, the more force the load can have as it's moving.

We look at the roof snow load, as Zach mentioned, we we subscribe to ASCE 7 for our snow loads, that's a national service that pinpoints ground snow loads for the whole country. And we look into drifting snow loads, and that's something that we see a lot in places like Wyoming, where you get a whole lot of snow, you can get a lot of snow, you get a whole lot of wind and some of the roof surfaces

Zach Stopyro: You

Lars Walberg: Won't have any snow on them and some of the roof surfaces will have three times the amount of snow than you would expect. And then the last thing we look at is what the exposure is. So does the roof eave drop off over a driveway or a deck or a hot tub or a walkway? We also look at is it a commercial building or a public building where you're going to have quite a bit of traffic around the roof. And in those situations, sometimes with heavy snow loads,

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Lars Walberg: We will recommend a snow fence instead of just snow guards. And sometimes we'll have a diagram or a snow retention plan that has a snow fence at the eve and snow guards above it to be extra safe to hold the slab in place and to keep that last little bit from maybe coming off the roof. Our quote department starts with blueprints from architects or reports from Eagle View, RoofScope or Hover.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Mm-hmm.

Lars Walberg: And we will protect the parts of the roof that are requested by the owner or by the contractor. Our default is to draw up a snow retention plan for the entire building. But oftentimes when we do that, we're told, gee, we didn't want that many. We're not concerned about this area over here that just drops off into the grass.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Lars Walberg: And so we'll remove those parts. Or if we know up front, we don't include those roof areas to begin with. And we consider, as I mentioned before, the snow load, roof pitch, I already sell that. We're not going to repeat that again. Our go-to pattern of snow guards starts with what we call a soldier row. And a soldier row is typically installed within 24 inches of the eave.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Lars Walberg: It's a single row of snow guards that are 12 inches apart. And what we've learned over the years with products like DaVinci that are extra slippery with snow is that the typical traditional spread pattern where you would have kind of a zigzag is far less effective. And I think that's because the distance between snow guards doesn't allow for the cohesion.

That happens inside the snow between the snow guards. So, think about the hypotenuse of a triangle, of a right triangle. Let's say it's 12 inches on each leg. Well, you're going to have a much greater distance if you, between snow guards, at 12 inches apart in one row, if you have them a foot apart.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hmm.

Lars Walberg: I'm not explaining this very well. If you have them two feet apart within a row and then a staggered row that's a foot apart above that, so creating a zigzag, all of a sudden you have a much greater distance between those snow guards for that snow to solidify or... Yeah, I butchered that. Anyway, so we start with soldier rows and then depending on the situation above that, we may have a spread pattern.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. Yeah.

Zach Stopyro: Pieces.

Lars Walberg: Lower slope or we may have additional soldier rows above that first row.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, wow, I mean and the thing I look at Lars, honestly, that's a lot, but when I think about it is the fact that you provide that engineering, right? You do that for customers. So people know they can depend upon you to have the right snow guards, the right system, not to have those big spaces where everything can slide. Or just because, I think we're supposed to do it this way, they really can depend on you.

Lars Walberg: Yes, I can. And I do want to mention one other thing as long as we're having this conversation. We provide load tests or we perform load tests on our snow guard. So we know how much load a snow guard can take before it fails or before the fasteners fail. Oftentimes with slippery products, you can have

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Lars Walberg: Load ratings on snow grabs that are so high that if you just apply that to the load factors present, you may only have one snow grab or need only one snow grab say every four feet or five feet or six feet in a row. And that's kind of the engineering side of it, but the artful side of it is knowing that if you have snow grabs that are spaced four feet apart, they're probably not going to do any

And so that's where we've learned over the years that we can't rely solely on the load rating of the snow guard and the loads present on

Zach Stopyro: There's what works in real life and what works in testing. And sometimes they don't match up very well. So sometimes that's why you go with good companies to go through this, because what they see not only in testing, they apply that as almost a minimum to what may work in real life, what's going to work in the actual.

Lars Walberg: That's exactly right, Zach. That's right. Right. So well put, Zach.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is perfect. Yes, that is perfect. And that's exactly, and Zach, I was actually gonna come to you also from a safety point, what is the difference between roofers installing snow guards on composite roofs when it's being installed versus retrofitting them in place a year or more afterward? And I think this follows up to what Lars was saying and what you just said, everything. It depends on the situation, but talk to us a little bit about the difference of getting them on when you're reroofing or retrofitting later on.

Zach Stopyro: So in either case, you always want to have the proper safety equipment, almost like I'm saying for OSHA, make sure you have the proper scaffolding, the proper, if a lift is needed, depending on if a lift can get in, that's probably always the best, but a lot of times that's just not possible, whether it be by cost or by the area around the home or even ropes and harnesses, you always want to have that proper safety equipment in place for each job. The truth is, I would push any contractor, in any area where it snows and not just with composite roofing but any non-porous type roofing whether it be metal, slate, anything like that to always look into the sale of snow guards or snow retention as they sell the roof. It's always going to be a much easier install with the roof as the roof is being installed. It's always going to be much safer. You do not have any of the concerns not just with even the safety end of it but of the damaging of product possibly down the road or damaging of the home down the road.

There's just all kinds of things that can happen or go wrong when you try and come back to the job to install snow retention or snowboards or anything on the roof for that matter. Snow carts and snow retention just happens to be what we'll talk about today. But it's always best to do the whole roof at one time. Do the parts and pieces as you need to. When you get into after the fact and having to come back,

It's a job that's very difficult. Companies like Rocky Mountain Snow Guards have snow guard and snow retention systems that are designed to be installed after the fact in a lot of cases. It takes a lot of designing to make that work right. And it's not always the easiest. They've done what they can do to make a very difficult situation as easy as possible. But it's just that, it's as easy as possible. It's much easier to, as you're going up a roof, just fasten the snow guards in place with each course of.

Tile than having to, in some cases, remove tiles or remove parts of the roof or do different things to the existing roof to make those snow guards and snow retention systems work in. That's from the installation and from the safety end, it's never fun, especially if you have a properly designed system where Lars was speaking of and I've seen systems where entire planes of roof are covered in snow guards or snow retention, especially in areas where there's heavy snowfall.

Zach Stopyro: That's not something you want to try and do off a rope or a harness, especially along the edge of a roof. So it's just a lot of extra work, a lot of added manpower and labor to do those types of things. And in the end, it may not come out as well as if they would have installed it just with the original system.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, you know and just thinking about that too, you know, from a risk factor point. And Lars, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. were, were nodding. People, know this is a podcast, so you can't see it, but I'll tell you, he's nodding. When, as you are, by not installing snow guards upfront, when you're reroofing or when, if it's a brand new roof on a custom home or a new construction,

Then you're also taking that risk that snow is going to fall and hurt somebody. And then you have to go back and put the snow guards in. it makes from a roofing contractor standpoint, it seems to be from risk mitigation and just overall taking care of your customer. It's a better thing to do right when you're doing, right when you're roofing.

Lars Walberg: It is absolutely better to do it when you're first putting the roof on. You can avoid the damage that will come down the road. With composite products like DaVinci product, it's really not a question of if the snow is going to slide. It's not a question of how steep the roof is. It is going to slide at some point in time, even on a low pitch. We hear this all the time from contractors who say, gee, it's only a 412 pitch.

It doesn't need snow guards and that is just not the case. In fact, on a lower pitch roof, the snow builds up deeper before the load overtakes the friction and it all comes off at one time. So it's just as dangerous as a steeper roof. In fact, in some ways it's more dangerous because on a steeper roof the snow will tend to slop up and doesn't build up to as deep a blanket in the first place.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And so.

Lars Walberg: But yes, much better up front to do that. Now, it isn't free. Snow retention is not free. And the installation of snow retention is not free. And a lot of contractors back off of recommending snow retention because they're very interested in selling the job when they're doing a re-roof or something like that. And so at a minimum, though, we recommend that the contractor talk about snow retention, present a snow retention plan, quote the snow retention and then if the homeowner decides they don't want it, then we recommend having a line on the contract that says homeowner declined snow retention and that'll help protect the roofer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, there's the risk. Yes, that makes so much sense. as you know, as we're looking at this month of the National Snow Guard Safety Month, it's more than just a month. I mean, that's the month where we're really gonna bring it to the forefront, talk about it. It makes sense because March is when you get all those heavy snows, it just, kind of all goes together. But this is really a 12 month concentration for roofing contractors. And I love what you just said Lars about.

Putting that into your process all the way through from presenting it, designing it, to having in the contract that the homeowner agrees not to have it if they make that decision, that that's their decision, not the contractor's. I love that. kind of talk about, Lars, I would love for you to finish out this talking about how roofing contractors should really be making this a part of their business. we know anywhere can get snow.

We've seen that in the last couple of weeks, but really in areas that you know are getting snow year over year, how important it is that that just is a basic part of your business.

Lars Walberg: I gotta say I'm a little lost again. Really, and I wasn't partying or anything last night, but...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You. No, it's okay. I was looking for it. It's not on the script. So that's probably the problem

Zach Stopyro: Okay. Have you been drinking today? Did you have an early lunch or something? that?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's not on the script. Okay. it's at the, it's at the, yeah, there's, it's not even on the script. It's not even on the script. Yeah. No. Yeah. No.

Lars Walberg: I think we're down to kind of near the bottom several reasons why. Is that where we are?

Zach Stopyro: Ugh.

Lars Walberg: I never wondered!

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is the closing. And so I was giving you like the last words of why this is important for contractors. So nothing on the script. So yeah, just your thoughts.

Lars Walberg: Okay, so, well, so then... Okay.

Zach Stopyro: Snow guards are important because if you don't do them, you are going to have damage. There you go. That's the ending.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. So take everybody take a moment just of quiet and then Mars you start.

Lars Walberg: It's... Alright, so what's the question?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, let me start over again. Okay, here we go. Okay, so as we're looking at this National Snow Guard Safety Month, really this is a 12 month concentration. And Lars, I just would love your final thoughts on why contractors should have this as part of their business plan for those contractors who live in areas where they're getting snow and how important this is.

Lars Walberg: Well, obviously, contractors want to shield their customers from the possibility of damage or injury when they're proposing to replace a roof. That should be top of mind. So the importance of this month is to get contractors to understand that this should be a part of their sale and then it's a service that they're offering to their customers rather than an obstacle to the sale. It's something they can do. Educating their customers and doing the job the right way so it doesn't come back around and result in issues down the road.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Well, I want to say congratulations to you, Lars, especially and Zach to DaVinci and all of the companies out there for celebrating this National Snow Guard Safety Month in March. Please, everyone out there, watch for this. We're going to have amazing articles, obviously this podcast and a lot of information to really build around that National Snow Guard Safety Month. Lars? Thank you so much for being here today. You as always are a joy.

Lars Walberg: Thanks Heidi, great to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Good to see you, Zach. Thank you so much for all your insights and I appreciate you so much for spending the time with us today.

Zach Stopyro: No problem at all. Thank you, Heidi. Have a great afternoon.

Outro: Thank you. Awesome. And thank you everybody for listening. Again, please go to the Rocky Mountain Snow Guards directory on Roofer's Coffee Shop to get all the information about National Snow Guard Safety Month and just about snow guards and snow retention overall, how important it is to your business year round. Check it out. Also be sure to check out the DaVinci Roofscapes directory on Roofer's Coffee Shop. What a beautiful product. And when you put snow retention, and DaVinci together, mm, beautiful. So check it out on their directory and see how it all looks. Be sure to check out all of our podcasts underneath the RLW navigation or on your favorite podcast channel, be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Red Trips.