Why It’s Important to Clean Your Gutters Before Winter

Although most people think gutter cleaning is an activity reserved for summer, spring, and fall; it's important to clean your gutters before winter. The gutters on your home play a critical role in preventing water from entering your home. Since your gutters will most likely experience an increase in the flow of water and snow during torrential downpours or heavy snowstorms, it's important the gutters are clean and able to direct the water or melting snow away from your home.

Failure to do so can result in leaks and the overflow of water whenever rain falls or snow melts. Simply put, the benefits of cleaning gutters before winter will help you avoid the unfortunate event of your basement being filled with water, rotted fascia boards, cracked walkways or patios and many other potential areas of damage.

Prepare...Winter is Coming!  And it has arrived!

While "winter is coming" is the catchphrase for the iconic show Game of Thrones, it should also serve as a beacon for you to have your gutters professionally cleaned. Simply put, the risk of your gutters being clogged doesn't stop once the leaves have fallen from the trees.

If you fail to clean gutters before winter, all of the water, leaves, and debris sitting in your eavestroughs will freeze once the temperature drops. Once it's frozen, the water from the melted snow will have nowhere to go. Instead, ice dams may form, causing water to seep through your roof, and leave you to foot an expensive winter loss from dirty gutters.  

Avoid Sagging Gutters

Once the water freezes, you can rest assured the heavier debris will freeze as well. Your gutters were not designed to accommodate this additional weight, which can result in gutters tearing, pulling away from the home and unsightly sagging gutters. In addition, the extra weight would cause any of the hardware securing the gutters to your home to pull away from your home or come completely loose. In this unfortunate scenario, your gutters could completely fall down. In addition to being a very dangerous condition, heavy, sagging gutters typically results in needing to have the gutters completely replaced.

Ice Dams Are Pretty...Dangerous

If you're walking in a winter wonderland, you'll most likely see beautiful icicles hanging from homes. While they may make your home look like a Hallmark card, icicles caused by ice dams can do some serious damage to your roof and the rest of your home.

In many cases, clogged gutters are the direct cause of ice dams. When water freezes in your gutters because of debris preventing drainage, it forces the melting ice and snow underneath the shingles on your roof and into your home.

This causes mold, leaks, and water stains. At the same time, ice dams can form that are so heavy they cause your gutters to tear away from the edge of your roof. However, clean gutters can proactively prevent ice dams from forming as well as preventing any significant water damage.

Prevent More Expensive Repairs

In addition to cleaning your gutters, one major aspect of the service is a gutter inspection. During the inspection, we carefully check vital elements of your gutter system for stability. We make sure all of the fasteners are intact and working properly. The fascia board that attaches to the gutters is closely inspected to detect any evidence of rot. In addition, we conduct a comprehensive inspection of your gutter system to detect any signs of damage to your home or damage to your gutters as early as possible. By inspecting the critical elements of your rain gutter system, we can help guard you against expensive water damage and quickly address issues prior to them escalating.

Unclean Gutters Can Be Dangerous to Your Health

If your gutters stay full of debris, they'll compromise the safety and health of your family. Once the leaves, pine needles, and twigs start to pile up in your gutters, they'll serve as the ideal breeding ground for dangerous contaminants like mildew and mold which can easily spread under the eaves and into the soffit and attic areas of the home.

Those who suffer from asthma or are susceptible to allergies will be especially affected by the increase of harmful molds spores and mildew in the air. By cleaning your gutters before winter, you can remove and destroy potentially harmful contaminants prior to them being a serious health risk.

Keep Winter Pests Away from Your Home

Just because it's winter doesn't mean you can completely forget about pests. While clean gutters may not repel foraging rodents and insects, it can help prevent them from nesting and entering in to your home. Virtually all critters love dark, damp places..

Additionally, the decaying leaf matter can foster mold and bacteria that acts like a beacon to hungry insects and rodents. However, cleaning your gutters before winter will reduce the overall likelihood of a pest making your gutters their winter home.

Contact Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning of Long Island

According to the Insurance Information Institute, wind, snow, and ice can have extremely damaging consequences on your home. Each winter, billions of insurance dollars are spent due to frozen gutters, ice damming, burst pipes, and other types of winter disasters.

However, you can save yourself the time and pain of having to have your home repaired by scheduling regular gutter cleaning before the next winter storm.

Contact Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning of Long Island today.