Weather (lol) you like it or not, winter is coming...
Keeping up with the maintenance of your home can be a cumbersome process that lasts all year long. In the end, gutters and roof systems often take a backseat when it comes to winter cleaning, repairs, and protection. Your Pittsburgh home can feel like a big block of dripping ice with cold water leaking into your walls, layers of ice melting and refreezing onto your driveways, and big chunks of ice creating blockages in your drains and gutters.
Why keep your gutters clean?
Keeping your gutter free and clean is one of the basics for having a beautiful home. Your roof drains and gutter canals get filled with debris like dirt, leaves, twigs, and smaller branches which block gutter flow. This debris buildup can cause unwanted drain water to drip down the side of your house and may even end up leaking through the window frames. The gutter water may find its way to the foundation or basement of your house and into your walls causing moisture to enter your home and damaging the construction. Dirty gutters are also a breeding ground for pests.
The Pittsburgh Winter Problem - Snow and Ice
The snow in Pittsburgh comes in all shapes and forms - from perfectly light and fluffy to wet and heavy or even soft and slushy. While heavy snowflakes are ideal for building a snowman and light and fluffy snow is fun to play in, all snow types can damage your home’s gutter health. Especially wet and heavy snow..
The winters in Pittsburgh may not be as extreme as in other northern states, but the snow, ice, and cold are still harmful to your house’s overall condition. Your home’s gutters tend to take the full brute force of the Pittsburgh winters.
In ideal conditions, snow and ice would thaw and melt into cold water which would easily flow into your gutters and down the drain leaving very few after-effects. However, the constant freezing outdoor temperatures don’t allow for easy thawing and melting. Naturally, ice and snow build-up inside the gutter drains.
As a result, there is additional weight on the gutter sections and the fasteners that hold them upright. With enough winters and rundown, the stress can cause the gutters to loosen and buckle, bend, or even separate or pull away from the roofline of your house.
Another damaging effect is the melting of snow and ice inside blocked gutter drains. Once the temperature rises slightly, enough to allow the accumulated winter debris to melt, the ice stuck inside the gutters won’t melt evenly. This could maybe even happen due to the house’s heating system. The uneven heating means that the ice melt won’t have an exit route and will most likely be absorbed by the house walls and foundation. This can lead to leakages, wall damage, rotting, molding, and weaken the foundation of your house.
The Solution
If you want to avoid paying for a whole gutter replacement as well as extra repairs that a blocked winter gutter may cause, the solution is simple - keep your gutters clean! The debris inside the gutters like leaves and twigs helps the formation of ice and snow blockages which prevents water from running off the drains. Clearing the debris from the gutter system will reduce ice and snow formation and prevent blockages. This will also help to avoid the accumulated water from dripping onto the ground and causing landscape erosion, icy patches , and freezing inside the gutter system.
Pittsburgh gutter cleaners, Call Pittsburgh Service offers a 4-step gutter maintenance process to keep your gutters squeaky clean and ready for the harshest Pittsburgh winter. Visit us online or call/text us today (412) 353-6018.