Keeping your gutters clean is an essential part of maintaining your home. Clogged gutters can…
You know that gutters have a purpose, right? They aren’t just ornamental décor to complete the roofline. They carry water away and the downspouts carry the water out away from a structure, lies your home or a commercial building. However, they get filled with debris and dirt, leaves, limbs, and nests from birds and insects. When they get too much of that stuff in them, they can’t work like they’re intended. That is where gutter cleaning comes into the picture.
If the gutters can’t send that water to the downspouts and the downspouts can’t send it away from the foundation, that water can either overflow and pool up around the foundation, or back up under the shingles. Either way, you’ll soon find out why to hire commercial gutter cleaning services, because that service will be a lot less expensive and intrusive than a new roof or foundation work.
Can You Just Do It Yourself?
If you don’t mind spending your Saturday afternoon cleaning your gutters of that debris, dirt, and gunk and cleaning out the downspout, go ahead. It isn’t a fun activity and it can get gross and nasty, not to mention the trickiness of climbing the ladder with equipment, gear, and tools to do the cleaning.
Don’t forget some gutter sections may need refastening or replacing, which means climbing up and down the ladder more, maybe even a trip to the home and garden store or parts and supplies. About that third time down the ladder, you may start wondering why you wanted to clean your gutters instead of hiring a professional gutter cleaner.
Or Maybe You’ll Wonder Why Do They Need Cleaning?
The one time you decide you can clean your gutters yourself, they may not have much in them, so you wonder, why do they need to be cleaned at all? So, in three or four months when it is “time” for cleaning your gutters again, you may think to yourself, why bother, they weren’t that bad last time. Well, let’s look at why the professionals from a commercial gutter cleaning service recommend a regular schedule to clean your gutters and why it is so important.
The Foundation Damage
When you skip cleaning your gutters once, it probably won’t cause any issues, but more than once, the problems can start building. That water that doesn’t back up under the shingles and it overflows out of the gutters, it will pool up around the foundation of your home and soften the soil. Your house will settle with the softness and cracks happen. The water freezes and unfreezes and repeats the process around and under foundation cracks. The ground will heave, and the foundation will heave with it. Eventually, your walls aren’t lined up between the ceiling and the foundation.
Rotting Wood
Gutter cleaning will prevent water from overflowing onto the ground and saturating the ground. Otherwise, clogged gutters will lead to creating moisture that will rot the fascia and soffit, the part gutters attach to. Wood rot doesn’t just stop at one place, it spreads to other areas, into your attic, and creates an entry point for rodents, which begins another batch of problems. As the wood rots, it won’t be able to hold the gutters in place, they break and fall as they fill up with that dirt and grime.
Leaky Roof
With professional commercial gutter cleaning services, your gutters will drain properly and that will stop ice dams from building during the winter from snow melting, thawing, and repeating. When this keeps happening, the melted ice and snow will migrate into the attic of your house and the ceiling will develop leaks, moisture will build up in the attic, mold grows, spread through the house.
Insects Infesting
A professional gutter cleaner will remove the dirt and debris from your gutters and keep them from sitting and getting moist and attracting insects. Those insects will make their way through your house, some are wood-eating insects like carpenter ants and termites. What the water doesn’t ruin, the insects will damage and destroy.
Leaking into the Basement
Professional gutter cleaning keeps the water running off and away from your home’s foundation and seeping into the basement. The water will collect there, and mold will begin growing, weakening the walls of the basement, the house, and permeant through the vents where your family will breathe that in, making them sick.
In Closing
If you want to do your own gutter cleaning, you should. Just make sure you do them two to three times year to keep the clean and the water flowing as they are intended to work.