My Failed Attempts To Escape The Gutter

Is there anything that carries a worse connotation than “the gutter”? People talk of helpless drunks “lying in the gutter”. Or crude language as being gutteral. Utter failure in the game of bowling is when your ball slides into the gutter and therefore hits none of the pins.

My gutter problem is a little different than these things. Instead of involving liquor and indolence, my three decade-long gutter live involves a continuing attempt to subdue and take mastery over my rain gutters. The problem is that my gutters are winning.

I once visited a friend in South Carolina. I was surprised to learn that in the sandy soils of his area (and with the plethora of towering pines that shed massive amounts of long needles), rain gutters are uncommon. But here in Indiana, it is imperative to move rain water away from the heavy clay soils that surround the foundations of our houses before that water finds a way into our basements or crawlspaces.

My house is in an area with many large trees. Trees have leaves, and every autumn those leaves drop to the ground. Or would drop to the ground if 90% of them did not make it into my gutters first. And black walnuts. Lots of black walnuts. Then comes springtime when the multitude of “helicopter” seedlings from the maple trees pack their way in and become as big of a nuisance as the leaves. Or even a bigger nuisance, because if left alone they start growing their own little leaves in my gutters. How efficient.

When I bought this house, I asked the seller how he got the leaves out of his gutters. “I just walk around the edge of the roof with a leaf blower and blow them out.” Except for one small peak, my house has a hip roof with a low slope, so the “walk around it with a leaf blower” method actually works fairly well. My home’s gutters are the larger-than-normal 6-inch versions (all the better to catch leaves, my dear). Their other purpose is to make it hard to buy gutter/downspout parts of accessories (like leaf guards) because the 5-inch gutters are what are carried in most of the convenient big box stores. I have a leaf blower that I strap onto my back, and it easily blows leaves, twigs, seeds, and other natural flotsam out. So long as the stuff is dry. Once it all gets wet, well that is another matter.

We are into the time of year when this becomes a weekly chore, and one I have undertaken for over thirty years now. Marianne has never liked me engaging in this maintenance task. There was a time when she insisted on walking around the yard as I walked around the roof. Now she just covers her ears and yells “La-La-La” until I come back into the house. At least that is what I imagine her doing while I am carefully treading across the shingles. I will admit that the back side of the house is two stories above ground, but I also have a healthy respect for heights and have always been careful to never do the job when I am fatigued or when there is any moisture on the roof surface. The result is that I have never fallen off the roof. “Yet” is what Marianne would add if she were a co-author of this blog.

There have been times when I have shirked my duties. This is when “tree crap” fills the gutters, followed by significant rain. Then the gutters get really heavy and try to escape from their mountings along the roof edge – and they succeed with increasing frequency. We are way past just pounding the spikes back in. I started replacing “gutter spikes” with “gutter screws”, which screw into the holes where the spikes were. I have recently moved beyond gutter screws in certain segments, and have had to try a newfangled gutter hanger that mounts to the roof/soffit more securely.

“It sounds like you need new gutters” is something I hear often. This is certainly true. However, I am probably nearing time for a new roof too, and no roofer in the history of the world has been able to tear off and replace a roof without ruining gutters, so I will wait and do it all at once. But that time is not quite here. In truth, I am waiting for a hail storm. I have paid for two roofs out-of-pocket thus far in my time as a homeowner, and I think it is time for my insurer to have to chip in.

So until that happens, I see no choice but to periodically succumb to the lure of the gutter where I will continue my gutteral habits. It is after that job that the liquor and indolence usually associated with the gutter life start to look pretty good.

27 thoughts on “My Failed Attempts To Escape The Gutter”

  2. Cleaning gutters is a horrible job. Like you, I have many trees around my house – two oaks out front, an elm in the back, pine trees on the west side, and elms on the east.

    Last spring, after not cleaning my gutters in about two years and having the rain overflow as you describe, I got creative. I have gutter covers (cheap slotted plastic pieces that snap to the outside lip of the gutters) but they quickly collapse under very much weight, especially pine needles.

    Do you have a shop vac? That’s the big part. If not, this is a wonderful opportunity to get one. This contraption works like a charm while staying on the ground.

    Cut a 6″ to 8″ section of PVC (I recommend using hollow core for all of this as it’s lighter), then glue it to an elbow. In turn, take more PVC pipe and run whatever length you need to reach the ground. Take that end and attach it to your shop vac hose using a rubber connector found in the plumbing department of any hardware store. All the PVC should be around 1.5″ or 2″ diameter – the same size as your shop vac’s hose.

    When constructed it should resemble a long stemmed candy cane. You will want to cut a few notches in the short piece I mentioned at first to allow for the vacuum to work. You’ll also want to cut the section you put into your gutters at a slight angle.

    Then turn on the shop vac (remove the air filter) and walk your Leaf Sucker 5000 along the perimeter of your house. This worked well when I first used it as it was strong enough to pull up all the dirt that came about from the natural composting of trapped leaves. The second time was two weeks ago and it was quite easy as it was only dried leaves.

    Like your house, some of my gutters are much higher from the ground than the rest. On the run between the elbow and shop vac, I put a coupling so I could screw on an extension if needed. I just used the Leaf Sucker 5000 again the other day and it worked great. I built it for about $40 (only because I bought too much PVC; I could have gotten buy with half the length I purchased).

    Hopefully this all makes sense. If you want pictures to better describe it let me know.

    You will no doubt win many brownie points with this. Your first time through will be the toughest given the volume of material; after that, it’s all gravy.

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  3. I’m not sure those leaf guard systems work all that well either. I know the wire covers just get clogged with wet leaves on the top, they don’t blow off, and then water just rolls over the whole business and rains down. The ones that just have the little slit along the edge, that the water is supposed to roll across and into, well, I’m not convinced but have no data from any homeowners.

    Here’s a point, in my current city, houses were built for decades, even since the twenties, with the downspouts running directly into the sewerage system. The over-paving of the outer ring suburbs and edges of the city, starting in the 70’s, with big box stores and parking lots, as well as very large suburban streets, have limited the ability of the ecosystem to absorb water from lack of green space, over taxing the sewer system with the runoff. In a storm, the sewage system overflows with the bad stuff which ends up running into Lake Michigan! In order to stop this, 30+ years ago, the county had to go through a multi-billion dollar sewage upgrade with huge holding areas underground to cover storm overflows, until it can be processed. For some reason, this doesn’t always work, and one of the additional abatement events is that if you have a licensed contractor replacing or fixing your gutters, they are required to disconnect all old downspout systems that ran directly into the sewer system. This results in beautiful old neighborhoods with flexi-pipe running across their lawns, trying to keep the water away from the house, and yet it’s probably rolling off their lawns and into the street sewer system anyway.

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    • I agree with you on the “leaf guards” – I think they work pretty much as you say.

      I think most older cities designed systems that combined storm and sanitary sewers. Like most physical things designed in that era, they worked well enough, but heavy rains would overwhelm them and sewage would pour into waterways. We have been working on a modern system for a decade, but even 30 years ago it was no longer legal for downspouts to hook into the sewers. A neighbor once worked for the city and had been told that guys would light off smoke bombs in sewers while others would cruise the neighborhoods looking for smoke coming from peoples gutters.

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  5. Well that reminds me, I should get up there this weekend and do that job. I haven’t fallen yet either. My neighbor did not clean her gutters for 10 years, then had to get new eavestroughs: now there are young trees growing in the new eavestroughs.

    And don’t get me started on roofing! Highly annoying when you have to do the same job multiple times on the same house! Just like fences!

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  6. I had a guy come and change out my spikes for screws in the eavestrough. However he could not get his ladder down one side of my house because of the fence location, and all the crap my previous neighbour had on his side of the fence. I have not had to change an eavestrough in either of my houses, and the current abode in ~25 years old now. We don’t get leaves and such in ours as there are no trees around tall enough to reach that high. However one can tell the relative age of the shingles on the roof from how much asphalt crumblings have accumulated in the eavestroughs. We are on our second roof in this house, having had to change it about 12 years ago. At the previous house, we had to change the shingles (but not the eavestroughs) at about the same elapsed life span.

    Working at heights sometimes reminds me of a former work colleague who fell off a ladder putting up Christmas lights and broke his elbow. He has titanium screws in that elbow to this very day.

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    • Marianne tells me that when we move it will be to a place with no big trees around. I like the trees, but I have had my full share of work and expense in dealing with their side effects.

      No titanium screws, though! (Fortunately)

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  8. We only have to do ours twice a year and it is my job because… well, I am not sure why, but it is. I like the idea of the leaf blower, but usually by the time it becomes apparent that the gutters need to be cleaned out, the contents are so wet and packed in place that the downspouts don’t work anymore. So I get up on a ladder and pull out the crap one hand full at a time.

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  9. I just got new seamless gutters installed two weeks ago – the contractor left the patio with no downspouts saying “your house is too small to need five downspouts – leave them be.” I am unsettled by that. He says I don’t need the gutters cleaned this year – well a lot of leaves will fall between now and Thanksgiving when I usually had them cleaned by the former handyman who is now legally blind. That leaves me unsettled as well. I am not looking to spend $$ unnecessarily, but believe in regular maintenance and doing things properly. My former boss lived in a two-story house and he wears shorts all year around – yes, even for shoveling snow. He was doing the gutters a few years in the Fall and made a misstep and fell all the way along the shingles as he fell down the roof, (but not to the ground), all the while scraping up his bare legs badly enough to go to the E.R. to get a tetanus shot – the E.R. didn’t have tetanus shots on hand, so he had to go to the Wayne County Health Department pronto.

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    • That gives me one more reason for not wearing shorts when I work outside!

      My downspout placement is another problem at my house. One downspout (out of 4) services probably 45% of the guttering, and has been my biggest problem area. The fix is another downspout, but it would have to be next to the front door, which does not pass the Marianne test.

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      • Yes, he had quite a mess with the scrapes which had dirt and shingle pieces in them (akin to street dirt). I am like Marianne because I have that issue now too, at the side but near the front as the new downspout is a trip hazard – he doesn’t see why.

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  10. You’re spot on about the South and our sandy soil. I was a little suspicious when I bought this house and noticed “some” gutters but not “all” gutters. Then I realized our gutters are only mounted over landscaped areas. Otherwise the water just cascades off the shingles and into the ground. Post-storm you’d never know anything happened. On the other hand there’s no way I could clean out the gutters the way you do. Vertigo would win and Dave would lose. Not gonna chance those heights (which mean we never have Christmas lights above 8′ either). Might have to look into Jason’s suggestion. I’m all about staying grounded.

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    • I am fortunate that vertigo is not among my problems. I’m funny on heights. I once had to work on the high gutters using a borrowed extension ladder, and was scared to death the whole time. But I feel fine walking near the roof edge at that same spot. Go figure.

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  11. Usually I do not notice the gutters until the heavy rains when the waterfalls ring the house and inform me that the gutters are clogged again. I get drenched trying to make emergency adjustments. I stopping going up on the roof about 15 years ago. It was a good decision because I am still alive.

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  12. When I was a kid, cleaning out the gutters of my parents’ house was one of my least favorite chores. But Dad was very creative, and made it easy for me. He put several long attachments on his leaf blower, with a U-shaped attachment at the end. That let us clean out the gutters without getting on a ladder.

    The bad news was that all of the junk in the gutters would rain down on you while you did this. Also, since their house was two stories tall, operating a leaf-blower with 20′ worth of attachments wasn’t exactly easy. Still, it was better than climbing on a ladder. Incidentally, after I moved away, my folks got gutter guards so they’d never have to do it again.

    I’m fortunate in my current house – we’ve lived here for 8 years, and I haven’t had to clean out the gutters. Our tall trees are all sufficiently away from the house so that the leaves don’t clog up the gutters. Each house has its advantages and disadvantages – this is a big plus for us right now.

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  13. This reminds me that our gutters will need to be cleaned. Trees provide shade, and look great, but they come with a whole set of issues. I’m ready to have the one tree cut down completely!

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