Homeowners have a lot on their to-do lists to keep their homes looking great and avoid major repairs. From pressure washing the siding to staining the shutters and pulling weeds, a household chore always needs completing when you own a home. One chore that should never be ignored is cleaning the gutters, something that’s often put on the back burner and dreaded by homeowners.
Though gutter maintenance and care isn’t a very exciting chore, it must be done to help protect your home from drainage issues. Keeping gutters clean ensures the inside is clean and clear of debris so water can flow freely through the system quickly.
It’s a great idea to perform gutter maintenance every season. Keep reading to learn how to care for your gutters with our seasonal gutter care guide and about a solution that ensures you never need to perform gutter maintenance again!
Why is Gutter Maintenance So Important?
Before we share our seasonal gutter care guide, let’s discuss why gutter maintenance is so important. For one, your gutter’s health affects how well the system performs; gutter systems with little to no gutter maintenance often leak or overflow while well-maintained gutter systems perform well and protect homes from drainage issues. How?
When a gutter system isn’t cleaned often, it’ll collect debris inside the gutters and even the downspouts. When a gutter has debris like leaves, twigs, roof sediment, and silt, it forms a blockage that impedes water flow, making it impossible for water to pass through the gutters and downspouts. As a result, water flows over the sides of the gutters or leaks through the tiny gaps in sectional gutters, collecting underneath the gutters.
What’s directly underneath the gutters? Your home’s foundation – an essential part of your home’s structure. Foundation damage is often a result of faulty gutters that leak or overflow, resulting in costly repairs that can be a nightmare for homeowners. In addition to foundation damage, other damage like basement leaks, roof damage, damage to the siding, landscape damage, and more can occur from dirty, faulty gutters.
Seasonal Gutter Care Guide
Understanding how important gutter maintenance is, you’ll want to do everything you can to avoid a disaster. Below is our seasonal gutter care guide to prepare you for gutter maintenance through every season:
Winter
Central Ohio is no stranger to snow. We get about 28” annually with most of it falling in January. Though we’re fortunate to have some mild winter days sprinkled in, winter lows are known to dip below freezing. There’s also a chance for ice storms, sleet, and strong wind gusts when winter storms approach.
Gutter systems work in overdrive every winter to protect homes from drainage issues. Depending on the snow, it can be very heavy when it falls on our roof and gutters; snow can weigh 20 lbs per cubic foot, putting a strain on gutter systems that aren’t mounted very well or some that have existing damage from past storms. Gutter systems are at risk of sagging from heavy snow accumulation, and forming ice dams when snow melts.
Some gutter systems still need maintenance during winter. However, if you inspect and clean your gutters, use caution when performing gutter maintenance in the winter since the ground underneath a ladder can be slippery, putting you at risk of falling or slipping. Do the following to care for your gutters each winter:
- Clean your gutters before the first winter storm to free up space in the gutters and take some weight off of it before heavy snowfall
- Contact a snow removal service to remove heavy snow from gutters
- Remove ice dams before they worsen
- Check for insulation issues in your attic to help prevent ice dams from forming
Spring
Your gutters are exhausted come spring. They worked all winter long to collect and drain snowmelt and icemelt and had excess pressure from heavy snow. If you cleaned your gutters in the fall or winter before the first winter storm, there probably isn’t much you need to do to prep them for spring.
Depending on the gutter system and gutter material, winter weather could have caused the paint to chip or the material to rust. Melting snow and ice can peel paint off of a gutter system made from galvanized steel or low-quality aluminum, exposing the metal. Exposed metal can develop holes, causing leaky gutters. If you notice any paint chips, holes, or rusty gutters or downspouts, contact a professional gutter installation company in Ohio like K-Guard of Central Ohio to inspect the damage.
Summer
Think of all the trees, weeds, and bushes that bloom every spring; they exacerbate allergies, and seeds and leaves get swept up in high wind gusts, often depositing them inside a half-round gutter system. This debris can build up quickly, forming a blockage inside the gutter and impeding water flow.
Give your gutters a deep clean at the start of every summer to remove all the debris from spring and to prep for fall. You can opt to clean your gutters yourself, enlist the help of a friend, or hire a professional gutter cleaning service.
Fall
Though fall in Columbus and surrounding cities creates a stunning backdrop, we have countless deciduous trees like oaks, maples, buckeyes, and more. Pine trees also shed their needles, resulting in a ton of debris that can find its way inside a gutter system. Even if your roofline isn’t surrounded by trees, falling leaves can get swept up in the wind and land inside your gutters.
Before winter arrives, clear the fall debris from your gutters at the end of the season. Removing damp leaves, pine needles, nut-like seeds, and other debris takes excess weight off the gutters and preps them for winter.
There is maintenance that can be done to your gutter system each season. Depending on the material and type of system installed and if trees surround your roofline, you might need to perform more frequent gutter maintenance. Of course, cleaning your gutters is a temporary fix that needs repeating multiple times per year, a daunting chore most homeowners dread.
A Permanent Gutter Solution from K-Guard® of Central Ohio
If you want a permanent gutter solution that never needs cleaning or gutter maintenance, consider installing the K-Guard® Leaf Free Gutter System. It’s a full system with multiple components like a curved hood that work together to prevent clogs while keeping water moving through the system rapidly. Because debris can’t enter the system it’ll stay clog-free for life! That means never having to perform gutter maintenance or repair your gutters again. Plus, it’s a seamless gutter system so there’s no chance for seams to loosen or the gutters to leak. K-Guard® gutters are best for Ohio because they can withstand any weather condition while never needing maintenance.
K-Guard® also comes with a transferrable lifetime warranty that protects your investment. Our lifetime warranty ensures your gutter system’s paint will never chip or fade, the system will never clog, and you’ll never need to perform gutter maintenance again. No other gutter system on the market can match the durability, capacity, performance, and warranty of K-Guard®.
Contact our team today if you’re ready to switch to the K-Guard® System. We’ll be happy to schedule a free estimate and provide a detailed analysis of your current gutter system and a quote for installing our K-Guard® Gutters.