The end of the foliage season means the beginning of cleaning out your gutters, a nasty but necessary chore. Your gutters may hold dead leaves, pine needles, acorns, twigs, and debris. Clean flowing gutters are important all year round especially in the fall as the collection of debris is greater by dying branches.
Why do I need to clean my gutters?
Clogged gutters can cause serious water damage to your home. We have created a list of reasons you should clean your gutters:
Prevent Water Runoff
The purpose of a gutter system is to drain water away from your home, and it's the foundation. Rainwater can properly drain away when the gutters are clear and functioning well. Clean gutters can prevent rainwater from entering into your home's infrastructure. If the gutters fail to drain rainwater away from the house, it can lead to the corrosion of the foundation, walls, and basement floors.
Gutter Corrosion
When debris builds up in your rain gutters it eventually forms a material of corrosive sludge, which can comprise the integrity of the gutters. The sludge will eventually weaken and further damage the gutters as it eats away at the material, affecting the performance of water drainage. When the sludge builds up high enough pushing the water over the side of the gutters, it is not uncommon for the sludge to spill over as well, resulting in dirty stains on the sides of your home.
Preventing Ice Dams
It is important to clean out your gutters in the fall as you prepare for the long winter of nasty snowstorms.
In New England, we can expect mounds snow dumped on the roof and
before the temperature rises above freezing, the snow starts to melt from the emitted heat of the home. As the snow melts the snow on the rooftop, sheets of water will run down to your gutters. If the gutters are clogged, the water will not drain properly, and the runoff will freeze. This effect will cause ice dams from the overflows of ice. The additional weight of those pretty looking ice dams will put immense pressure on your gutters, causing them to shift away from the home and further damages to the fascia board.