Top 5 Reasons to install gutter guard reasons covered in this article:
Time to read: 7 minutes
5. Pest Control
Due to their versatility as both a water supply and a secure spot to sleep at night, gutters naturally attract birds, bats, squirrels, insects, and just about every other animal small enough to wiggle their way into a gutter. Mosquitoes are a particularly pertinent problem, as they prefer to lay their eggs in standing water. Besides simply causing damage to your home, this could make outdoor living for you and your family nearly impossible during the summer – after all, who wants an angry swarm of mosquitoes dive-bombing them as soon as they step outside?
Gutter guards solve this problem by creating a barrier between your gutters and all the pests that want to take your home for themselves. In so doing, they keep your gutters clear, your house safe, and your family free of nasty bug bites.
4. Preventing Clogs
Without a gutter guard, it’s easy for debris such as leaves, pine straw, and twigs to collect in your gutters, obstructing the flow of water and thereby keeping it from draining. Eventually, this could become a serious risk to your gutters – water is heavy, and enough of it concentrated in one place could easily cause your gutters to collapse, demanding a difficult and often pricey repair in order to keep your home protected.
Luckily, with gutter guards, that isn’t something you’ll need to worry about. By simultaneously letting water flow through the gutters while trapping debris on the outside, these tools vastly reduce the frequency of blockage, allowing your gutters to efficiently direct water away from your home and preventing you from having to do any difficult unclogging.
Gutter guards solve this problem by creating a barrier between your gutters and all the pests that want to take your home for themselves. In so doing, they keep your gutters clear, your house safe, and your family free of nasty bug bites.
3. Reducing Mold and Mildew
Speaking of clogs, keep in mind that debris such as rotting leaves contains mold spores, which can spread from the blockage all throughout your gutters. What’s worse, the resulting excess buildup can cause dirty water to overflow onto your roof and siding, creating a perfect breeding ground for even more mold and mildew. Consequently, clogs can cause significant damage to both your house and your health, weakening your home’s structural integrity and reducing the quality of the air you breathe.
With gutter guards, however, clogs rarely form in the first place, making it much more difficult for mold to enter your gutter and start spreading. As such, gutter guards go a long way to keep your house strong and your family healthy and safe.
2. Extending Your Gutter’s Lifespan
Between the weight of water stopped by a clog and the serious damage often done by mold, a frequently-blocked gutter can deteriorate quickly without proper protection. The average lifespan for aluminum and galvanized steel gutters, the most common types of gutters on the market, is around 20 years. However, frequent clogs reduce this figure significantly, especially if you live in an area with lots of cold weather (remember that water expands as it freezes – when it comes to gutters, that’s a recipe for disaster).
No one wants to have costly gutter replacements hanging over their heads for ten, fifteen, or twenty years. Plus, even if you’re planning on selling your home before your gutters wear out, potential buyers will balk at the idea of having to replace their new house’s gutters themselves, reducing the value of your home at the most inopportune of times. Because of that, by keeping your gutter healthy in the long run, gutter guards do your future self a favor, reducing the stress that you (or your realtor) will have to deal with years down the line.
1. Saving You Time and Money
And remember that difficult unclogging process I mentioned earlier? Well, it takes up quite a bit of time and effort. If you own a mid-sized home, you’ll likely spend 1-1.5 hours sitting atop a ladder or roof under the hot sun cleaning out loads of rotted debris from your gutter (that is, if you’re not deconstructing the downspout to reach a clog in an unfortunate location). Trust me, it’s not fun.
Of course, there are a variety of quality gutter cleaning services out there that will solve this problem for you. They’ll just cost you between $150 and $300. While that doesn’t sound like too much for a single cleaning, when you’re getting your gutters unclogged every three to six months (as you likely should), the money you spend builds up rapidly, draining funds from your savings account for a cleaning that was unnecessary to begin with.
By keeping your gutters unclogged, gutter guards vastly reduce the amount of time and money you devote to cleaning your gutters, giving both you and your wallet the freedom to pursue more important things without regularly having to shell over money for constant – and pricey — cleanings.
Conclusion
Gutter guards are a homeowner’s best friend when it comes to keeping gutters clear, reducing water and mold damage, and preventing frequent maintenance headaches. They pay for themselves in no time, protecting your house – and your wallet – from pests, mold, and constant cleanings. To put it simply, gutter guards are a must-have component of a worry-free home.
Looking for gutter guard installation near you? Baker Roofing is a trusted installer with 108 years of experience meeting customers’ needs. Contact a member of our team today to take the next step toward the home you deserve.
