If you are a homeowner, chances are you have a gutter around your roof. A gutter is a pretty useful thing with a pretty simple task. A gutter’s role is to collect and redirect the rainwater away from your house and into a drain. However, more often than not, the gutter is unable to fulfil its sole purpose because it gets clogged.
When clogs happen, it’s an annoying thing. The water is running down your walls, ruining your property both aesthetically and structurally and it can be a real drag to clean them out. You have to climb up on the roof, inspect the gutters, and so on. It can become a dirty, time-consuming task that could’ve been easily prevented.
So, how can you prevent it? Well, if the answer to that question is what you’re seeking, you’ve come to the right place. Today, we’re going to talk about a few things that you can do, to prevent your gutter from ever being clogged again. Without wasting any more of your precious time, let’s get straight to business.
-
Maintain The Gutter Properly
One thing that generally stops mishaps from happening, whatever the case at hand may be, is the proper and regular inspection and maintenance. Just like with anything else, if you take care of your gutter, inspect and clean them properly, maintain them the way they’re supposed to be maintained, stuff like clogs will never be an issue for you.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens in most cases. What happens in most cases is that the people forget that they even have gutters from the point they install them to the point they get clogged. We’re not saying that’s what always happens, but it does happen more often than not.
So, what do you need to do? What is the proper way to maintain the gutter? Well, the gutters often clog at the entry point of the downspout. A load of different debris can be found in the gutter and it takes no more than a clump of leaves and sticks to clog the gutter. Once that happens, the water stays trapped in the recess and the only way it can leave it is to overflow.
Once that happens, you’re not only dealing with the clogged gutter. The overflowing water is damage the paint on your house, it’ll find its way to your foundation and possibly your basement and cause a significant structural and financial damage. Now, to the question at hand – how to prevent this from happening? Essentially, all you need to do is climb a ladder once every month or two, inspect your gutter for debris and clean it out if it’s there.
You can easily schedule this inspection on every last weekend of the month. If you do it regularly, it shouldn’t take longer than half an hour at most. Obviously, you don’t have to do that, it’s just a recommendation. We would also recommend inspecting the gutter after a significant storm.
Strong winds can easily fill your gutter with all kinds of debris, so if the weather allows it, inspect your gutter the day after the storm. However, if the gutter does become clogged during the storm or any other time, and you don’t want to clean it yourself because you’re scared of heights or just simply don’t want to, you can always hire a professional crew to do the cleaning for you. For example, someone like www.guttercleaningspecialists.co.uk will get the job done and may even offer you some additional advice and how to keep your gutter clutter-free.
-
Trim The Surrounding Trees
Like we’ve already mentioned, the main cause of the clogging are leaves and twigs from nearby trees and hedges that end up on your roof and then inside your gutter. A slightly stronger wind will easily break off a twig or two, or blow away a lot of leaves from a tree and onto your roof. This can especially be a problem during the fall when the leaves are falling off on their own. Therefore, if there is a large, tall tree or a hedge close to the roof of your house, you might consider trimming some of the branches to keep your roof clean. This may be a lot of work at the time, but it’ll keep your gutter free-flowing and clog-free.
However, if the tree happens to be so large, or meaningful, and you cannot or don’t want to trim it, there are other ways to keep the leaves from entering your gutter. For starters…
-
Use A Leaf Blower
A leaf blower is a really handy thing to own if you have a lot of trees in your backyard. Come the fall, the yard will be covered with yellow, brown and red leaves and you’ll use your blower to at least clear the pathway to the shed. But, why stop there? A leaf blower is a powerful tool, so, grab a ladder, climb onto a roof and blow away the leaves from the roofs and from the gutter. And if it happens that the leaves are wet and you can’t just blow them out of the gutter, how about this?
-
Use A Garden Trowel
A garden trowel is a very useful tool that everyone should have – at the very least, for situations like these. Sometimes, leaves get wet and it’s hard to just blow them out. That’s where a trowel comes in handy – with just one scoop you can clean a significant portion of the gutter. However, not everyone likes climbing on the roof or cleaning the gutter themselves. Luckily, there’s still one more thing to try out.
-
Install A Gutter Guard
The single greatest way to prevent the clogs from happening is to install a gutter guard. There are a few options out there – from gutter screens to fine mesh gutter guards, but all of them are better than just leaving a gutter exposed. What they essentially do is, let the water through, keep everything else outside. You’ll still need to clean them from time to time, but it’ll be significantly easier to clean them than to unclog a gutter.
Hopefully, by the time the next rain comes, you’ve read this and are now prepared to prevent your gutter from clogging.
