Cleaning Your Gutters the Creative Way
My husband, Kyle, makes me laugh. He likes to think of himself as a handy type of guy and prides himself on being able to do things around the house, rather than having to hire others. So twice a year, he has to do one of his least favorite home maintenance projects, but really an important one; cleaning the gutters.
Cleaning our gutters presents quite the challenge because they’re a good 30 feet off the ground. Walking on our roof is not an option because it’s slate. And you’d really just have to have a death wish to be up that high. So you either need to put a ladder up and slowly work your way around the house climing up and down the ladder 10s of times, or find a better way.
Well, Kyle seems to have found a better way. He’s rigged up a Shop-Vac, about 30 feet of vacuum hose, and a telescoping pole so he can just walk around the house and suck the debris out of the gutters. I think the neighbors thinks he’s nuts, but hey, it works!
[...] On the other hand, we hate that they are so close to our house that they provide a litany of squirrels direct access to walk all over our roofs and try to find ways to get in to our home. We hate that they run through the power lines connecting to our house. We hate that the roots make our slate sidewalks uneven. We hate that it is nearly impossible to grow much grass because there is so much shade. We hate that they clog our gutters with junk throughout the year, making them fairly ineffective unless Kyle enacts his gutter cleaning solution. [...]
[...] the leaves, collecting fallen branches, and cleaning the gutters are favorite activities here at the Bergquist house. This year we’ve been so busy with other [...]