Gutter Maintenance Matters
To avoid costly home repairs, make sure you periodically monitor the overall condition of your home. Weathering and aging results in wear and tear in every home, so it is wise to take care of problems early. This means routine maintenance should be done to ensure that everything is well in all parts of the home. This is especially true as far as the exterior of the home is concerned – it is the exterior that is most subjected to wear and tear.
1. Why Bother Maintaining Your Gutter?
Gutter maintenance is one of the most effective tasks for the proper exterior home maintenance. In case you’re not sure, the gutter is the trough fixed under or along the eaves for draining rainwater from your roof. Other names for gutters in general are “eaves spouts”, “eaves troughs”, “rainspouts” and “spouting”.
Of course, because they are external to the home proper gutter maitenance impacts directly the overall appearance of the home.
Maintaining guttering is a simple task, but can be awkward, depending on the height and general accessability of your gutters. If this is your situation, look for good tools and equipment to make the job easier for you.
Even so, the effort is well worth while, considering the protection they offer to the walls, window frames and doors below. Worse than that, clogged gutters can cause considerable damage to landscaping, lawn and shrubbery, walls, foundation, basement, crawl spaces and other existing gutter system.
Clearly, it is important to keep these channels clear at all times.
2. Gutter Maintenance Tips
- In maintaining gutters, (as with any other work) it is important to make sure to have all the equipment you need before starting work. Otherwise you just waste time having to stop in the middle of a task to hunt for a tool.
- Start by cleaning the gutters with a narrow stiff-bristled brush. A wallpaper brush is good to sweep out debris when the gutters are dry.
- Avoid trying to clean the gutters by flushing them with a garden hose because this can cause the downspout to clog. Gutters should be cleaned when they are dry, and the hose should be used only to flush out any remaining debris.
- Step by step:
- Clear any leaves, twigs or other debris off the roof – Use an old broom or a leaf blower, to pitch all debris down from the roof into the yard
- Once the roof is clear of debris, start on the gutters themselves – Using a narrow trowel or putty knife, gently lift any debris in the gutters out and pitch it down to the yard
- For safety purposes, you must check all the supports after the gutters themselves are clean enough
- Hose the gutters down, and use the hose to test the gutters’ ability to rapidly drain off water
- Avoid leaning ladders directly against the gutter. You can ensure this by installing a plastic support piece to the gutter to take the weight of the ladder. The support piece is a permanent fixture providing an access point to the roof and should be fastened to the wood facing below the edge of the roof using galvanized deck screws. Some supports can instead be mounted directly on the gutter.
- Buy a ladder stabilizer for added ladder safety. The ladder stabilizer locks onto the rungs of the extension ladder, and prevents the ladder from shifting to one side or the other.
3. Gutter Guards – Prevention Better Than Cure?
If you want good-looking, serviceable gutters for your home, consider installing gutter guards – screens that prevent debris from entering the gutter.
Gutter guards also direct the flow of water away from the house and into the ground. This way, you can have gutters that will prove to be more of a blessing than a curse.
As with the guttering itself, proper maintenance of gutter guards will help them do their job and extend their useful life, while adding a touch of style to the exterior of the home.
Here at FL Gutter.com, we aim to make it easier to find solutions to your guttering needs.
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