House Rain Gutter Blues

Are the rain gutters on your house full of Ice? Do they look like they are so heavy with ice, they might fall off? If you are asking yourself these questions you need to act on it. Plugged gutters from leaves and debris quickly turn into solid chunks of ice during the cold time of year. When even alittle snow gets on the roof and then melts in the sun into the gutter, it will plug up and freeze, if the gutter is full of debris. This is one of the things I could never understand, how can a person spend the most money they have on one item and then let it get damaged. I can drive up and down the streets in the greater Milwaukee area in Wisconsin and find house after house with huge amounts of ice in their gutters and coming down the side of their houses.

When a gutter is not cleaned in fall and spring time it can become full of leaves and twigs. These build up over time and then plug the gutters up. Plugged gutters are never a good thing at all. Even in spring when they are not full of ice, but are full of debris, they can really do some damage to your house when the spring showers that bring May flowers kick in. Water that can not get away from your house will end up back in your house. Many people can not figure out why they have water in their basement, when all they have to do is look up. You see during the winter people notice the plugged house gutters even more because they have a huge mass of ice in them and look like they are ready to fall off the house. This is normally when people start to think about their house gutters. You need to think about them long before this happens.

I have spent alot of time educating people on how important it is to keep house gutters clean. I am a expert in this field and do not hide the fact that I endorse a gutter protection system, the Gutter Care II system, a foam gutter insert system. This does not mean that I do not , or cannot help others by educating them on why their house gutters are full of ice. I have a small area in my part of the country that I can even directly help out and service, where as my articles can help people all over the country. Again, people become concerned every winter and then forget about it until spring comes and water is pouring into their basements. Gutters filled with ice can become to heavy and break. Most of the time they bend out of shape and takes some time to start to break away from the house and fall down. This does not mean you should just ignore the problem until this happens.

There are other products, like salt melt products for the roof to keep the ice melting and flowing. Remember, regular old salt on a roof or shingles can cause damage to a shingle or roof system. You can use regular salt in emergency type situations, but not for regular use. Use products that say they are less destructive to roof systems. You can find these products at all the big box hardware stores in your area. There is a small chain that has been around for years that carry these hockey puck shaped roof melt product, that comes in a bucket. The hockey puck ice melt system seems to work well. You can also have heat coils added to your roof line to help with melting and freezing problems. These systems still will not work if your gutter system is full of leaves and twigs.

Remember, with any home project, safety first.