Keeping The Eavestrough Clean And Maintaining It
Water from the rain may cause extensive damage to your home. It explains a lot why the most vital thing to look for in a new home, after ticking the top five must-haves of a home, is the eavestrough. Essentially, it protects your home from water damage in two ways. It harvests the water and stores it in reservoir tanks or drains it away into the main drainage system. Cleaning and maintaining the eaves trough is well worth your efforts as it helps solving the issue of potential home insurance claim. The entire cleaning process may be a dirty one but the perks are promising. It merely entails the following.
What you need to start cleaning
These are simply the things that you are going to need to clean and maintain the eavestrough. First, you need an extendable ladder. Depending on the size of your home, find a ladder that perfectly suits the activity. Safety needs to be on your mind when selecting the ladder. This means the ladder has to get you safely and easily to the eavestrough without scaring the wits out of you. Ladders with standoff stabilizers are ideally good for the activity.
Next, you need cleaning attire that you do not in the least mind getting dirty. The shirt needs to be long-sleeved. Rubber gloves come in handy for getting rid of leaves that have been in the eavestrough for quite some time. Ensure that the gloves are made of heavy-duty rubber for better results.
Thirdly, you need a bucket with you or a tarp below your work area particularly on the ground. As you go about cleaning, debris usually comes off falling. The bucket or tarp is suitable for catching all the falling debris. If you have a garden, you may make use of the collection of leaves and debris as a mulch to fertilize the soil and make your plants flourish.
A perfect eavestrough scoop will do when doing the cleaning. If you do not have one at your home, just check with your local hardware and get it. Alternatively, a plastic shovel mostly used by kids for playing may fit well for the job. As long as they fit deep into the gutter as you clean, you are better off with either of them.
Cleaning the eavestrough
The cleaning part is simple if you have all the items that you require for cleaning. Ensure that with you is a helper to keep the ladder stable as well as passing the items that you will need in the cleaning process. The best point to start is at one end of the eavestrough. This enables you to scoop off the dirt into the bucket and pass it down to your helper once it is full. Systematic movement around the eavestrough is the only thing that will help you get rid of a large amount of debris within a short time. Work from these focal points ensuring you leave no dirt behind.
Some parts are going to require more attention from you. For instance, the downspout is the part that takes the rainwater all the way down to the ground. As such, examine it keenly and get rid of any debris. If there is a blockage, clear it up. Blockages may cause an overflow even in a clean eavestrough and cause water to pour over the side hence damaging your home. As you clean, ensure you leave no debris and leaves behind in the downspout. Keeping it free from these two will let water flow well without causing any damage to the house.
After you are through with cleaning the eavestrough, let your helper pass a hosepipe and turn the water on. Running the water on the eavestrough removes tiny bits of dirt that may remain even after the previous cleaning. Moreover, it is an effective way of detecting any leak that may be there so you can patch it up.
Doing the repair
Once the cleaning activity is over, you need to shift gears to the worn-out parts that need repair. Over the years, the eavestrough tend to wear and develop leaks. When going about the repair, look out for cracked caulking or holes along the seam. If you find any cracks, you will have to fix them by using a good technological way. Bead silicon sealing is a good method for dealing with leaks present in the eavestrough. After identifying the leaking part, prep it and then apply the bead silicon sealing. For the next one year, you problem will be gone.
Depending on the length of time that your eavestrough stayed without cleaning, the task may have been a dirty one but worth the while. The good thing is that you will not have to worry about home damage again until a year is over save for planning a major repair or replacement of eavestrough. You can do the cleaning on a quarterly basis to ensure your eavestrough is clean throughout the year.