What Are The Risks of Cleaning Gutters Yourself?

You want to save some dollars by cleaning out your own gutters. You go up that ladder and take a fall. So much for your savings! What are the risks involved when you clean your gutters yourself? Here are some of the important factors that professionals see and you don’t:

1. Injury or harm. You get up there, a one-man crew putting up your ladder, climbing, and the next thing you know, you start to fall. When people call for a gutter cleaning crew, it’s mainly because, a. They’ve fallen off a roof and they’ve learned a lesson, b. They’re afraid of heights, or c. Their wives or husbands do not want them climbing up ladders anymore. It’s a risk any time you use a ladder.
2. When the gutters are in the fascia board and it’s an older home, you run the risk of pulling the gutters away when you put the ladder down, it comes in on top of the gutter and it forces it down. Those nails will pull out of the rotten or older fascia, and you’re going to have to fix that.
   We carry a $5 million dollar liability insurance, so if we cause it, we fix it. If you do it yourself, you’re going to have to pay to get it fixed or you’re going to start Google-ing DIY projects to put that nail back into your gutters or to replace the fascia altogether. That is another risk that you run.
3. Gutters dent pretty easily. If you’re just one guy and you slam the ladder down, it’s going to dent the gutter. You take a hammer and try to bang it out. It’s never going to look the same. Try to be gentle when you do these kinds of things and look if the damage is present already when you make the decision to call a professional or not.
4. Tools that help clean gutters. If you have stuff in your downspouts and if you have a lot of gutters, we have tools that can actually reach and pull stuff to us. In the downspout particularly, you can’t really see what’s in there unless you have a snake, really good light, or you’re a hawkeye. We have pressure-washing equipment that is able to blast stuff out of there. That is the biggest thing about gutters: you can have cleaned-out gutters, but if your downspouts are blocked, they’re going to fill up, start pouring over, and you’re going to get basement and foundation problems. If you don’t have the right equipment, you’re not going to be able to do it. You’ll never know what kind of problem you have until you get up there and start looking around.

If you’re not sure about any of these things, give the professionals a call for a good gutter cleaning service.