The Experts' Guide to Life at Home by Samantha Ettus

Author:Samantha Ettus [Ettus, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48447-5
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2011-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

52

CLEAN GUTTERS

MICHAEL HOLIGAN

Michael Holigan is the host of the nationally syndicated Michael Holigan’s Your New House television show on the Discovery Channel. He is the president of Holigan Family Holdings Ltd., a Dallas-based company offering tips and advice on how to build, buy, and remodel houses.

There is nothing quite as beautiful as a tree, and nothing that leaves as big a mess to clean up (except maybe kids). The real problem occurs when those leaves start clogging up your gutters. Your gutters are only about 3 inches deep, so it doesn’t take many leaves to cause a dam that any beaver would be proud of. And once the rainwater starts backing up in your gutters, the water is going to start flowing over the sides until the weight finally pulls the gutters off your house. The rain is then going to come straight off your roof in sheets and destroy any plants and landscaping below until you pay someone a big fee to install new gutters.

There are easy ways and hard ways to keep the gutters clean. We will start easy. You need a ladder and a whisk broom on a dry day. If the leaves are dry, you can easily sweep them out and over the edge. Notice “over the edge.” I know it seems silly to have to spell it out, but don’t sweep them onto your roof, as they will be back in your gutter in a few hours. You will be amazed at what I have seen homeowners do.

The second option is a leaf blower. If the leaves are dry and you have a low pitch on your roof, you can walk along the edge with a leaf blower and blast them out of there. This is the fastest way but probably also the most dangerous if you are not careful. If you don’t want to get on the roof, use the leaf blower while on a ladder.

The broom and the leaf blower are not going to work if the leaves are wet. If this is the case, you will need a spatula that fits inside the gutter—not a big one but one that is the same width as the bottom of the gutter. You need to get all of the leaves out, not just the ones on the top.

Once you get the gutters cleaned out, you may find out that the water still backs up. That means you have a clog in your downspouts. This is normally caused by broken sticks and branches that get lodged in there and then leaves that catch on them. In my home, clogs in downspouts are caused by model airplanes and other kids’ toys that can be shot, thrown, or lobbed up onto the roof. Invariably, they will wash into the gutter and get lodged into the downspout.

The easiest way to break up these clogs is a plumber snake (an auger), a long piece of steel on a reel that plumbers use in toilets and sewer lines to break up clogs.

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