How to Keep Your Gutters Clean and Avoid Property Damage

• Posted on Alyssa Moylan
• in Home Improvement
• on December 9, 2021
• Comments Off on How to Keep Your Gutters Clean and Avoid Property Damage

Gutters are often neglected when doing house chores. But, if left unattended, they can become a severe problem, and it’s essential to keep them clean.

Otherwise, they will get blocked with leaves and twigs from nearby trees or debris from the wind. Here are a few tips from our professional window and gutter cleaners:.

Tools You Need

Before you start doing anything, bear in mind that gutter maintenance is dangerous. Professionals advise simply calling for hired help. But if you are confident in your own abilities, here are the tools you need.

• A ladder

• Working gloves

• Plastic scoop

• Wire

• A hose

• A bucket

How to Keep Gutters Clean

Climb carefully on the ladder with your working gloves on. For safety measures, make sure you read our guide on ladder safety.

Scoop out loose debris by hand, starting at a drain outlet at the low end of a gutter. If most of the waste is solid stuff like leaves, you can remove them by hand. If you prefer to minimise the patio clean-up after that, put them all in the bucket. If the gutter is full of liquid debris, use the plastic scoop.

Clear obstructions in drain pipes. Sometimes, the most problematic places are the drain pipes after they get clogged. To fix this, climb down the ladder and use the wire to scrub the inside of the drain pipe.

Use an on-off, high-pressure nozzle at the end of a water hose. Blast some high-pressure water through the drain to clear everything left.

How to Keep Gutters from Freezing

This is the most challenging task of all, as ice will clog and damage your gutter. What you need for this is good home insulation.

1. Inspect the attic for cracks. First, you need to check and repair any visible leaks.

2. Purchase insulation for the entire attic (if it doesn’t have any). This should include the ceiling and the floors. The best way to keep your gutters from freezing is to ensure a temperature above zero for the whole ceiling and attic.

3. Apply heat tapes along the roof, just above the gutters. Heat tapes include electric heating wires that help with melting the snow.

4. Remove snow from the gutters after a snowfall. Sadly, we can’t tell the sky not to snow over our house, and why would you? Snow is great!), so if there is snowfall, you’ll need to clean the gutter as soon as it ends.

5. Use rock salt on the gutters. Rock salts do wonders with snow and ice. They can prevent the ice from building and work as an additional precaution.

How to Keep Gutters from Clogging

Here, we are going to talk about preventative measures. If you wish not to climb a ladder and clean your gutters too often, you can install gutter protection to keep most undesirable debris out.

• What you need is called a gutter guard. It’s a type of barrier that goes on the horizontal open pipe. Now, it’s not something that would keep your gutters clean forever, as debris come in all forms and sizes. But it will significantly decrease the number of times you’ll have to get on a ladder.

• Clean if your gutter is clogged right now. You cannot start the installation if it’s already full of garbage and debris.

• Attach the metal clip to the front of the gutter. In general, this is the best way to keep your gutters well maintained and free of leaves. Big leaves, that is.

• Snap the back slips underneath the shingles.

• Make sure to check the gutters for debris occasionally. Just in case the guard might not be working well enough, you’ll have to do a few seconds of inspection every month.

This is the easiest thing you can do for protective measures. It also comes in different colours, so you can match whatever you like. You can also see it from the ground to ensure it’s there. You’ll be surprised at how many people would love to have it.