Fall is my favorite season. Sure, summer is activity packed and spring is refreshing and full of hope, but early autumn speaks to me like no other. The crisp mornings and evenings, the blue sky watching over the yellow, red and orange leaves, and the slow, natural progression towards the comfort of the holiday season makes it unique.

Yes, Fall is my favorite season…well, at least it starts out my favorite. Then the nonstop rains come and the fall/winter choirs like cleaning the gutters need to be done. Yep, that choir that suddenly make’s summer jobs such as mowing the lawn and weeding the flowerbeds seem not so bad after all.

The first consideration regarding gutter cleaning is when to do it.

There is one school of thought that says to clean them early in the season so as to create available capacity for the upcoming leaf and needle fall. This plan reduces the chance of having overflows during the fall rains but leaves (no pun intended) you with full gutters the rest of the year.

The other idea is to wait until most of the leaves have fallen so that the gutters don’t fill back up immediately. This plan keeps the gutters cleaner for much of the remaining year but subjects you to drips and overflows while waiting for the last leaf to fall.

The indecision between which plan to follow is a result of an understandable desire to have one gutter cleaning suffice for the entire year.

In reality, this may or may not work. Some homes, simply as a result of the environment surrounding them, require gutter cleaning four to six times a year. Others may be able to go every other year between cleanings. The point is that there is no “standard” gutter cleaning schedule that applies to all homes.

What you do not want to do is put your home at risk of damage from water intrusion at the exterior walls and windows, basement leaks, foundation degradation and erosion (we all saw what happened this Fall in the SW Hills) and premature rusting of gutters. Sometimes the cost or effort of a relatively small job will help prevent a much more serious and costly one. And of course, you won’t have to listen to the constant drip, drip, drip…!

Tags: clean gutters, downspout clogs, Gutter Cleaning, gutter leaks, gutter protection, Roof Cleaning