Gutter Cleaning - Why, How, When, Tools and More

Everyone knows gutter cleaning is important. Cleaning gutters is a job that must get done every year for most homes. It can be difficult and tedious, because unfortunately not every one knows how easy or how much fun it can be when you know how to clean gutters. Yes it is fun. Being on a ladder or on a roof gives you an adrenaline rush and when you finish a tough gutter cleaning job you feel as if you have climbed Mt. Everest and back again. Be Safe, and learn proper gutter cleaning methods and you can have fun!

Why is Gutter Cleaning Important?

Cleaning the gutters on your house is a great way to protect your investment. When they are properly working, gutters collect the water from your roof and channel it away from your home. Cleaning your gutters on a regular basis prevents them from getting clogged and over flowing. Clogged gutters can spill over into areas around your house and cause flooding and water damage. Gutters that are not cleaned regularly can rust through and then have to be replaced. This can be very expensive.

Cleaning Gutter and Fixing Clogged Downspouts

Clogged gutters are annoying and occasionally they are hard to deal with. The best way to unclog gutter downspouts that are over flowing is to start by uncapping the clog at the top of the down spout with your hand. 50% of the time this will get them flowing again. Be careful it doesn't clog back up with the loose debris. If that doesn't work, try unclogging the downspout with a toilet snake or a long garden house (be careful on ladders.) and snake your through the clog. If that doesn't work, or if the clog is further down, you will have better luck un-attaching the downspout, cleaning it out, and then re-attaching it. Where a rain suit if you have one or else do this from the side or you will get very soaked. :)
Another reason why people have their gutter cleaned is because they can see the weeds growing over the top. In the late Spring it is not uncommon to see 3 to 4 ft weed growing out of the gutters on some houses. When your neighbor start commenting on how beautiful your (roof) garden is, this is a good indicator that you need to have you gutters cleaned

Gutter Cleaning Tools

There are really several tools you need to clean gutters. Let's look at each of these gutter cleaning tools listed in order of importance and explain why each type of tools is needed.
The first tool you need is a good ladder. If you have a smaller build, I would suggest an aluminum ladder. If you have a bigger build, you may need a fiberglass ladder. Aluminum ladders typically hold 200 to 250 pounds. Fiberglas ladders hold 250 to over 300 pounds. Fiber glass is a little heavier than aluminum. In most cases a 24 to 28 ft ladder will work fine for 2 to 2 1/2 stories. It is also a good idea to have a ten foot a frame for getting on the roof on the first level.

Other useful gutter cleaning equipment you might need include gloves, a square bucket with a handle, a gutter cleaning rake, and safety line and a safety harness for extremely high or steep roofs. A gutter rake is my favorite gutter cleaning toll. You can buy these for less then $25 dollars. b They can greatly speed up the time it takes you to get a job finished, allow you to reach around windows, and stay further away from the edge. They makes the job faster and less dangerous. You want to use a flat bucket, because it balance better then a round one.
Your line and harness should be high quality. If you don't know how to install it properly ask a contractor or work with someone that does. You may also need some spiked roofing shoes for ceder roofs. One brand that I like is called Korker roofing shoes. When buying safety equipment

I usually upgrade to the most expensive equipment out there as soon as I can.
Other gutter cleaning tools you might need:
A down spout unclogging tool. (Usually a elongated coat hanger works great.)
A hose,- for flushing the down spouts when you are finished clearing them
A hammer and nails for fixing gutters as needed
A flat and a Phillips screw driver.
A sealer for patching gutters or filling nail holes in the roof.
In some cases, a wet dry vac can also be used to clean out the gutter.
These is every gutter cleaning tool I use to clean gutters on a regular basis. If you have anything else you would recommend, or think would be useful, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks, Spencer

My Experience Gutter Cleaning

For the last two years I have been cleaning gutters in some of the richest suburbs surrounding Portland, Oregon. Nearly every house is situated on a steep hill surrounded by trees and a lot of these houses are in excess of 3 stories. After two years of gutter cleaning, most extreme sports don't seem very extreme any more. Portland is likely to be the hardest place on earth to clean gutters and we were extremely busy with our start up business Fall, Winter and Spring. This is the land of perpetual rain. And in the winter, you will often have the intensity of a tropical rainstorm, down around 35-40 degrees. We have a ton of deciduous trees and pine needles. I have learned that Pine needles fall year round and the Spring time blossoms can clog almost as many gutters as the leaves in the Fall. I this job. It is very fun and exciting. Every job is a new challenge and it is always fun finding new and inventive ways of gutter cleaning, that both save me time and increase my profitability. I will try and give you the best advice I can, but you also need to be extremely careful because gutter cleaning has many variables including wind, slippery roofs and frost bite. Always dress warmly and wear the proper safety equipment. Even though it is fun to work fast, you should never rush.

Why Are There Not Very Many Old People Cleaning Gutters?

Why are there not very many old people cleaning gutters? The whole time I was cleaning gutters, I only saw one or two people that work older than me, and I am a pretty young guy. This is why I think there were not a lot of them:

1. Old people don't clean gutters because people have a tendency to get more intelligence as
they go through life.(or at least rule out dumb choices) I started cleaning gutters when I was very young.

2. If I was not as young as I was, I never would have cleaned out some of the roofs that I did. It takes a lots of gusto to put forth the effort to risk your life to make only $150. When I worked as a gutter cleaner, I cleaned gutters in Portland Oregon. This is probably the most dangerous place in the world to clean gutters. It rained about 95% of the time. A lot of the roofs were covered with wet slippery moss. Not very much fun, but at the end of the day I feel like I had accomplished some great task.

3. Old people will get hurt a lot easier. During the last few years I have only fallen off of two roofs. But man do they hurt. At least I was using my safety line the first time. It caught me about halfway down and then slammed into the side of the house. Then I let go of my line and tell another 9 feet. It was not very much fun. I learned that even if the roof doesn't look icy on the south side, it doesn't mean that it isn't icy on the north side.

4. I also think that a lot of people who are daredevils, (and you have to be a daredevil to
clean out gutters,) don't have a very high life expectancy. I vividly remember two jobs I went to where the owners took time to point out me where the previous guys had fallen off the roof. For a minute I felt relieved that I wasn't the only one dumb enough to fall off a roof. Then I started thinking about how I needed to increase my life insurance just in case. While I am not one to be easily daunted by a hard task, I received a lot of extra encouragement from my wife and from my inner self to improve my life by starting a blog rather than spending all day cleaning out gutters. Now I am grateful that I made the change even though the first years of life cleaning gutters and blogging were actually very hard and difficult.

Gutter Cleaning Tips - Start to Finish

Here are a few steps to make your gutter cleaning process easier from start to finish:

If you are a know how to clean gutters, great, this article will only help you to improve your skills that you already have.

As a professional gutter cleaner, I have cleaned out hundreds of gutters every year. Each time I clean out a gutter, I try and focus on how to do it faster and how to do a better job. I have found that it is normally best to start with clean gutters in the front of the house. This is because these gutters are the easiest most of the time. And you can feel great because you'll be moving quickly as you make an effort to clean that. If your house is only one story, and your wrist is not very steep, you can clean them simply by sitting on top of your roof and bending down and cleaning them out with your hand or with a gutters. You want to bring a bucket up along with you so you have some place but the degree that you do from the gutters. If your house is two stories, you'll be best to do it with a ladder. When I buy a ladder for gutter cleaning, I usually like by a 24 foot ladder with just all lakes. This will allow me to lease to the top of any two-story house. And it will also allow me to have a steady ladder as I climb up to clean them. Another tool that I have found helps me out immensely, is to have a small gutter snake, or toilet snake. This allows me to complete and effortlessly unclog all of the downspouts. A third tool which I like to use is a better rate. I put my gutter rate on the end of a 12 foot extension pole, and it does a great job at cleaning out gutters, especially those that are not completely full. By being able to clean out 12 feet on either side of the latter, I don't have to go up and down the ladder quite as many times, and I can still get the job done fairly quickly. If the roof is more than three stories, you will probably want to go back to cleaning it from on top of the roof. Only now, you'll want to make sure that you have a safety line and a safety harness. As you reach over the edge of the roof and clean out the gutters, make sure that you are safely anchored to the top of the roof. Safety, is your number one priority. Please be careful not to go on groups that have ice on them. Also be extremely careful when Bruce are slippery, or when you are cleaning the gutters on the corners of the house. As a general rule, a ladder that is less than 30 feet is safer than the root. When you are using a 30 foot ladder, make sure that you have a spotter that will help you put the ladder up, because if you are not used to it, you may be lacking in strength and balance.

Spring Gutter Cleaning?

What, gutter cleaning in the spring? Actually cleaning out your rain gutter in the spring is just as important to cleaning out your gutters in the fall. In the Spring time, gutter can often be clogged by tree blossoms or even by pine needles a tree branches that have accumulated on your house over the winter. All of these things can a frequently do cause your down spouts to get clogged and overflow your gutters especially in the spring.

In the spring you often get a lot more rain then you do in the fall. In addition, the rain comes down very heavily. Heavy rain is nice, because it cleans off your roof, but the downside it that often most of the debris gets trapped in your gutters and then causes them to over flow. If you clean your gutters in the Spring you can keep this from happening. Spring gutter cleaning is less tedious and a lot more enjoyable then cleaning them in the winter. You can typically do it in half the time. Spring gutter cleaning will allow you to have clean, dry gutters all Spring and summer. This will mean that the gutter on your roof will probably last a lot longer and they won't need to be repair your replaced.

Another reason to clean them clean in the Spring it to keep weeds (and trees) from growing out of your gutter. To often, weeds and tree seeds that have blown onto your roof, start growing out of your gutters. Not only can this be embarrassing, but it can also cause damage to your gutters and down spouts. Therefore, cleaning out your gutters on a regular basis will prevent them from getting damaged or from having to be replaced and is very import to do even in the spring.

HOW TO CLEAN YOUR GUTTERS

Knowing how to clean gutter is very important. Gutter cleaning can often be seen as a boring job. Not only that, it is a time-consuming and wearisome task compared to other chores within the home. However, gutter cleaning is extremely important to every homeowner. The potential problems that could arise from untended gutters are far more complicated, as well as pocket draining.

Gutters are the collecting system attached along the edges of your roof. They collect water running from your roof during massive rains. Gutters are essential to keep the heavy flow of water from falling directly into the sides of your house. Without gutters, the heavy downpour of water will damage whatever it hits below. Unfortunately, water is not the only thing that gutters collect. Due to winds and rains, different materials also find their way into our gutters. Debris such as dead leaves, twigs, dead insects and dirt accumulate within your gutters. Even kids’ toys, doggie bones and bird’s nest find their way up there! If left unattended, the accumulated materials will clog up and stuff up your gutters.

In order to clean your gutters, the first thing you must do is to plan ahead. Choose a day when you have no other things to bother you, such as a weekend. This is really important. It would be such a headache if you are constantly being interrupted in the middle of your cleaning. Also, choose a day that is fair. You cannot clean your gutters under extreme weather conditions. Intense heat will exhaust you and might possibly cause heat stroke. On the other hand, a rainy day will make your ladders slippery, which could lead to accidents.

Prepare all the tools you would need, and recruit the help of a friend who can assist you while you
perform this laborious task. Once you’re ready, set up your ladder securely before ascending your way to the gutters. Once you have reached the gutters, reach out as far as your hands can take you, and start removing all unwanted materials using a gutter scoop. You can either dump the trash below, or collect them in a trash bag. After removing the debris, wash the gutters off with water coursing from your garden hose. This will flush away any remaining dirt. Next, proceed to scrubbing and brushing. Your gutters are bound to be filled with slimy black spots and grime. This can be eliminated by using a gutter brush. The gutter brush usually has a long handle that will enable you to cover more sections of your gutters. After brushing, get the garden hose and do a final washing to completely remove all the dirt.

Before calling it a day, be sure to check for any breaks or damages present in your gutters. See to it
that your downspouts and draining systems are clear and free from any blockage. Make sure that the gutters are still intact, and all attachments are working properly. Also check that the water flows and drains smoothly. Once you’ve ascertained that your gutters are still in excellent working condition, then you can put aside all your worries and give yourself a deep breath of relief, because finally you have accomplished your biggest task of the day.

Knowing when, why and how to clean your gutters will ensure the success of cleaning your home
gutters.

Useful words
how to clean gutters, how to clean out gutters, , how to clean rain gutters