Spring time brings a lot of fine debris to gutters--blossoms and pollen. It accumulates in the gutters and easily clogs the downspouts--particularly if a few twigs have blown in from the last winter storm.
This spring--especially for the north east portion of the country has brought more rain than normal which means clogged gutters become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
By this time of year, you'll start noticing seedlings beginning to grow in your gutter and another two weeks from now they will be peeking over the top of your gutter.
Time to get out the ladder and take to the roof edge to clean the gutters. Wear rubber gloves clean the gutters to protect your hands from any cuts that may occur with leaf guards that you might need to deal with.
If you have the screen type variety of gutter protector they often need to be cleaned. Sometimes you need to remove them to clean them.
One homeowner wrote asking about the light bulb type strainer that get installed in the downspout. My answer is that if you do nothing else, definitely install the strainer. It will keep your leaders from clogging and from experience I'd rather clean fifty feet of gutter than take apart one downspout and clean it out. It seems that the debris always seems to compact in the elbows and leader making it a real job to clean them.
While you're on the ladder, inspect your roofing for any damage from the winter winds.
Obviously if you can walk on your roof, cleaning gutters is relatively easy if you use a blower. Stick the end of the blower down the downspouts to blow them free.
At some point in your life, you'll say enough is enough and begin the search for a serious gutter protection device to eliminate the chore of dealing with ladders and mucky gutters. The serious ones are professionally installed and can be in the thousands of dollars.
The problem is that all of them seem to offer a life time warranty against gutter getting clogged and when you look at the designs of all of them, the design flaws of some of them are obvious--others not so.
When you look at their websites, you'll see beautiful animations and life-time claims. But it's important to project a few years ahead and see what it will look like dealing with all the debris you'll have to clean from your gutter.
Instead of publishing pictures of beautiful new gutter covers as you'll see on most youtube videos, we actually visited installations after 9 and 15 years in very heavy debris conditions and video taped the outside of the gutter as well as the inside.
If you'd like to know more about the Waterloov system go to our website www.waterloov.com.
We in Florida are being bombarded with mosquitoes this year, more than ever! If you wish to keep within a budget and not have your gutters cleaned on a regular basis,you can save money by purchasing a new wet/dry vac tool that you can vacuum out water,snow,leaves,and all debris, from the ground, in less time, and its safer and cleaner way of doing a nasty dirty job. Now you can do it more often and not wear yourself out dragging around a ladder and not becoming a "injury statistic" from falling off the ladder. See this tool at www.GutterClutterBuster.com and see for yourself how very easy it is, even for an elderly lady in her 70's. Keep those West Nile breeding skeeters on the run!
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