After a windstorm or a fall rain, you hear the sound of clogged gutters. Drip, drip, and pour. Your gutters are telling you that you need to clean them. When your gutters are full of leaves, sticks, and other debris, do you pull out the ladder and get to work? Make sure that your gutter cleaning efforts don’t damage your gutters.

Can a Ladder Hurt Your Gutter?

Even a small branch that hits the outside of your gutter can cause it to warp, sag, and clog. While you may think that your ladder is more lightweight than the typical tree branch, when you press your ladder onto the outside of your gutter and then climb that ladder, your body weight presses against the gutter. This can warp the gutter, causing it to clog further, or it can cause it to sag due to pressure on the gutter brackets.

What Can You Do To Avoid Ladder Damage?

You don’t want your efforts to be the cause of future problems for your gutters. After all, you’re trying to remove debris from your clogged gutters, not cause further clogs. Many people use ladder stabilizers to stabilize a ladder on the roof rather than the gutter. These ladder arms attach to your ladder and distribute the weight of the ladder on a wall or the roof.

Talking to the Professionals

Not only is ladder cleaning potentially dangerous to your gutters, it’s dangerous for you as well. Ladders can slip easily, and you need a spotter to help you stay safe and stable on your ladder.

You must ensure that you use the right ladder for the job. If you have a smaller home, you could use a step ladder, but if you’re cleaning a taller home, you’ll need to use an extension ladder, which must be set up at the right angle so that it doesn’t slip and injury you and damage your gutters. As you get higher in the air, the potential injuries that you could experience increase, as does the chance that you’ll miss the mark when you’re setting up and send your ladder into a gutter or window by accident.

When you need to clean the gutters on a taller home, it’s often prudent to call in the cleaning professionals, since they have the experience and the proper equipment for the job.

Alternatives to the Ladder

You don’t need to lean a ladder against your gutters to clean them. There are many different gutter cleaning tools that you can use to clean your gutters instead. Gutter tongs act as an extendable arm, reaching into your gutters to remove debris. Gutter flushers attach to a sprayer and help remove grime from the inside of your gutters. A rotary gutter tool combines spraying and a brush to remove large debris and spray away smaller gutter debris.

If you’re looking for a longer-term solution to the ladder quandary, try installing gutter covers instead. Surface tension, nose-forward gutter covers allow water to move smoothly across the surface of the cover while debris slips off the other side and onto the ground. You won’t need to lean a ladder against your gutters because your gutters simply won’t be clogged.

At Harry Helmet, we’re here to simplify your gutter cleaning. In fact, with our gutter guards, you’ll never need to clean your gutters again. Contact us today to learn more about gutter guards and see how they can help you maintain your home.

Written by Del Thebaud