Sunday, April 26, 2009

Spring Gutter Cleaning

We've had a lot of rain over the past few days, and it looks like it'll keep up for at least another day or two.

Since we moved in there have been pretty regular "issues" with the downspouts, as they get a pretty good build-up of leaves and twigs which can block the flow and plug the downspout. Plugged downspouts lead to water coming in at the foundation, which has meant water getting into the basement.

I took a little time when the rain stopped to go check the downspouts, and found that two of the four had some build-up. Neither was too bad, but one of them could have easily escalated to full blockage with a little more debris.

Five minutes of work and they're all cleaned out and ready for more rain. I also found that one of the drain lines was ready to come disconnected, which would have let all the water drop straight down to the foundation. Probably from the kids playing around it, would be my guess.

The blockage I get now is nowhere near as bad as it was last year thanks to the tree trimming I've been doing. Trees which were overhanging the house were cut back as much as possible, so now much of the junk ends up in the gutters thanks to the wind. I won't cut the trees back too much more, as they'll really start to look hacked up if I do that.

2 comments:

Jayne said...

I really need to clean out my gutters and downspouts. I don't have any trees, but the neighbors do & because their houses are so close to mine, a lot of junk from their trees falls into my gutters. Junk like acorns, pine needles, and sticks. Thanks for the reminder.

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