Gutter News & Information

Did you know that just a few large leaves or as little as 10 pine needles can be enough to block water from flowing through your gutters? Clogged gutters can lead to pooling water, flooding in your yard, and even cracking foundations. That’s why it’s extremely important to ensure that runoff water and snowmelt moves easily throughout your home’s entire guttering system.

So how often should you have your gutters cleaned?

It’s summer, and most teenagers are enjoying their time away from school by sleeping in, goofing off, and just generally lazing around the house and doing nothing.  As parents, we know how unfair (not to mention annoying) this is. So it’s well past time to follow that time-honored American tradition of making the kids do chores, especially the ones you don’t want to do, and paying them for it.  Consider this before making them an offer:

-        How hard is the job, and how long will it take?  Is it something they’ll have to do every day, or something that will only be done once?

Generally, it’s nice that your neighbors take an interest in maintaining their homes; cleaning their siding, getting their gutter free of standing water, maintaining their landscaping, that kind of thing.  It keeps up property values, it makes a good impression on visitors and prospective homeowners, and it just looks nice.  All of this is true … unless you live next to eighty-year-old Kevin Lavelle.

Lavelle, of the town of Stockport in the U.K., was a conscientious handyman, keeping his house exterior clean and neat. But he forgot one rather important aspect of it: wearing pants.  Or a shirt.  Or anything else.

If you’re concerned about debris clogging up your gutters, then you may want to consider a system of gutter protectors. These are usually gutter covers of some sort that are designed to keep out leaves and needles while allowing water to freely drain into the gutters.

If you’ve already started looking for gutter protectors, you’re probably well aware that there are various brands and types of gutter protectors to choose from. Here are five questions to ask yourself before purchasing one.

Source: http://www.sxc.hu

Gutters are supposed to be a simple drainage system to keep runoff water from getting into your foundation. However, certain members of the animal kingdom may see gutters as a cozy place to hang their “Home Sweet Home” sign. Here are eight examples of unwanted guests that may be found living in your gutters.

Chipmunks. Sometimes, Alvin and his friends like to cause a little mischief in your gutters. You can try to keep them out by affixing hardware mesh cloth over your gutter downspout openings. Or you can use rat poison to get rid of them for good.

The autumn season is commonly known as “fall” for a reason. That’s because it’s the time when all those beautiful leaves on your stately trees suddenly decide to cascade down onto the surface of your yard. It’s bad enough that you have to spend your time raking, blowing, and gathering leaves throughout the fall. But the fact that many of them get stuck in your gutters and cause rainwater to spill onto the ground is enough to make you yearn for an apartment lifestyle.

How can you get some “leaf relief” for your gutters? Here are four tips:

Ah, yes – “no-clog gutters”: the Holy Grail of home drainage systems. If you could just find those elusive no-clog gutters, then most of your water runoff problems will simply wash away – literally. But is it really possible to have true no-clog gutters on your home?

Image: ghclark.com

Judging by the ads you see on the Internet, no-clog gutters are just a phone call or email away. Many companies and contractors market their products and services with the “no-clog” moniker, and a few even offer some sort of warranty or guarantee. But do they work as well as advertised?

Some of the simplest — yet most wondrous — parts of nature are the leaves that decorate our trees. They augment the beauty of spring and provide vibrant color during the autumn months. Yes, leaves are beautiful … until they fall into our gutters, that is. Then they become troublesome rubbish.
]
Image: gutterworks.com

Everyone wants leafless gutters, but accomplishing that goal can be difficult. Unless you enjoy teetering on a ladder and scraping wet, soggy debris out of your gutters a few times a year, consider one of these seven alternatives for achieving leafless gutters:

Installing a gutter is expensive even during the best of times. But for some people, it can get really, really costly.  How costly?  Try $10,000 … or even more.  Here are three situations where your gutters will cost you a pretty penny.

1. Concrete Construction

Fortunately, we rarely run into this in home design, possibly because most people don’t enjoy a home that feels a bit like a prison.  But it’s still a major concern: concrete doesn’t like water more than any other building material.  As anybody with a flooded basement or a driveway knows all too well, concrete tends to crack and erode when exposed to large amounts of water over time.  Of special concern are the joints of an all-concrete structure: a gutter design has to specifically funnel as much water as possible away from those areas.

There are lots of ways to know if your gutters aren’t doing their job, from the obvious to the subtle.  There are some signs we can all catch, even if we’re not the most handy. But what about the more subtle ones?  We’ll start with some of the obvious ones and work our way down to the ones that are harder to spot.

1. Water spilling out of your gutters. This is the most obvious sign that something’s wrong.  If you look out the window and a waterfall seems to be coming off your roof, it’s time to look into getting those blocks cleared.