Is there a way to make gutter cleaning easier? A great many people do not particularly enjoy having to stand on a ladder and clean out their rain gutters, yet fortunately for them, there are items which help make this somewhat easier. These are called gutter guards, gutter filters, leaf guards and many other names, yet the one thing they all have in common, is that they limit the amount of dead leaves and other organic material that ends up in your rain gutters, eventually clogging them.
The principle is easy enough to understand – a piece of steel or plastic which is perforated in some way, is placed over the top of the gutter. Here, it will catch a large portion of the organic material passed up the wind or washed off the roof by rainfall. The advantage is that whatever it catches would not end up in the gutter, where it would otherwise decay in to a mud-like substance which restrains the progression of water very effectively. There are many different designs, with numerous shapes and sizes of holes, and made for any kind of rain gutter you can imagine. Whatever guttering you have on your home, there will be a gutter guard that fits.
Yet, how well do they work? Some makes are certainly marketed very optimistically, claiming that you never have to clean your gutters again. This defies rationale, of course. At some point the gutter guards would not hold more material, they may even obstruct completely themselves, and the water will start flowing over the edges of the guttering. This is not good – in fact this is exactly why we have gutters on our homes and buildings in any case – so by then you should act.
Eventually, evenĀ Gutter cleaning tips guards have to be cleaned. So what good are they? Well, a great deal, actually. Remember that they keep a great deal of bad stuff out of your gutters – which would otherwise stop up the gutters – and your downspouts and sewers! In the event that you think cleaning gutters is dreadful work, then you should take a stab at cleaning a downspout! Or on the other hand what about having to call someone to come and clean your hopelessly clogged sewers which are overflowing due to a vast amount of dead leaves from the roof? This is where you can either clean your gutters often, or install gutter guards and do a little less cleaning. In my view, that is how gutter guards ought to be used.