Every so often throughout the year, you climb up on your ladder and start scooping dirt and leaves from the gutters (or, you hire someone else to do it!). It’s not a glamorous job by any means, but it is actually one of the most useful things you can do to keep your house safe from water damage. Also, gutter cleaning will expand the life of your gutters by years to help you stretch your dollar.
Why Clean Your Gutters?
Gutters actually get very dirty over time, especially if you live in an area with trees and other plant life around. Even if it’s not leaves and pine needles in your gutters, a layer of silt and dirt can accumulate and may even sprout seeds of any weeds or nearby plants. No matter where you live and what surrounds you, your gutters are going to get dirty and need cleaning. The only difference is going to be how often they need to be cleaned.
Read: Benefits From Cleaning Your Gutters
Since gutters can always get dirty, the risk is that leaving the dirt and debris will cause clogs that make gutter ineffective or will create the perfect circumstances for mildew, rust, and leaks. If clogs are left unattended for too long, it’s easy for any of these things to happen underneath all the leaves, dirt, and various other debris.
If you still persist in ignoring the gutters, the weight of trapped particles and debris will become too much when it rains. Clogs keep water from flowing through the gutters, meaning it will all be standing in one section of the gutter. Not only will it leak everywhere, it will also be too heavy and may start to sagging, eventually breaking off entirely from the house. In the winter time, this is a particularly bad problem, as rain may freeze into even heavier ice in the gutters overnight.
How Gutter Cleaning Keeps Gutters around for Longer
If you put less stress on your gutters during their lifetime, they are bound to last a lot longer than they would without the right maintenance. Clean gutters are strong gutters, and they are less likely to experience issues if they are kept in good working order.
By cleaning your gutters, you are helping to prevent circumstances that would cause damage to your gutters. Even if they could be repaired, it’s better to completely avoid having to do repair work on the gutters if you want them to last for as many years as possible. The more repairs you have to do, the less likely you’ll be able to do another repair in the future, and you may end up having the replace them before their lifespan is supposed to be at an end.
Conclusion
Maybe you don’t like gutter cleaning, but it is an important part of keeping your gutters in good shape and helping them to last longer. If you don’t want to keep up a frequent enough cleaning schedule, there is always the option of hiring a servicing company to come take care of it for you. You may even save money in the long run, because you’ll get a few more years of useful life from your gutters!
