Gutters are a hardworking part of your home, ensuring that you and your home stay protected from the elements. However, many homeowners overlook the significant role gutters play in protecting your home and don’t engage in maintaining or repairing their gutters as often as they should. It’s understandable — they’re not a part of your home that’s considered very much, and hiking up a ladder twice a year can feel like a daunting task when you’re already pressed for time and just keeping your floors clean feels like a big achievement. But let’s talk about why it’s so important for your gutters to be cleaned out and in good shape, and why you should hire a gutter cleaning company.
Take a Minute for Your Gutters
Your gutters run along the edge of your roof and connect to downspouts, which funnel water away from your siding and foundation. There are two main types of gutter shapes — half-round and K-style. The K-style is often what people picture when they think of gutters. Generally speaking, you need about one downspout for every 30 to 40 linear feet of gutter. The more downspouts you have, the greater the capacity of your gutter system.
The most popular material for gutters is aluminum, followed by copper, steel, and vinyl. When thinking about the size of your gutter, remember that bigger isn’t always better. If you live in icy temperatures, ice buildup and snow in big gutters can weigh it down and cause it to break.
And just a reminder — your gutters should be cleaned out twice a year! We’ll get to why that’s important in the next section, below.
Why Is Keeping My Gutters Clean So Important?
A gutter’s primary function is to keep water damage from impacting your roof, keeping water away from the foundation entirely, and preventing moisture from collecting in your windows. Water damage to your roof can significantly reduce its lifespan, cause rot and mold, and present you with an expensive roof repair or replacement cost.
Moisture in the windows causes your windows to fog up between panes with condensation and can negatively impact your windowsill or inside walls. And bad gutters can mean basement flooding, erosion around your foundation, or straight up damage to your foundation, all of which are a homeowner’s nightmare. Indeed, clogged gutters are the top reason homeowners face issues with water in their basement.
Think about it this way — one inch of rain in the summer puts nearly 1,500 gallons of water on your roof. That water has to go somewhere. Every gallon of water weighs about eight pounds. If your gutters are clogged and the water can’t run through them, they’ll be supporting thousands of pounds in water — not good news for them.
Be smart about your home maintenance and simply keep up with clearing debris out of your gutters and doing routine inspections to make sure that everything is working as it should.
Why Should I Hire a Gutter Cleaning Company?
Let’s face it — a house is a lot of work. And sometimes we can’t always get to everything we want to get to. That’s where professional gutter cleaners come in. They might also work for a larger company that can handle gutter installation and gutter replacement if necessary. A gutter cleaning company can make that twice a year cleaning easy as pie. They’re professionals, so they come equipped with the tools and know-how to make it extremely quick and easy.
Hiring a professional gutter cleaning company takes the stress, time, and hassle out of doing it yourself, but still ensures that the job gets done when it needs to. If you schedule it in twice a year, that part of your home maintenance is all set without any further thought!
Do yourself a favor and look into professional gutter cleaning companies. They’ll make it easy to check at least one homeowner’s task off your list every year.