Keeping your gutters clean is one of those home maintenance tasks that’s easy to forget but incredibly important. Gutter guards protect your home from water damage and can even increase your property value. Adding gutter guards can make maintenance even easier while providing long-term benefits to your home.
The Importance of Clean Gutters
Your gutters have one main job: to direct rainwater away from your home. When they work properly, they protect several parts of your house from water damage.
When gutters get clogged with leaves, twigs, and debris, water can’t flow through them properly. Instead, it spills over the sides or backs up under your roof shingles. This can lead to serious problems for your home.
Chesapeake Roofing helps homeowners in Annapolis and Central Maryland to maintain the integrity of the home’s structure with gutter guard services. Common problems that clogged gutters can lead to include:
Foundation Damage
Water that overflows from clogged gutters often pools around your home’s foundation. Over time, this water can cause cracks in your foundation. Fixing foundation problems is very expensive, often costing thousands of dollars.
Basement Flooding
If water collects around your foundation, it can seep into your basement and cause flooding. This can damage items stored in your basement and lead to mold growth.
Roof Damage
When gutters are clogged, water can back up under your roof shingles. This can rot the wooden boards under your roof and even damage the inside of your home.
Insect Problems
Standing water in clogged gutters provides a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes and other pests. These insects can then become a nuisance around your home.
Landscape Damage
Overflowing gutters can wash away soil and damage plants around your home. This not only hurts your landscaping but can also lead to erosion problems.
Benefits of Regular Gutter Cleaning
Cleaning your gutters regularly helps prevent all these problems. Most experts recommend cleaning gutters at least twice a year – once in the spring and once in the fall. If you have many trees near your home, you might need to clean them more often.
Clean gutters help your roof last longer by preventing water damage. This can save you money on expensive roof repairs or replacement. Regular gutter maintenance is much cheaper than fixing water damage to your home. Spending a little time or money on gutter cleaning can save you from much bigger expenses later.
Clean, well-functioning gutters look better than sagging, overflowing ones. This improves your home’s appearance, which is important if you’re thinking about selling.
Xtreme Gutter Guards: An Investment in Your Home
Gutter guards are covers that fit over your gutters to keep out leaves and debris while letting water flow through. Chesapeake Roofing can place Leaf Solution Xtreme gutter guards to protect your gutters and your home from damage.
With gutter guards, you won’t need to clean your gutters as often. Some types of guards can reduce cleaning to once every couple of years instead of twice yearly. By keeping leaves and large debris out of your gutters, guards help prevent the clogs that cause water damage. In dry areas, leaf-filled gutters can be a fire hazard. Gutter guards help keep this flammable material off your roof.
When potential buyers look at a home, they consider both its appearance and the maintenance it will require. Clean gutters with Xtreme guards installed tell buyers that the home has been well cared for. Well-maintained gutters contribute to your home’s overall appearance. They may not be the first thing people notice, but sagging, rusty, or overflowing gutters definitely make a bad impression. By protecting your roof, foundation, and siding, clean gutters and gutter guards help these expensive parts of your home last longer. This is a selling point for knowledgeable home buyers.