As a homeowner, you want to do everything you can to protect your property. Unfortunately, the gutters are often an overlooked area of the home when it comes to regular maintenance, and not giving your gutters the proper attention they need can lead to a host of problems for your home.
Cleaning out your gutters may not be the most enjoyable task, but thankfully with gutter guards, you can eliminate the need for regular maintenance. If you want to achieve clog-free gutters for your home, keep reading!
What You Need to Know About Clogged Gutters
While clogged gutters may not sound like a high-priority issue for your home at first, the truth is they can eventually cause serious damage when not taken care of properly. Thanks to the series of gutters running along the roofline of your home, rainwater is directed away from your property. This system can become interrupted when debris clogs the gutter’s pathway or another issue occurs, and the result can be considerable damage.
When the gutter system has a clog somewhere in the line, it can’t keep up with the flow of water as it should, especially during heavy rain and storms. This leads to the rainwater overflowing and causing different types of water damage. A clogged gutter system may create any of the following problems:
- A damp basement: An overflowing gutter system means rainwater isn’t being diverted from your home, and instead is seeping into the ground below. The extra water can easily make its way into your basement through cracks and porous walls. A buildup of moisture in your basement can cause unpleasant smells, stains, damage to belongings, and in more extreme situations, flooding.
- Issues with the foundation: Related to moisture in your basement, water that seeps into your house’s foundation can make existing cracks larger and cause shifting and settling in the walls that can damage the overall structure of your home.
- Damage to building materials: Any water flowing over the edges of the gutters can leak into the surrounding roofing materials and trim and all the way to the interior walls and ceilings of your home. This can lead to stains, cracks and crumbling surfaces both outside and inside of the home.
- Damage to landscaping features: All that extra water from the gutters falls more heavily on the ground than with regular rainfall due to the additional weight and pressure. This can cause erosion to the walkways, driveways and ground around your house and damage to delicate plants and other landscaping features.
- Health concerns and injuries: Dealing with clogged gutters means you must climb a ladder to fix the problem. Unless you’re a trained professional, doing so can be incredibly dangerous, as slip and fall accidents are common when ladders are involved. Additionally, when moisture gets into the home, it can lead to mold, which can be hazardous to the health of any inhabitants.
These damages can come with expensive repair bills. In addition, the staining and water damage caused by clogged gutters can reduce the curb appeal and selling ability of any home. For so many reasons, clogged gutters are an issue you’ll want to take care of as soon as possible to prevent further consequences.
How to Prevent Clogged Gutters
If you want to prevent the damage discussed above, you have a few options for achieving clog-free gutters:
- Perform regular roof inspections: While it may not look like it from a distance, your roof is home to debris, leaves, critters and most likely a baseball or two. When your gutters share this space, any object on the roof can damage their pipes. A clean roof and guarded gutters can work together to ensure a longer life span for both home necessities.
- Keep up with regular landscaping maintenance: Most gutter clogs come from fallen leaves and twigs, among other debris, so ensuring your landscaping is well-trimmed can go a long way when increasing the life span of your roof and gutters. This is especially important for any trees or taller shrubbery that hit your roofline or hang over your roof.
- Clean up yard debris that could become airborne: It’s not just the tall trees in your yard that need attention — rake any leaves piling up in the yard, ensure your garbage and recycling bins are secure and watch for shingles or building materials coming loose. This will help reduce the amount of airborne debris that could make its way onto your roof.
- Replace your gutters with high-quality upgrades: If your gutters seem to be clogging often and require more work and hassle to keep them maintained, it might be time to replace the whole system with something better. A new system is likely to perform better than your older system. It’s also more likely to have premium features like filters, improved water flow and higher quality materials that are more resistant to wear and tear.
- Add gutter guards to your system: An even easier upgrade for your gutter system is to add gutter guards. The most effective clog-free gutter systems begin with gutter guards. These helpful additions to your system fit on top of open gutters and filter out the leaves and other materials that would otherwise fall into the gutters and lead to clogs. Overall, gutter guards ensure that only rainwater falls into the gutters. This added protection completely eliminates the occurrence of clogs.
Get Gutter Protection From Clogs With Our Products
If you want to never clean your gutters again, it’s time to install professional, high-quality gutter guards from All American Gutter Protection. Our revolutionary gutter guards are made from high-quality, long-lasting materials like stainless steel and aluminum — never plastic or vinyl! The micro-mesh gutter guards offer superior protection against clogs and other gutter issues.
We’re so confident in our gutter guard systems that we guarantee their performance. If you’re ready for permanent clog-free gutters, give us a call today. Our experienced team will gather all of the necessary details and provide you with a gutter guard estimate.
