The gutters that encircle your home’s roofline are great for collecting runoff water and preventing it from seeping into the ground next to your home’s foundation. But they won’t do you any good if the water is not successfully directed out of your downspouts and away from your home.
It’s almost winter, and homeowners in snowy climates know what that means: ice dams. Ice dams are, of course, chunks of ice that form on your roof and trap snow melt. The melt freezes, then melts, then freezes, then melts, wrecking your roof, straining your gutters, and generally making the winter as miserable as possible. Fortunately, you don’t have to put up with it, and you can do more to stop it than just shoveling out your downspout and making sure it’s clear. Here are three great ways to ensure the melt goes off your roof and stays off.
No, you’re not seeing the classic gag that people pull off every April Fools’ Day. Nor are you looking at a design test for the common Christmas decoration of Santa hanging off a gutter: click this link to see two grown men doing pull-ups on a gutter system they’ve just installed. It’s actually a demonstration of how much weight a gutter can take, and it’s pretty impressive on its own. But it’s also an illustration of why testing is important … and how your gutter is only as good as the way it’s installed. Read more
The Northeast has received a record setting amount of snow this Winter. With every passing week, it seems we have a chance of a major winter weather event. Roofs and rain gutters in the Northeast are taking a pounding this season. The golf season for many including myself seems so far away at this point.
Take a minute after you read this post to go to the upstairs of your home and peak out a bedroom window at your gutters. Yuck, right, all that debris & leaves? Yes, it’s that time of year again where you need to start searching in Google and Yellow Pages for a gutter cleaning service to come out and clear your gutters from leaves, debris, twigs, etc.
Last winter the Mid-Atlantic region was hit by a series of monster snow storms known as “Snowmageddon.” The storms dumped two to four feet of snow on much of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, left hundreds of thousand of residents without electricity, and caused extensive property damage. One of the most dramatic effects of the extreme weather was the series of homes left with gutters dangling from their eaves. The ripped-off gutter syndrome was the result of ice build-up and gigantic icicles that dripped from gutters around the Mid-Atlantic region.