How a Clean Gutter Can Protect Your Home

You might not think about your gutters too often. In fact, you might not think about them at all, until they are not working right. Then you notice what an impact this little part of your home has on the rest.

To get an idea of a gutter’s importance let’s look at how much water we’re talking about. On a 20 by 30 roof, a mere 1 inch of rainfall produces 370 gallons of water runoff!

That’s why roof gutter cleaning is so important. Imagine 370 gallons of water with nowhere to go! This can cause some major structural issues with your home if the problem persists.

In case you’re not convinced, let’s look at the problems that you can avoid with squeaky clean gutters.

Avoid Water Stains

With clogged gutters, water can’t run to its designated area. Instead, it ends up overflowing over the edges of your gutters. That means that it’s now running down the side of your house.

To make matters worse, the water is dirty because of all the muck that’s clogging your gutters. That dirty water will start leaving ugly water stains on the side of your home. Not the look you were going for, we imagine.

Avoid Damaged Siding

If you let the problem go on long enough, it gets worse. Simple water stains will be the least of your worries.

Water running long enough down the side of your home will make the siding itself soggy. Over time bacteria will start to grow and make your siding look nasty. Leave it long enough and the siding will rot.

Then you have some major home repair issues to deal with. And you could have avoided it all with a quick but thorough roof gutter cleaning.

Avoid Flooding

There is another nasty side effect of water overflowing your gutters. The water ends up pooling around the base of your home. As it sits it saturates the ground surrounding your foundation.

If left for long enough, the water will find its way through your foundation and flood your basement. In houses that don’t have basements, it often takes a long time to discover the problem. Most people don’t crawl around under their houses too often.

Even if the water does run off on its own, it will take some soil with it. Your foundation will lose part of its support. That causes it to settle and at some point, it will crack.

You can imagine what kind of problems will present themselves. Cracks in the foundation of your home is not a good thing!

Avoid Dirty Siding

There is one more issue with overflowing gutters. This one has more to do with aesthetics than causing actual damage.

When water overflows the gutters, it strikes the ground alongside your house. It strikes the ground with enough force to rebound against the side of your house.

The water almost always takes some dirt with it. You end up with streaky, dirty siding around the base of your house. Not an attractive look.

Lengthen Gutter Life

Letting your gutters sit full of water and debris is not good for the gutters either. Debris and backed up water is heavy and will weigh your gutters down a lot.

The purpose of gutters is to keep water flowing, not hold a bunch of weight. Regular and proper roof gutter cleaning will keep your gutters free of all that weight. This will lengthen the life of your gutters by quite a bit.

Avoid Creating Homes for Pests

There is one other problem that accumulated debris in your gutters can create. It can create a nice comfortable home for annoying little pests. The type that you don’t want to hang around your house.

Mosquitos love all that standing water. It’s the perfect habitat for them to live and breed. Did you know that they only need 10-14 days to create a home in standing water? That means there will be even more of these annoying little buggers around to bite you.

Ants and termites are happy burrowing in the piles of debris. Plus, once your siding gets soggy and soft enough, they will start burrowing into the side of your home as well.

The moral of the story? A good roof gutter cleaning helps to keep your home free of annoying pests.

Avoid Creating Ice Dams

During the cold times of winter, another problem can arise. During the day the sun and the heat from your home will warm the snow sitting on the roof. If there is a clog in the gutter, the runoff has nowhere to go. It will stay sitting in your gutter.

At night the temperature goes down and the water will freeze. This can not only cause damage to your gutter but also form an ice dam.

That ice dam can push water up under the shingles and even into your attic. This can cause some serious damage over time. Once your attic insulation gets wet it will start to grow bacteria resulting in mildew and it is very difficult to dry it out.

A Solid Roof Gutter Cleaning

So how often should you clean your gutters to avoid all these problems? It depends.

At the very least you should plan to clean them once in the fall and once in the spring. But if you live near a lot of trees, you should plan to at least check them more often. They may need a regular monthly cleaning.

To avoid the inconvenience of roof gutter cleaning, make it easy on yourself. Pick up the phone and call us to schedule a cleaning! Trust us, you’ll be thanking yourself that you made the decision.

Don’t waste your weekend on gutter cleaning. You’ve got better things to do. And with our reasonable prices, you can keep your gutters sparkling clean all the time.

Check out all the great things our customers are saying about us here. You’ll see how great our service is and how easy it is to keep your gutters clean.

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