well it just has to stop significant buildup over multiple days right? IDK, seems pretty effective here in tahoe where ive seen it applied on parts of peoples houses

Do people in Tahoe heat-tape their whole roof or just the edge where ice dams would otherwise form? I've only ever seen the latter, and even doing that will be noticeable on your power bill.

Yeah it’s usually just 3-6ft on the edges of the roof. But this whole roof is tiny. Covering a 12x12 roof would be much less than one edge run on a big house . Also they only turn on when there’s actual snow falling so doesn’t use as much power as you might think

also idk, tons of people up here have regular sheds for various purposes and they seem to survive just fine

woof, where are you located, coastal/northern Canada?

Cascade mountains. I've seen over 5 feet of snow in under 48 hours, then freezing rain. Its heavy! Lots of these "it'll be fine" type structures collapsed.

Building code for snow load is a factor of location and elevation here. We are around 130 lb/sq ft.

Roof pitch can help with shedding, but then you've got other problems (roof avalanches can and do kill, not to mention snow up against materials that don't want to be wet all winter).

> We are around 130 lb/sq ft

That's not too bad, that's just a floor (and that's for a flat roof, it gets less demanding with pitch).