7 Signs of Gutter Damage on Your Home
If you’re like many homeowners, your rain gutters are not something you often worry about. They need routine gutter cleaning, but otherwise, their functionality is very simple.
It’s not until gutters aren’t doing what they’re supposed to that you understand just how important they are for your home!
WHAT DO GUTTERS DO?
Gutters and downspouts go virtually unnoticed on most roofs in Clifton. They blend into the exterior unless the homeowner chose copper or wood … materials that are definitely designed to stand out! Most are made of durable but lightweight aluminum or vinyl siding.
The purpose of gutters is to provide a path of least resistance for rain to get off your roof. When they’re in good shape, your rain gutters will direct runoff away from the home’s foundation and landscaping, will protect your home’s exterior from mold and mildew, the foundation and basement from leaking water, and the gutters themselves from rust.
When they are damaged, it can cause thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to your house and property.
ARE YOUR GUTTERS DAMAGED?
Gutter damage is too easy to fix to be the reason for any major home repairs! Keeping an eye on your gutters is easy and safe. If you identify any of the following issues, it’s a pretty good clue that your gutters have some type of damage.
Once you identify a gutter issue, you can decide whether it’s something you feel comfortable fixing or remedying by yourself or if it’s a project you’d rather trust a gutter service to handle.
Sitting Water Near Your Home
Standing water is a sure sign that your gutters or downspouts are not routing the water runoff away from your house the way they should be. Standing water can cause mold, weakening of your foundation, and provides the perfect habitat for pesky mosquitoes. And, it will make the areas around your home constantly soggy and muddy.
Mold or Mildew
Mold or mildew is a sign of gutter damage, whether you see mold or mildew on the rain gutters or the exterior of your home. Mold and mildew indicate that there is too much moisture around that area – a possible issue with the rain gutters could be to blame. Remember that mildew and mold are more likely to grow on the north side of a house anyway, so if that’s where these substances are appearing, it may just be because that area doesn’t get a lot of direct sunlight. This is a time when the advice and expertise of a gutter specialist in Clifton would be helpful.
Rain Pouring Over the Gutter
You will have to wait until it’s actually raining to look for this type of gutter problem. Hopefully this doesn’t mean your gutters are damaged. It might just be that the gutter is clogged with debris and needs to be cleaned out. Either way, you want to have it checked right away.
Basement Leaks
Depending on the design of your home’s basement, the leaking could be due to any number of things. The standing water problem we mentioned before could definitely cause a basement leak. Egress windows and cinder block walls can only keep out so much water. That’s why it is important to keep your gutters in good condition!
Landscaping or Lawn Damage
Rain gutters pour directly onto the ground in most cases, and landscaping should be laid out to work with this flow of water to help it disperse into the ground. However, a gutter leak or clogged gutter will cause rainfall to overflow or pool where it shouldn’t. This standing rain water can destroy plants either by force or by overwatering. It will also displace flower bed materials like mulch or rock.
Water Marks
Water marks are the first sign that there is excessive moisture on a surface. Water marks are sometimes left behind even if pooling water has evaporated or dissipated into the ground. You will usually see water marks beneath the gutters or directly behind the downspouts. This is a usually an indication that water is running down the outside of the gutters and not staying inside of them.
Visible Gutter Damage
The final sign of gutter damage is the easiest to spot. If your gutters are bent, sagging or cracked in the middle, they have damage. Following a storm, it’s a smart idea to walk around your home to assess any damage to the roof, outer walls, and rain gutters. These inspections are in addition to any standard home inspections.
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR GUTTERS?
Here are some easy ways Clifton Gutter Solutions recommends to prevent gutter damage:
Clean your gutters out at least once a year. You can lengthen the amount of time between gutter repairs by keeping them cleaned out regularly. Like with anything else, the better you maintain your rain gutters, the fewer problems you’ll experience with them.
The optimal time to clean gutters is during the spring, but to be extra cautious, give them a good cleaning in the fall, too. A lot of homeowners choose to clean their gutters themselves, but there are local gutter cleaning companies that provide this service so you don’t have to handle the work or the risk.
Inspect your gutters often. Signs of damage can often be visible from the outside of the gutters. A fast inspection – with both feet firmly on the ground – will reveal any of the signs we wrote about above.
We’d recommend that you complete an exterior home inspection at the end of each season to confirm that your gutters are functioning correctly.
When you see signs of gutter damage, act fast. Taking care of a problem before it becomes too bad can save you a lot of time and money. A small crack, for example, can be sealed, or the section of gutter with the crack can easily be replaced very affordably and quickly.
But, if you let the issue go on too long, you could end up making repairs in your basement, replacing vinyl siding or redoing an entire section of landscaping.