As every homeowner knows there will come a time when the plastic guttering will need to be cleaned; by failing to maintain your gutters you could be risking a significant level of water damage that could end up costing you a bundle – luckily, however, the steps toward a clean gutter aren’t too difficult, and guttering can easily be maintained without the need for professional help.
The first and most important consideration when cleaning a gutter is ladder safety – if you have any doubts about cleaning your guttering you can always seek a professional to do the job! In order to minimize the risk of ladder slippage, you should ensure that you don’t rest your ladder on your plastic gutters, which are not secure, and you should rest your ladder on your solid house wall instead.
Once you’re up there, cleaning the gutter is actually fairly simple and doesn’t require any special equipment – in fact any scooping device, such as a trowel, would be perfect for scooping out the leafy detritus. If this scooping method doesn’t completely remove all of the trapped debris from your guttering then you can use more dramatic methods – e.g. you could use a hose to soak any debris with a hosepipe which you can then scoop out fairly easily. If you do take your garden hose up the ladder with you, you should ensure that you use a suitable length of extension; otherwise you might end up overstretching on the top of our ladder, which would greatly increase the chance of falling.
Remember – water damage from water trapped in your gutters is one of the main causes of damage to roves and walls, which is why gutter cleaning is definitely a job worth doing!
