When you clean out your gutters, do you notice things growing in them? Or even as you walk by, can you see things sprouting inside your gutters? And what do you do if you see growth in your gutters? If you choose to tackle the task of cleaning your own gutters, there are many useful resources online that provide tips and tricks. At Alamance Insulation and Gutters, we are happy to answer questions you have about cleaning or installing your gutters. We are also more than happy to clean your gutters for you! Contact us today to determine what’s best for your home.
Here are some common things that get stuck in or grow in gutters:
- Leaves: Even in the spring and summer, a breeze can knock a few leaves off a tree, and in the fall, those leaves are present in abundance. They can quickly fill your gutters. While they decompose relatively quickly, leaves are a huge source of gutter clogs.
- Needles: Needles are a type of fine debris that can be very hard to remove from gutters. They slide past some gutter covers or clog gutter filters such as foam inserts. If you live in an area where evergreen trees are common, needles will be a common sight in your gutters, where they collect together and clog the gutter. Since they are tough, they also take longer to break down than other leaves.
- Blossoms: While all of those blossoms look gorgeous on the trees, they look less than lovely as they decompose in your gutters. They can form mats of thin blossoms and can have a surprisingly large impact on your gutters, especially if you consider gutter cleaning to be a fall task rather than a spring one.
- Pollen: While pollen is tiny, it all adds up in your gutters. During pollen season, some plants move their pollen on the wind. Quantities of this land on your roof and move into your gutters. This contributes to the fine debris at the bottom of the gutter and sticks everything else together.
- Seeds: The flying seeds of spring are also prone to landing in your gutters. From maple keys or helicopters to fuzzy, cotton-like seeds carried by the wind, you’ll find a selection in your gutters. These decompose and contribute to gutter blockages. They are also prone to growing in the gutter, where they find water, light, and excellent growing conditions.
- Sticks: During the fall, winter, and spring storm seasons, sticks and leaves fly everywhere. If you don’t have gutter guards, some of these will land in your gutters. Large sticks not only have the potential for puncturing your roof: they also clog up your gutters. They stick out of the gutters, but the end that’s inside will capture a lot of debris. Sticks also don’t decompose as easily as other gutter debris, so that blockage will be with you for a long time.
- Mushrooms: If your gutter is really wet and mushroom spores land there, they could form a root-like network called mycelium and begin to grow. What you call mushrooms are actually the fruit of the mushroom, and this takes some time to develop. Since mushrooms can grow in places where there is very little light, you could find mushrooms moving down into your drain pipe if you don’t clean out your gutters for a long time.
As you can tell, there are a lot of things that can end up in your gutters. Stay tuned for part 2 of this post!