LESLIE: William is on the line with a gutter question. What’s going on at your money pit?
WILLIAM: Hi. We recently purchased a home that – it’s surrounded by a lot of pine trees. So I’m getting a lot of pine needles on my roof and in my gutters. And it’s only been a few weeks and already I’m tired of climbing up there to clean them. Do you have any suggestions for keeping them off the roof and keeping the gutters flowing?
TOM: Well, we can’t fight gravity, so you’re going to always have them on your roof.
I will give you a couple suggestions. First of all, as you probably know, there’s a wide range of gutter covers out there. And the type that are sort of screen-like are the type that are most likely to clog, because the pine needles will lay out across the top, they’ll get stuck in there and you’ll just be very miserable. What I think the best type – is the ones that are continuous gutter covers that go all across the top of the gutter, where the pine needles have a chance to actually wash over the top and let the water fall in through the principles of surface tension.
Now, the bad news is that those are expensive. They’re so expensive that you may find that removing your traditional 4-inch gutters and replacing them with 6-inch gutters – which will not clog with pine needles because everything is much bigger, the throats for the downspouts are bigger, the gutters are bigger, they can take more water, more flow – might be the best way to go. So that’s kind of your option. I would either use a gutter cover that covers the entire top of the gutter or I would take out the 4-inch gutters and I would put in 6-inch gutters, which is what I did at my house and just never looked back.
WILLIAM: OK. Well, thank you.
TOM: You’re welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Leave a Reply