Gutter and Down Spout Maintenance

Main­tain­ing your gut­ters and down­spouts is not a chore that any home owner I know enjoys but the impor­tance of it is significant.

Clogged gut­ters and down spout­ing can hold water that becomes stag­nant and cre­ates a breed­ing ground for mos­qui­toes and other insects. I have seen gut­ters with trees and weeds grow­ing out of them (A really nice look for any house), but above all of this the water and debris in the gut­ters becomes very heavy and begins to pull the gut­ters off of the house. The water will also have to find another way off of the roof when the gut­ter is clogged so it will have to go over the gut­ter or find its way back in behind the gut­ter, fas­cia and sof­fit; pos­si­bly find­ing its way into the inte­rior of the house but def­i­nitely caus­ing water dam­age to any­thing in its path.

So it is rec­om­mended that twice a year you inspect and clean all of your gut­ters and down spout­ing, once in the spring and once in the fall (after the leaves have fin­ished falling). This should be done whether or not your gut­ters have guards or screens installed on them. I haven’t seen a gut­ter guard yet that elim­i­nates ALL debris from get­ting into the gut­ter and some­times the guards get dam­aged and need to be repaired.

If you don’t like lad­ders or you really despise the idea of clean­ing gut­ters there are con­trac­tors who offer gut­ter clean­ing and main­te­nance ser­vices (me included).

Clean­ing your gut­ters and down spouts:

• All of the leaves, twigs and other large debris need to be removed from the trough of the gut­ters. (This is best done by hand using a bucket or other con­tainer so that you don’t get this stuff all over the sid­ing of the house and you don’t have to col­lect it off of the ground or flower bed areas.)
• The smaller stuff like dirt, silt and what­ever else it left in the gut­ter should be rinsed out. (DO NOT rinse this stuff into the down­spouts if the down spouts are hooked into a drain. You don’t want to have to call some­one out to snake out the clogs in you drainage sys­tem.)
• If the down spouts are clogged they need to be cleaned out. Some­times a gar­den hose will push the clogs out. But most of the time they need to be removed and cleaned out a piece at a time and then rein­stalled. (If they are held together by screws all you have to do is remove the screws and reuse them later. If the downs spouts are held together by riv­ets, the riv­ets will have to be drilled out and new fas­ten­ers used later.)

Inspect­ing and main­tain­ing your gut­ters and down spouts:

• While clean­ing the gut­ters, inspect the fas­ten­ers that hold the gut­ters in place and make sure that they are in good con­di­tion. Replace or re-secure any that are com­ing loose.
• Check for leaks around any and all seams in the gut­ters and seal up any leak that is found with sil­i­cone caulk­ing or a gut­ter sealer.
• Check all down spout con­nec­tions and fas­ten­ers or brack­ets. They should all be tight and you shouldn’t be able to move the down spouts.
• Make sure that all of your down spouts are still direct­ing the water where you want it to go.
• Replace any dam­aged sec­tions of gut­ter, down spout or gut­ter guard.

For More infor­ma­tion on Gut­ter func­tions and impor­tance please see my other post:

Gut­ter and Down Spout Function.