After the long, cold winter, you are ready for Spring. You want to clean up the yard, maybe put in some new perennials for the beautiful weather. However, you don’t want to forget about other maintenance, such as cleaning out your gutters.

Cleaning your gutters is one of the most important projects on the to-do list yet it’s too often overlooked. Unfortunately, many of us wait until late into the fall season when the very last leaf falls before we decide to get it done. This delay exposes our homes to potential damage. Plus, it makes the job a lot more difficult to do. If you do it a couple of times a year, in the fall and spring, cleaning gutters is easy. While it may seem insignificant, clogged gutters can cause water to back up into the walls and lead to many thousands of dollars in damage.

Perhaps the most important reason for cleaning the gutters is to prevent damage to your home. When gutters get clogged with leaves and other debris they can get heavy enough that the gutters pull loose and cause the trim and siding to begin rotting. The damage often begins with peeling paint and ugly water marks but the damage you don’t see is more severe than what you do see. The problem is not just in the outside damage, but it can also ruin the interior of your home. Another aspect it that standing water in a clogged gutter is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. In the winter clogged gutters freeze into heavy blocks of ice causing your gutters to pull away from your home, shorting the gutter systems lifespan and creating not only an overhead ice hazard but also large ice dams and icicles.

During an after-winter gutter checkups the crucial tasks are to remove leaves, acorns, sticks and other debris from gutters, so melting snow or spring shower can flow freely. It’s also important to check for any loosened gutters. The weight of water, twigs and other debris may loosen gutters and cause them to pull away from their attachments. This may lead to your siding and trim rotting. Provided you’re not confident in such work or you simply don’t have time for that call us and we will be more than happy to help you.

Don’t wait until the damage has occurred to do something about your gutters. If the overall damage doesn’t scare you well then maybe money will convince you to do the right thing. The saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is applicable to this situation. The time it takes to clean out the gutters or the cost of having it done is a fraction of what you will pay if damages occur. Preventing damage to your home only takes a short time but the effects of not doing it can last a long time. Save yourself the headache of repairs by scheduling this maintenance item on a regular basis.