Cleaning Out your Gutters

JOYCE: I have a ranch-style home in Florida that has two pitched roofs coming together. The roof from the house meets the screened roof from the pool cage …

TOM: OK.

JOYCE: … and at the base of it is a gutter. And it traps everything.

TOM: I bet it does. (chuckles)

JOYCE: We live close to – we live to a woods and so we get all the leaves down in that V-shaped trap. And how can we – short of going up there every couple of weeks to blow out the gutter, what can we do to try to keep this from …

TOM: You’ve got a major design problem here.

JOYCE: Yes.

LESLIE: I’ve actually – and I know this is crazy and you’re going to think I sit around and watch the Home Shopping Network – but I actually saw something; have never tried it but it looked interesting on the show. It’s something by iRobot and it’s something called like the Looj – it’s like L-o-o-j – and it’s a gutter-cleaning robot …

JOYCE: Oh.

LESLIE: … and it’s a thing – I mean I can’t describe it but it sits in your gutter and you put it up there once and then you operate it by a remote.

TOM: That’s a great idea. I actually saw that at the Consumer Electronics Show and you’re right.

LESLIE: Yeah?

TOM: It is a gutter-cleaning robot and you have to drop it in the gutter and then you come down off the ladder and push the button and it just kind of walks back and forth and throws all the leaves out of the gutter.

LESLIE: I mean for 130 bucks, it’s worth a shot.

TOM: Absolutely.

JOYCE: Oh, that’s a great idea. I didn’t know there was anything like that, so …

TOM: Yeah, I think it’s the same folks that make Roomba, as Leslie said.

LESLIE: Mm-hmm. It’s by iRobot; I know that.

JOYCE: OK. Well, thanks so much. I’m going to try that and see what happens. There are a lot of us down here that have this pool design with the cage. So thanks much.

LESLIE: Well, you’ve got to keep the gators out. (all chuckle)

TOM: Joyce, good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.