How Cleaning Your Eavestrough Twice A Year Can Save You Thousands of Dollars
October 5, 2020
We perform maintenance on many things we use; our car, computer, and cellphone come to mind. When you live in Ontario, you know there are four seasons, and in the fall, the leaves fall from the trees. Often, we rake leaves from the ground, but what about the leaves that don’t fall to the ground. They end up in our eavestroughs, and it is essential to do a thorough eavestrough cleaning to keep the channels open for drainage. Gutter cleaning is considered the best course of action when maintaining a roofing system because it is little work and saves thousands of dollars in costs. When you regularly clean your eavestroughs, you will be able to monitor the gutters to ensure they are in a good state of repair. Should you find damage to the channels, a simple eavestrough repair will correct the problem to keep the water flowing off the roof.
How Many Times A Year Should Your Clean Your Gutters?
When gaging the frequency of maintenance and cleaning for your eavestrough, you should enact a plan that requires a twice-a-year cleaning. It provides an opportunity to inspect the gutters, and you can examine the roof also, looking for defects or problems that might occur.
Benefits of Regular Roof Gutter Cleaning
- We need to protect our homes’ structural integrity, which is why cleaning the gutters regularly makes excellent sense. When water cascades over rain gutters, it falls to the ground and pools. Once water pools, it looks for a way to enter a structure like your home, and floods in the basement are commonplace when you have clogged gutters. Also, when water doesn’t flow freely from the gutters to the downspout, it will pool at the roof’s edge, and in no time at all, it is creating leaks on the roof. That is when costs multiply, all because regular maintenance wasn’t conducted for the eavestrough.
- A roofing system should last for many years as long it is well maintained. Your gutters should last the same amount of time if you keep them in good condition. You can extend the lifespan of your roofing system and gutters when regular maintenance is enacted. Keeping decay and damage from your roof will reduce maintenance costs, and replacement costs should be pushed into the future because you maintained your roof and gutters.
- Water is the scourge of any roof, and water will find any opening to enter your roofing system, whether we like it or not. Water can damage your roof’s decking and create a costly repair when shingles must be removed to get at the rotting decking panel or panels for repair. Also, water will leak into your attic because the problem isn’t caught in time, which creates a whole host of issues.
- Roof damage will allow vermin and insects an opportunity to enter your attic through openings created by water damage. Once inside, they will multiply, and you will have an infestation. Not to mention, vermin and insects carry germs and diseases that can impact your family’s health and wellbeing.
- Your landscaping is important, and the area around your home should slope to lower areas for water drainage. If you have a clogged eavestrough, water will run over the channel and pool on the ground causing sinkholes at the point of drainage. A small puddle turns into a large open pit, and the water will drain against the basement walls. The hole in your yard will be an eyesore that hurts property values if the situation isn’t corrected.
- Our home is our castle, and we don’t want to present a shabby home to the world. That is why we keep our gutters clean because it enhances the home’s beauty and protects the value of the equity we are accumulating in our home.
What Clogged and Damage Eavestroughs Can Lead To
Wood Rot
- Water needs to flow from your gutter to the downspout and away from your home. When water doesn’t flow, it will pool and sit, and over time create wood rot at the fascia. The fascia is a long wooden strip that joins the building’s roof edge, and rot here is hard to detect. If the water is allowed to enter the roofing structure, damage to trusses and decking is inevitable. The cost to repair trusses and decking is expensive; your roof may sag when the damage is acute, and that repair is difficult to complete without a complete structural overhaul. When you can see wood rot from the road, it creates an unsightly image of your home and one that takes away from the aesthetic appeal of your home.
Mould
- It is a big problem and one that comes with health risks. If water leaks into your roofing structure and cannot dry, the mould will grow like dandelions on a lawn in the spring. Remediating a mould problem is a tricky business and expensive, too, if you don’t keep the water out through regular roof maintenance and gutter cleaning.
Cracked Foundation
- When you have water leaking down your home’s walls because your gutters are clogged, it will pool at the foundation. Over time, it will erode the structural integrity of the foundation, and small cracks will appear. That is the entry point for water to enter your basement, creating a two-fold problem. The first is a cracked foundation that costs thousands to repair and water on the floor, causing mould and mildew to grow. In the winter, the problem is a lot worse, frost heave creates frozen water at the foundation, and it is prevalent in many older homes, causing significant cracking along the foundation walls.
Roof Leaks
- When water can’t escape the roof due to clogged gutters, water sits and pools. The water will freeze at the gutters in the winter, creating ice dams that force the gutters away from the house’s side. Water will back-up in this scenario, moving its way into the home; the water will also drain down the house’s side to the foundation when the gutter is pushed away from the fascia.
Slippery Sidewalks
- When your gutters overhang sidewalks or walkways and are clogged, it creates a dangerous situation. A slip and fall on an icy sidewalk is an injury waiting to happen, but you can eliminate the problem by cleaning your gutters.
Cracked Driveways
- It is crucial to have your gutters draining correctly and working with the downspouts to move water away from the house. When water is misdirected, it will pool on driveways and sidewalks, causing cracks and sagging, requiring a large sum of money to repair.
How Can Gutter Cleaning Save You Money?
As homeowners, we all understand an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, leading to home maintenance to stop expensive repairs from being a regular occurrence at our homes. To keep your gutters clear, hire an expert who does the work regularly. They know what to look for and will anticipate future problems with current solutions. Keeping water and debris out of your rain gutters is essential, and it will save a substantial amount of money. We want to share a few tips that will help save you money with gutter cleaning.
- Maintaining your gutters in good condition means you won’t have to replace them every time you turn around.
- You can keep up with any foundation issues that occur when you keep your gutters clear.
- You can maintain regular inspections that will identify roof/water leaks in their infancy. When you catch the problem early, it will be an inexpensive repair.
- Replacing and pruning shrubs keep the debris away, and those pesky leaves that end up in gutters are disposed of in the trash or compost pile.
- You can reduce the risk of mould problems to zero when you keep the gutters clear and prevent health and financial costs from impacting your life.
Preventing Gutter Damage with A Winter Cleaning
Once the leaves are firmly secure in your rain gutter, problems will eventually come to the forefront. If they sit, it impacts the orderly flow of water to the ground, bringing the water to a standstill. Once it is sitting, the water will freeze come winter temperatures causing problems. Water is heavy and will pull your gutters away from the fascia exposing the side of your house, causing a hefty repair bill. It is a self-filling prophecy that accumulating water will accumulate more water, creating devastation to any roofing system that relies on gutters to move water.
Who Can You Turn To?
When rain gutter problems affect your roofing system, a call to Integrity Roofers will solve the problem. We have over two decades preparing roofs for winter, and keeping the gutters clear is one of the tasks we perform. At Integrity Roofers, we recommend that you clean your gutters twice a year to prevent problems from becoming costly repairs. When we come to your home to clean your gutters, our technicians will be able to identify and solve any problem you have through their years of experience.
When you want to prosecute your rain gutter problems, call us at Integrity Roofers for a professional estimate and consultation based on current and future issues you may encounter. We are ready to receive your inquiry when you call us today at Integrity Roofers at 416-736-7373.
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