Constantly replacing your gutters can get quite expensive — and leaving them in disrepair can be even more costly if you end up allowing heavy torrents of water to flow anywhere they want. It’s no surprise, then, that savvy homeowners take every step possible to prevent gutter damage where possible and resolve it quickly and inexpensively when it becomes inevitable.
To minimize damage to your home’s gutters, it’s important to understand how gutter damage occurs — that way, you can take steps to prevent that damage when it’s possible and can spot it and correct it while it’s still minor when prevention becomes impossible. We’ll begin by looking at common sources of gutter damage:
Common Sources of Gutter Damage
- Installation problems. Many gutter issues start at installation, though your gutters may look excellent at first. Over time, mistakes in the size of your gutters, the pitch of your gutters, the assembly of joints and other components determined during installation can cause your gutters to wear down and fail — even under normal use.
- Blockage. The accumulation of debris in your gutters will quickly result in damage, as components that aren’t meant to take heavy impact or hold up extra weight are forced to do exactly that. Blockage can occur from leaves, branches and similar debris, or ice and the like during intense weather.
- Physical impacts. A tree branch falling onto a gutter, a kid tripping into one, a mistake with a ladder, the constant bombardment of hail: Any of these can result in serious damage to your gutters which warrants repairs.
- Intense weather. Of course, intense weather of any kind can push your gutters to their limits and beyond — especially if the weather exceeds the normal intensity for your area, extreme weather events happen in rapid succession or your gutters are already in rough shape or partially blocked when a storm starts.
The Many Forms of Gutter Damage
Gutter damage comes in many, many different forms, despite the relative simplicity of gutters as a structure. Learning to spot these problems can help save you a lot of money over time, as you can often replace or repair small areas of your gutters early on — but you may need full replacements later.
You’ll want to keep your eyes open for:
- Leaks or overflow of your gutters
- Sagging, where your gutters hang low in the middle
- Changed slopes or angles of your gutters
- Cracks in your gutters
- Dents and bends in the material of your gutters
- Loose hardware connecting your gutters to your home
If you spot these problems, you’ll want to get them repaired as soon as possible, before the problems lead to more problems.
Preventing Gutter Damage as a Homeowner
The best way to prevent gutter damage as a homeowner is to prevent the situations that lead to serious damage in the first place. That means, first and foremost, keeping your gutters properly maintained: cleaning them regularly and repairing minor damage and wear as it occurs.
Expensive gutter problems occur in most cases because little problems that have been overlooked are given time to develop into catastrophic failures.
Of course, there are other ways to protect your gutters as a homeowner. Gutter guards can keep debris from ever entering your gutters in the first place — or at least minimize it, as no solution is completely foolproof in all cases, greatly reducing the risk of weighed-down gutters from collected, compacted debris.
If you want to protect your gutters against the significant risk of blockage and weight from snow and ice formation in and on your gutters, Helmet Heat is an excellent option worth considering. Especially when you consider the damage that a gutter loaded down with ice and snow can do if it collapses unexpectedly.
Learn More
As you can see, gutter damage prevention is largely about keeping your gutters working properly in the first place. As long as they can flow clear and clean, your only major threats will be snow, ice and unpredictable accidents such as falling branches — and even these can be mitigated with the right preventative upgrades!
To learn more about gutter guards, Helmet Heat and other gutter protection solutions, you can contact the team at MIG Home today by dialing 888-397-0988.
