BWW Project # 28 Eavestrough Rehab

 BWW Project #28:  Eavestrough Rehab

The eavestrough all around the house, particularly in the back, have very high-end leaf-guard coverings which allow leafs and small branches to slide right over them.  The water, however, clings to the rounded edge of the cover, follows it around and drops into the trough.  

At first I thought the downspouts were clogged up with rotted leaves and small debris and not draining, particularly on the north end of the house by the sunroom corner.  But close examination showed that the covers were doing their job of keeping this stuff out of the gutters.  The narrow slot between the gutter edges and the covers were, in many places, filled with dried and congealing vegetative debris and the water simply couldn't get through like it is supposed to.  

The solution.  Take a stepladder and go around the entire house with a rag and bucket of warm water with Pine-sol in it and clean them off, taking special care to get into the slot and rub off all this stuff.  Then spray it good with a hose and knock it all off.  It took one leisurely day for the back and another for the front of the house, and a special trip to the top dormer with the hose nozzle being pulled up by a line.  The dormer roof is nearly flat so it could be done safely from above.

We have had a monsoon-like spring with plenty of rain and the test came almost immediately.  The leaf-guard covers worked nicely as they are designed to do and only a little water drips off the roof edge in a deluge.  Above the sunroom, I had to lift the leaf-guards slightly and insert a shim in there because they rested too tightly down on the gutter.  This made them work properly as well.  An occasional spraying with the garden hose should be enough to prevent this clogging in the future.