And then there is the issue of snow guards. Snow guards are small metal fences, usually no more than six inches high, that are screwed into the roof to hold back heavy snow loads so they don't avalanche down and tear off the gutters. "There is a company called Alpine which will engineer these," says one roofing expert, who did not want his name used because he sometimes works for companies employed by the school system. "The problem I see is the architect in many cases won't do it—he'll basically just draw a dotted line near the bottom of the slope…and the contractor will say, oh, he wants a snow guard. And nobody gives any thought to it."