When Should I Clean My Gut­ters in Chicagoland?

Oct 5, 2022 • By Matthew Stock.

Gut­ters have one pur­pose which is to col­lect water and direct it away from the home. Through­out the sea­sons in Chicagoland, gut­ters col­lect debris such as leaves, twigs, pine nee­dles, etc. It is imper­a­tive to have your gut­ters cleaned by a pro­fes­sion­al. We rec­om­mend this be done a min­i­mum of twice per year. When exact­ly should you clean your gut­ters if you live in Chicagoland?

First, let us tell you more about the pur­pose of gut­ters and why it is so impor­tant to keep your gut­ters clean. If you had no gut­ters on your home, rain­wa­ter or water from melt­ing snow would fall from the roof and land direct­ly next to the foun­da­tion. When the ground is at a nor­mal water table the extra roof water would raise the water table. This would over sat­u­rate the soil caus­ing the soil to expand, putting extra pres­sure on the foun­da­tion walls. When this hap­pens, it can result in foun­da­tion wall cracks, struc­tur­al dam­age and ulti­mate­ly base­ment seep­age. Addi­tion­al­ly, hav­ing water land next to the foun­da­tion will cause ero­sion over­time. To move the water away from the foun­da­tion, we rec­om­mend extend­ing your down­spouts at least 10 feet from the foun­da­tion. Under­ground down­spouts are a great way to accom­plish this with­out hav­ing the down­spout lay­ing on top of the lawn. 

But by just hav­ing gut­ters this does not mean no base­ment seep­age! Chicagoland sees all four sea­sons mean­ing we get the wind, rain, snow and in between. Hav­ing gut­ters in good work­ing order is impor­tant! As the sea­sons change, debris col­lects in gut­ters result­ing in block­age. When debris is present it also makes a cozy home for ani­mals and birds to cre­ate their nests in. If debris sits in a gut­ter for too long it traps water under­neath lead­ing to mold, slime, sludge, and mildew. This can grow and spread across roofs and sid­ing offer­ing oth­er types of dam­age to a home. The best way to pre­vent this? Clean­ing and main­tain­ing gutters! 

Gen­er­al­ly, you should clean your gut­ters mid-fall and in mid-spring. Clean­ing in the fall allows for all the sum­mer debris from storms as well as the fall leaves to be cleaned out and allow for prop­er water flow once the win­ter snow begins to melt. Clean­ing in the spring allows for any left­over fall leaves and debris as well as any spring debris (think Maple tree ​“heli­copter” seeds) that may have col­lect­ed be removed so your gut­ters are ready for the spring and sum­mer rains. 

Clean­ing gut­ters may seem like an easy task, but it is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed that a pro­fes­sion­al com­plete the task. Did you know that more than 100 peo­ple die in Illi­nois every year from a lad­der relat­ed fall? To top that, each year, there are more than 164,000 emer­gency room-treat­ed injuries, some more seri­ous than oth­ers, and over 300 deaths in the U.S from lad­der falls. Even while you are elim­i­nat­ing per­son­al injury by hir­ing a pro­fes­sion­al, most gut­ter com­pa­nies will climb a lad­der and walk the edge of the roof while blow­ing out debris or clean­ing by hand. Did you know that roofs are not made to be walked on!? There is actu­al dam­age to the roof that may occur as a result of some­one walk­ing on it. Walk­ing on your asphalt shin­gles can leave the shin­gles bare, dis­lodge them or cre­ate gaps that can increase the poten­tial for leaks.

Clogged gut­ters lead to base­ment seep­age and U.S. Water­proof­ing are gut­ter clean­ing pro­fes­sion­als! We don’t use lad­ders, so we reduce the risk of injury to almost noth­ing. In fact, we are the only com­pa­ny in Chicagoland clean­ing gut­ters from the ground. We clean gut­ters with our spe­cial vac­u­um tech­nol­o­gy and con­firm gut­ters are cleaned with a spe­cial cam­era that can show you our amaz­ing work! This ensures a clean and clog free gut­ter sys­tem to give you peace of mind know­ing water is prop­er­ly being dis­trib­uted away from the foun­da­tion of your home. You can sched­ule your free esti­mate for a gut­ter clean­ing online ²⁴⁄₇!

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