Hiring a local gutter cleaning company is the most cost effective way to maintain your rain gutters and protect your home from the damaging effects of water. Local professional gutter cleaning companies, like Clean Pro Gutter Cleaning, provide a valuable service to homeowners and businesses as well as help the local economy and keep local businesses viable.
Hiring A Local Gutter Cleaning Company vs Hiring A National Firm
Hiring a local gutter cleaning professional to come out and clean and inspect your gutters and downspouts is one of the best things you can do to protect the most important thing that you own, your home. For most people, their home is the single biggest financial asset that they have. They put a lot of money into a down payment, spend a lot of money on upkeep, and making monthly payments on it for years.
Why is it important to keep these things in mind in regards to gutter and downspout cleaning? It’s because your rain gutters aren’t just there for decoration, they are there to do a job. They are there to keep rainwater from flowing in an uncontrolled manner which can end up causing a lot of expensive damage to your home.
Why Is It So Important to Hire the Best Gutter Cleaner?
Water is one of the most destructive things that your home is exposed to on a regular basis. Water from rain doesn’t care where it flows, it’s pulled down by gravity and follows the path of least resistance as it flows downward. If that path happens to have it go into a place that will cause damage to your home, well then you could end up with some very expensive problems.
In a worst-case scenario, uncontrolled rainwater could end up seeping into cracks in the foundation of your home. Concrete is a great building material that makes an ideal foundation, but it’s also prone to cracking. Most of the time those cracks are not cause for a lot of concern.
However, if water is able to penetrate into those cracks, and temperatures drop below freezing, then that water will expand as it freezes and it could very well split your foundation. Then you are looking at having a company come out to repair your home’s foundation, which usually comes with a bill in the tens of thousands of dollars range.
What other types of problems can water cause? Well, one of the major ones that you should be concerned about is toxic black mold. There are black mold spores everywhere just waiting for water to come into contact with them so they can become active. Then they turn into a nasty toxic black mold problem that can quickly spread and necessity the hiring of a mold remediation company. You’ve probably guessed by now that this isn’t an inexpensive thing to do, and you would be right.
Hiring a professional mold remediation company can leave you with a bill in the thousands of dollars. On top of that, you may end up paying even more money out to have the materials damaged by the water replaced.
Can You Clean Your Gutters Yourself?
Now that you know that gutter guards are ineffective the next option for keeping your gutters clean that you may be thinking of is cleaning your gutters yourself. While this is a job that you may be able to do yourself doing so is not a good idea. For one thing, you are not going to be able to do as good of a job as a professional gutter cleaning company.
Professional gutter cleaning companies use specialized tools and equipment and have training and experience that the average person doesn’t. So, while you may be able to do a somewhat decent job of cleaning your own gutters, you won’t be able to do as good of a job as a professional company is able to do. Which means that cleaning your own gutters is a bad idea.
Not only will you likely fail to do as good of a job cleaning your gutters as a professional, you also won’t have the experience it takes to spot problems that a professional will be able to spot. For example, when you hire a local gutter cleaner they are going to be actively looking for problems while they are cleaning your gutters. They can spot structural issues while they are still minor problems, which can save you a lot of money by preventing them from becoming major issues.
The final reason that you probably don’t want to try cleaning your own gutters is that it is a very physically demanding job. It involves climbing up and down of a ladder repeatedly. It involves sticking your hands into the disgusting muck that is in your gutters. It’s generally a very unappealing way to spend your day. Think about it, you probably don’t have as much free time as you wish you did, so do you really want to spend what free time you have doing a dirty job like cleaning out your gutters?
Are Gutter Guards A Viable Option?
Many people hear of the promise of gutter guards and envision never having to worry about having their gutters cleaned again. They see a way to invest some money in a product, and then never having to worry about hiring a local gutter cleaning company again. The promise of these types of products is definitely very appealing, unfortunately, it is a false promise.
Gutter guards, shields, screens, covers, or any other type of gutter device designed to keep debris out of gutters do not work the way that they claim they do. They are a waste of money, and they can actually end up causing you to need expensive repairs. So, no, gutter guards are not a viable option to having your gutters cleaned by a professional on a regular basis.
Why Should You Hire a Professional Gutter Cleaning Company?
Now that you know that gutter guards don’t work and that cleaning your gutters is not a good idea, that leaves you with the option of hiring a professional to clean them for you. Not only is this the last option you have available to you, it also happens to be the best option you have. If you want your gutters and downspouts to be cleaned the right way so that they last a long time, then hiring a pro to do it for you is the only option you should be considering.
The first rule of finding the best gutter cleaner is to only consider a professional company that is licensed, bonded, and insured. Why is this so important? It’s important for a number of reasons. The most important of those reasons is that it provides you with financial protection in the event of some kind of accident. Accidents happen. Even the best gutter cleaner in the world could have a bad day and make a mistake. Or there could be some kind of fluke thing that nobody saw coming that ends up causing an accident.
If there is an accident that results in your home being damaged by a professional company that is licensed, bonded, and insured will have insurance that will pay for the damages in most cases. If you hire a handyman or someone that is not insured and they damage your home, do you really think that they are going to voluntarily pay for those damages?
Probably not, and the biggest issue you are going to run into here is that you won’t have a lot of legal recourse available to you. If handyman damages your home while they are working on it, then you are probably going to end up paying for the damages yourself.
While the prospect of having your home damaged and the damages not paid for by the person causing them is bad enough, it’s actually not the worst thing that could happen. In fact, it’s not even close to the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing that could happen is that the handyman you hire ends up getting injured while working in your home.
If they don’t have any insurance coverage then they may actually be able to file a lawsuit against you. That means that you could end up having to pay a lot of expensive medical bills. Obviously, this is not a situation you ever want to find yourself in.
The last reason that hiring a licensed, bonded, and insured company is the best course of action is that they are almost certainly going to do a great job for you. Any company that cares enough about what they do to go through the process of becoming licensed, bonded, and insured, is going to want to protect their reputation. They know that their future success depends on keeping their clients happy, so they will usually go out of their way to keep you happy.
How Do You Find the Best Gutter Cleaner?
Hiring a gutter cleaning company that is licensed, bonded, and insured should be the minimum qualifications that you are looking for. This is a great starting point, but that’s all that it really is. If you want to ensure that the local gutter cleaning company you are considering hiring is a reputable one, you need to spend a little time doing some research. Fortunately, the internet makes this easier than ever before.
The first thing you want to do is go online and see what former or current customers of the local gutter cleaning company that you are thinking about hiring have to say about them. Are most of the reviews positive? If so, then this is definitely a good sign. Are there more than a few negative comments that are being made? If so, then this is not a good sign, and it means that you should probably look elsewhere and avoid hiring the company in question.
Hiring Local Gutter Cleaners Saves You Money
Hiring a gutter cleaning company that is locally based is a good idea for many reasons. For one thing, a local gutter cleaning company is going to have an excellent idea if what it takes to keep the rain gutters in your area clean and in good working order.
They know about the rainfall in the region, and they also have a good idea of what types of plants are around that can contribute to debris that gets lodged in rain gutters. The point here is that a local gutter cleaning company is an expert at cleaning gutters in your area, which means that they are an ideal choice for you to hire.
When you hire a local gutter cleaning company you can spend some time talking with them about your home and what their recommendations are for it. They are experts and they can tell you exactly what you should be doing to keep your gutters and downspouts in excellent condition. You can generally trust a professional gutter cleaning company to give you their honest opinion for the same reason you can trust them to do their job well, their reputation depends on it.
After consulting with you and then cleaning your gutters the company you hire should spend a few minutes explaining to you how the job went. This should include any problems they ran into, any repairs they had to make, and any repairs they did not make but recommend that you have completed in the near future. They can also schedule gutter cleaning appointments in advance for you so that you don’t have to worry about forgetting to take care of what is, in fact, a very important part of your home.
The main reason that people either try to clean their gutters themselves or hire a handyman to do it for them is to try to save money. Ironically this is often the exact opposite of what happens. From poorly done jobs to damaged property, to an injured handyman, there are a lot of things that can go wrong when your gutters are being cleaned.
Will they definitely go wrong? No, but you need to think proactively and plan for the possibility of them happening. When you do that you should quickly realize that when it comes to having your gutters cleaned, hiring a professional company with a great reputation is the only way to go.
This post originally appeared in 2018 and was updated in September, 2019.
