Are Your Gutters Clean?

This spring I watched all of the winged seeds from my neighbor's huge Maple tree make their way into my yard and on my roof and the car.  They come twirling down into my back yard from the high up limbs to annoy me every year.  I really should not complain too much since the pine cones from our very tall White Pine mostly fall into that same neighbor’s front yard.  We both get lots of pine needles, too.

Usually after the seeds have fallen, I get out my extension ladder and spend a few hours cleaning out my gutters.  This year was different because it seemed to rain most days and when it did not rain, I was too busy to get at it.  I only work part-time now that I am “retired” which means I have time to do all of those other things I could not do when I worked full-time!  To make my point even clearer, I now have reached the time in my life when I have little “spare” or “extra” time to do things like gutters, trimming bushes and fixing things around the house like I did when I worked full-time!

When we got those hard rains last month, we noticed water was coming in from around one of the back basement windows.  I went out into the rain to see why this was happening and noticed that the water was running off the roof and over the gutters that were full of Maple seeds.  This was filling up the window wells around the basement windows.  The window had a leak around it somewhere.  It was raining hard and the forecast was rain for the next 3 or 4 days.  I needed a solution now, no matter how temporary.  I went to a hardware store and got a window well cover… they are nice and I needed one long before that day.  Problem solved for now!!!  Being the man of the house, I take a lot of pride when I manage to solve a situation like this one.  I showed my wife how clever I was and she reminded me that she told me we needed that cover about six years ago.  I did not let her remarks hold back my pride in a job well done.

That night it rained long and hard… no water in the basement.  However, the water from the roof was still running off over the gutters and now hitting the window well cover making a sound like a very loud drum.  Needless to say, but we did not get much sleep that night.  The next morning someone was insisting that I clean the gutters that day, no matter if it was raining or not.  In a light rain, I worked at cleaning out the gutters… I wanted to sleep, too!  And, that night we slept most of the night until the thunder woke up the dog and the barking and whining began.  Such is life!

Eventually, things were back to normal and we got some much needed sleep and peace.  Then I remembered that the basement window had leaked and needed repairing.  I decided that I would get the ACCA Waterproofing professionals to replace that old leaky window with a modern new window.  And next year the gutters will get cleaned earlier after the seeds stop falling, even if I have to hire someone to do it for me.