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How to keep your guttering in top condition
Guttering is designed to direct water away from your home and its foundations. But broken or jammed gutters don't. Instead, they leak or overflow, sending water where it shouldn’t.
Whether the gutter is above or under your home, overflow and leakage of water eventually causes oversaturation of the soil on which your home sits. This oversaturation compromises your home’s foundational stability and can cause your house to sink. This sinking reveals itself later as wall cracks, bowing or bulging walls, cracked arches, broken lintels and much worse.
If your gutters are always leaking or overflowing, here are a few tips to keep them in top condition.
Clear obstructions
This is the first thing you should do to keep your guttering in great shape. Gutters are shaped to catch water but inadvertently catches everything else that falls into it too.
This can include leaves, branches and/or sticks that have fallen from nearby trees, tennis balls your kids were throwing around during the school holidays and even dead rats or birds.
Get into your gutters with a pair of gloves and remove all the debris. Then flush any remaining debris with a hose to make sure water passes through correctly.
Trim tree branches that sit above or near your guttering
After you’ve cleared the debris, you want to stop more junk getting back in. If you have trees that stretch their branches above your guttering, an easy way to stop more leaves and branches falling into is to trim them.
Trimming branches is particularly helpful just before Autumn and Winter starts. It’s during these seasons that trees shed the most leaves and bark.
Double-check the integrity of your guttering regularly
If you’re clearing debris on a regular basis, you’re well on your way to keeping water away from your home’s foundations. The next trick is to make sure the gutters work properly. This is easy to do.
Get a hose and spray water into the guttering. If cracks are present, water will flow through those cracks to reveal where they are and then use a roof and gutter spray seal to repair them. You can find spray seals at your local hardware store. If your gutters are in terrible condition, have them replaced.
Finally, make sure your guttering is secure and stable at all times. Loose, shaky gutters can’t collect and send water to the right places which means it could end up in your house foundations. This is the last thing you want!
Worried your foundations are soaked through?
If your gutters have been leaking or overflowing for a long time, the soil underneath your home could be eroded. Your home may already be suffering from subsidence.
If you’re seeing any wall cracks, bowing or bulging walls, cracked arches, broken lintels and want a second opinion, we’d be happy to help.
Just give us a call on 1300 854 115 or book a FREE inspection today.
