How to Safely Prepare Your Gutters for Winter

roof-gutter-winter

LAST UPDATED: Dec 2022.

Your home’s gutters will be instrumental in passing the winter successfully and with no trouble. That means you want them working at their best capacity for the season. As a result, let’s go over how to prepare your gutters for winter in Calgary.

Clean out the insides

The first step to prepare your gutters for winter should always be to properly clean them out. You see, during the year, it’s very likely that lots of small debris and gunk will get caught in your gutters. It is challenging to notice, and it will not even pose much threat to the integrity of your gutters normally. However, these ‘small’ inconveniences quickly add up during a season such as winter when lots of water flow through your gutters. If you do not have your gutters cleaned, then all that stuff will stream toward one point and eventually produce a clog, which would end predictably badly for your gutters and home! Do you think cleaning a slightly dirty gutter is a pain? Having to unclog it and then clean it is a lot worse. You are saving yourself a lot of effort by doing it in advance.

Eliminate standing water

Another serious problem that you need to strive to eliminate is standing water. Now, there are several reasons why this can happen. Just like when going through moving in winter and trying to be ready for the weather by getting rid of puddles in your yard, a common cause is ‘dips’ in your gutters. They are a form of light damage and can be fixed with a bit of effort if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t, it’s better to leave things up to professionals and avoid messing with them! That can also reveal that your gutters were not set up correctly. After all, gutters are supposed to come at a gentle incline, allowing the water to stream away. If there are no dents in your gutters that make the water collect, then a likely reason is that it’s just not angled suitable for effective drainage.

Get rid of any pests quickly

Pests! They are an absolute pest when trying to keep your home clean, and it’s no different when talking about gutters. Bugs are the most common type of infestation you can find in your gutters, and they can cause trouble ranging from mildly inconvenient to downright annoying. If you are unlucky, the infestation will show up and then quickly foul up your gutters, contributing to the formation of clogs and forcing you to battle to unclog them in the middle of winter. That is not just annoying. It is also potentially dangerous since working to clean gutters during hostile weather conditions is not smart. More realistically, they will cause minor damage, or maybe, if you’ve actual pests of the animal variety, they can seriously stink up your home if they crawl into your gutters and die. Therefore, hope you will find them early in this case.

Check your gutters for damage

Now, naturally, while we’ve already covered so minor damage, if you want to prepare your gutters for winter, then you need reassurance there’s nothing wrong with them. There are three essential things you need to check out about your gutters. First, you need to check if the seams are holding up well or if they’re coming apart and leaking. Second, you need to see if there’s severe damage to your gutters in the form of cracks and holes. These frequently require a replacement of the gutters rather than a mending. Finally, you need to ensure that the gutters are correctly and firmly affixed to your home and in no danger of falling off. It may sound silly, but it’s an actual danger for shoddily installed gutters. You can do most of these tests by purposefully running water through your gutters using a water hose.

Install a guard

There is considerable debate over whether gutter guards are a good option. People arguing in favor of gutter guards point out how they stop most debris from getting in. And how this prevents clogs much more effectively than any other method. The people who argue against it point out that it’s much harder to clean gutters with guards on and that it’s harder to inspect them, as well. We are here to tell you plainly: have gutter guards installed. They provide too much protection to pass up. More importantly, leaving them off is only good if you intend to do maintenance on your gutters frequently. Having gutter guards is indispensable if you want to have a couple of major cleaning operations a year and just let things run independently.

Prevent damage from the environment

Tons of people forget that preparing your gutters for winter also means trying to protect them from future damage. They also tend to forget that most sources of such damage come from your yard itself. First, try and clean up old fallen leaves, if there are any, quickly. Second, if you have trees near your home, be confident they are not close enough to the house to whip at it and scratch it in a storm. If you overlook this danger ahead of time, severe damage can happen to your gutters and home in general.

Conduct yourself carefully

The final thing to remember about trying to prepare your gutters for winter is to stay safe! Most work on gutters can’t exactly be done from solid ground, which means having to worry about ladder safety when doing maintenance on your gutters. If you approach the subject carelessly, you might end up in a lot of pain on the ground. And if you are home alone, this means a severe risk to your life and continued good health! At least make sure there’s someone who can bail you out if something happens.

Final Comment
Knowing just how to prepare your gutters for winter can mean the difference between a casual cold season and a ton of problems popping up you need to handle quickly and at significant personal risk. So, it is always better to think ahead and do what work you can!

free quote

Why hire ‘Gutter Cleaning on a Budget’ for your eavestrough cleaning needs?

A small but dedicated family business. We are in the TOP THREE gutter cleaning companies in our beautiful city, and #1 by volume of eavestrough cleaning jobs in Calgary. Thank you, YYC. We’ve been working hard to achieve and sustain this status. We guarantee that your gutters, eavestroughs, and downspouts will have no clogs after our appointment. Plus, we can double the lifespan of your gutters.

Wonder if you can trust us?
Over the years, we helped CEOs, doctors, lawyers, engineers, IT-specialists, tradesmen, and even some local celebrities. We helped single moms, retirees, landlords, tenants, new homeowners, and a lot of other people who are not comfortable with heights or don’t have enough knowledge of rain gutter systems. That means you won’t be among the first hundred customers that trusted us, but we are very happy to work for you anyway 🙂

2 thoughts on “How to Safely Prepare Your Gutters for Winter”

Comments are closed.