Gutter Cleaning Facts
It’s time to work in the garden. Simplify gutter cleaning this year.
The leaves are falling, the rain is pouring, and your gutters are overflowing: it’s the season for gutter cleaning. At least twice a year, you need to clean your gutters. Can you make gutter cleaning a simple, straightforward task instead of an onerous chore?
Why Do You Need to Clean Your Gutters?
You rarely see inside your gutters, so why do you need to clean them? Whether their role is visible or not, it’s a critically important one for your home. Gutters move water from your roof to your drains. Without clean gutters, water backs up and cascades over the gutter’s edge. This can cause water damage to your siding, problems with your foundation as water moves into the ground, and troubles with your landscaping as it sits under a miniature waterfall day after day.
How Often Should You Clean Your Gutters?
Gutters get dirty, and they get especially filled with leaves and blossoms during the fall and spring seasons. If you live in a climate where you receive rain relatively frequently and you have trees that drop leaves and blossoms, you need to clean your gutters at least twice a year, preferably right after those trees have dropped their leaves and blossoms. Other factors can impact when you clean your gutters:
- If you live in a very dry place, you may only need to clean your gutters once a year.
- If you experience frequent fall or spring storms, you need to check your gutters for debris after a large storm.
- If you live on a tree-lined street and you live downwind from many of the trees, check your gutters more than once in the fall.
It can be safer to hire a professional than to clean your gutters yourself.
What Are Your Gutter Cleaning Options?
You know that you need to keep your gutters clean. What are your options for gutter care and cleaning?
1. Do it yourself
Cleaning your own gutters will save you money on professional cleaning. You’ll need to have your own supplies, such as a freestanding metal ladder and the cleaning supplies mentioned above. It’s also prudent to have a spotter: gutter cleaning can be dangerous, especially if the ground is unstable. Have someone there to spot you, stabilize the ladder, and watch you as you clean.
2. Install a gutter filter
Gutter filters come in many diverse shapes and sizes, and they are often a choice for homeowners who are looking for a product that will help reduce gutter cleaning. Filters capture debris that falls onto the gutters. However, over time, the filter itself can become clogged with debris. Adding a gutter filter will help the water flow in your gutters, but it won’t prevent you from having to clean.
3. Ask a neighbor
We’re all getting older, and so it makes sense to turn to a friend, family member, or neighbor for help. The challenge with this solution is that gutter cleaning can be a dangerous task. As the homeowner, you need to make sure that anyone who cleans your gutters is covered by insurance so that they will be able to seek coverage for any injuries that happen on your property.
4. Get a professional gutter cleaner
You can seek professional help on the gutter cleaning front as well. Gutter companies are available to remove debris from your gutters on a seasonal basis. Look for a company that has excellent insurance and an outstanding service record. Gutter cleaning tends to cost between $160 and $200 per cleaning on an average-sized home.
Is There An Alternative to Gutter Cleaning?
When you’re high up on a ladder struggling to get the last bits of debris from your gutters, you may wonder whether there’s an alternative to this chore. Can you skip it entirely?
Skipping gutter cleaning isn’t a good option. The cost of foundation damage from leaks, landscaping damage from overflowing gutters, and problems with your roof and siding can cost much more than the cost of gutter cleaning. However, if you install gutter covers, you can skip gutter cleaning for the rest of your time in that home. Gutter covers work by allowing water to run smoothly over the cover and slide into the gutter. Water clings to the cover with surface tension so a gutter cover with a nose-forward design prevents any debris from slipping in by sending it off the edge and onto the ground instead.
If skipping gutter cleaning sounds like a great idea to you, contact Lednor Home Solutions. Learn more about gutter guards and decide if they’re the right solution to your gutter cleaning problems.
