Well-maintained gutters can boost your home’s curb appeal. However, when it comes to weathering the harsh winters and verdant summers of the Spokane, Seattle, and Portland areas, keeping your gutters clean is also essential for protecting your roof’s health.
Keep Runoff Moving Away From the Building
Gutters route water away from your roof to keep its shingles, flashings, and underlayment protected. Downspouts route it away from your home’s foundation. When your gutters are clogged by leaves, twigs, silt, and other debris, they’ll overflow. This can lead to standing water on low-sloped areas, pooling water around your home’s foundation, and warped and discolored siding.
Even the insulation behind your siding can suffer due to dirty gutters. If water seeps behind your siding and saturates your insulation, this material will lose more than half of its insulating capabilities until it’s fully dry.
Prevent Heavy Gutters From Detaching
Leaves and twigs aren’t the only things that can find their way into your gutters. Your gutters may have heavy build-ups of rocks, sand, and shingle granules. A lot can reach your roof when the wind blows hard. With too much weight to bear, your gutters will start pulling away from the building. Not only does gradual detachment make gutters far less effective, but it also damages the elements that these structures are connected to. With the added weight of snow, hail, or heavy rain, your gutters could detach completely.
What to Know About Dirty Gutters and Ice Damming
Insufficient gutter maintenance also puts you at risk of ice damming. Blockages prevent water from leaving the roof. When nighttime temperatures dip below freezing, trapped water will turn into heavy icicles and icy sheets. Ice dams along the outer edges of your roof can pull off shingles, gutters, and downspouts. As these dams melt, they can also cause water damage in the building interior.
Stop Water From Pooling in Your Yard
Clean, high-functioning gutters and downspouts direct runoff toward your landscape drainage. Dirty gutters can cause runoff to pool in areas that it isn’t meant to reach. This can result in foundation damage. It can also saturate the soil in your yard and leave you with soggy, sunken terrain and grounds that are all but impossible to traverse. In spring, when newly planted gardens are just starting to bloom, excess water can cause plants to die off or make them more vulnerable to disease and infestation.
In yards that haven’t been completely landscaped, excess water can trigger soil erosion and grading problems. If severe, it can even have a negative impact on underground utilities, including sewer lines.
Stave Off Pests
Many pests that can infest your Coeur d’Alene home naturally thrive within the local environment. Thus, the best way to avoid them is by creating undesirable conditions on your property. Dirty gutters do the exact opposite. They’re rich with moisture and decaying, nutrient-dense materials. Dirty gutters also provide the perfect grounds for breeding and egg-laying.
Climbing Animals
In late fall and early spring, dirty gutters can draw all manner of rodents to your roof. These climbing animals can access your roof’s drainage system via low-hanging branches and nearby structural elements. They’ll come for the water, dropped seeds and fruits, and varied insect populations. Once rodents start congregating on your roof, you’ll deal with problems like loose and torn flashing, damaged shingles, and detached gutters. Having heavy animals mount and run through your gutters can lead to significant building damage.
Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. To hatch, these eggs must be surrounded by damp, organic materials. If you leave your gutters dirty, local insects will choose your roof for breeding rather than taking their activities to a nearby forest floor.
Flies
To lay their eggs, flies need a fermenting liquid. When submerged in pooling water, damp leaves, twigs, blossoms, seeds, and fruits provide this liquid. As these things decay, they’ll create the ideal environment for fly eggs and larvae. The smell of fermenting liquid in dirty gutters will invariably draw flies.
Ants
Dirty gutters provide everything that ants need to thrive. If you’ve been battling major ant problems in your home, it may be time to clean your gutters. Gutters offer water, food, shelter, and easy access to the interior of the building.
Stinging Insects
If you’re eager to avoid run-ins with stinging insects on your property, keep your gutters clean. Wet, dank gutters provide shelter, safety, water, and food. Before long, you could have a wasp or hornet nest dangling from your eaves.
Avoid Moss, Mold, Mildew, and Other Growths
Mossy roofs have a fairytale-like appeal. Aesthetically, moss gives homes a touch of charm. However, despite being visually appealing, moss can destroy your roof. Each time it rains or snows, moss will absorb the resulting moisture and spread. As it does, it can lift and loosen shingles and create other points of ingress for water. Unchecked moss can also lead to wood rot and other serious structural damage. Eventually, this damage could become severe enough that you need to call for roof replacement service for large sections of your roofing, if not the entire roof.
Moss thrives in dark, shaded environments and perpetually damp spaces. Buildups of gutter debris provide ideal conditions for moss.
Roof Mold
Moss is hardly the only growth that you can expect to encounter on your roof when you leave your gutters dirty. Damp, decaying debris can also lead to buildups of mold and mildew. Mold can “eat” through and soften wood and asphalt shingles. It can discolor your roof and diminish the air quality around your home. A moldy roof is also a red flag for potential buyers and could cause your home to fail lender-required inspections.
Mildew
Like mold, mildew can lead to fast-spreading roof rot. It can undermine the integrity of the entire roofing system and give the topmost portion of your home a rank “dirty laundry” smell.
How to Keep Your Gutters Clean
Cleaning your gutters doesn’t have to be a tedious, hair-raising task that entails pulling out your ladder or physically mounting your roof. Instead, you can outsource this work to seasoned professionals. Licensed roofers have the right tools and safety equipment to get the job done quickly and without sustaining injury. These services also give our team an additional opportunity to spot and address minor roofing problems early on.
Schedule Gutter Cleaning in Autumn and Spring
Tree-fall is often heaviest in autumn when local trees shed their leaves and cones. As their branches dry out, they drop tiny twigs as well. However, the months of spring also produce a lot of gutter debris. Fruiting trees release their blossoms and fruits, and climbing animals regularly break branches and leaves off. To keep your gutters working efficiently year-round, you must have them cleaned in late fall and again in mid-spring.
Install Gutter Protection
You can decrease your likelihood of developing severely dirty gutters by installing gutter guards, mesh, brushes, or another form of protection. These installations block larger items, but they won’t keep out silt, sand, or other small-sized debris. Even with gutter protection, it’s still important to have your gutters professionally inspected and cleaned at least once each year.
We help homeowners in Coeur d’Alene protect their roofs with exceptional roof and gutter maintenance services. We also service the Spokane, Seattle, and Portland areas with roof coatings, inspections, replacements, and repairs. If you need help keeping your gutters clean, get in touch with Jimmy's Roofing today.
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