The Fall season brings a change in weather, temperatures, nature, and extra work around the house to keep up with the changing environment. Leaves change color and eventually with fall with withered branches. The weather temperature drops and tests the durability of your roof. It’s important to prepare your gutters for the new season and this article will provide 5 ways to do that.
1) Clean Your Gutters
The first thing you should do is to clean your gutters. If you haven’t touched your gutters much over the summer, it’s likely that they’re full of crud, leaves, and small branches from heavy rain and wind storms. You should spend a weekend giving your gutters a thorough cleaning to get every last foliage debris (e.g. seed, leaf, twigs) from the trough of your gutters and downspouts. Once you’ve cleaned out the gutters on a particular side of your house, pour water down your gutter to make sure any crud you missed gets washed through the downspout. It’s possible you’ll have to do another cleaning of your gutters in the middle of Fall, but performing a pre-Fall clean will save you much time and effort later.
2) Inspect Your Gutters for Damage
Now that your gutters are cleaned inside and out, you can inspect it for any small or large cracks or loose parts. Some questions you will want to figure out include:
- Are your gutter filters falling apart?
- Are the seams starting to split?
- Is your downspout loose and pulling away from your house?
- Is there a section of your gutters that you need to replace?
- Are there any cracks in your gutters?
Falling leaves will weigh down your gutters in coming months, so it’s very important that you fortify your gutters. Adding additional gutter support will be a lot less expensive and time-consuming than replacing a gutter or downspout that’s pulled away from your house from leaf weight.
3) Repair Your Gutters
Did you find leaks in your gutters? Is your downspout pulling away from your house? If you noticed any small or large gutter damage during your inspection, the next step for Fall prep is repair. Anything that is missed or left not repaired could lead to water and debris seeping into your basement or cause your foundation to be damaged. It’s much more cost effective for you to make gutter repairs now, than have to make significant repairs or replacements to your entire house later. Depending where you live, Fall could bring ice and snow to damage your gutters further. Making repairs now will build strong gutters going into the new season.
4) Surrounding Tree Maintenance
The third step for preparing your gutters for Fall is to perform some maintenance on the trees surrounding your roof. Walk around your house and make note of which trees have branches that are either hovering over or are located closest to your gutters. Then take clippers or an extendable saw and trim back branches around your roof. Trees and branches will continue to grow in the first part of Fall; this can result in leaves falling your gutters or branches damaging your gutters. Give yourself a head start by trimming branches back—if you’re lucky, all you’ll have to do is rake leaves off your lawn.
5) Contact Exterior Remodel & Design
Are you too busy to prepare your gutters yourself? Did you find severe damage to your gutters? Would you prefer a professional work on your gutters than yourself? Exterior Remodel & Design is made of up a team of top-skilled and experienced roofing professionals who can inspect your gutters more in depth, make repairs, and create top-notch gutter reinforcements.
Contact us by phone at (402) 861-0000, by email, or visit our contact form.