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How to Clear Blocked Guttering – A Practical DIY Guide

Gutters channel rainwater away from your home’s structure, ensuring that roofs, walls and foundations are not compromised by excess moisture. A blocked gutter or downspout, left unchecked, can cause costly damage. Thankfully, keeping your gutters flowing is usually a straightforward DIY job. This article offers practical advice on dealing with clogged gutters and ideas on how to prevent them.

Topics:

1. What Causes Blocked Gutters?
2. Why Clogged Guttering is a Problem
3. Safety First
4. Gutter Inspection
5. The Right Tools for Clearing Gutter Blockages
6. Damaged or Sagging Gutters
7. How to Prevent Gutters Blocking in the First Place

What Causes Blocked Gutters?

Gutters can become clogged for several reasons, causing them to overflow. Falling leaves, twigs and dirt often accumulate, particularly in autumn. Other culprits include nests from birds or small mammals, debris and sediment washed down from your roof and masonry. Freezing winter weather can also compact and solidify debris, worsening a clogged gutter.

Recognising seasonal and other causes of gutter problems will help you know when to check and clean your gutters, preventing significant blockages that may require more extensive and expensive work.

Why Clogged Guttering is a Problem

Waterflow impedance and back-up caused by a blockage can seep into the roof and walls of your home, causing interior mould and mildew growth, structural damage to masonry and even compromise loft or cavity insulation.

Additionally, excess water can accumulate around foundations, leading to foundation damage, the spectre of rising damp and even concrete cracks and basement flooding. Furthermore, standing water can attract pests like insects in the summer and cause metal guttering to corrode over time.

Understanding these potentially serious consequences of blocked gutters should motivate you to react quickly to a blockage situation, or to take pre-emptive action with regular gutter cleaning and maintenance.  

Safety First

When doing any DIY around the home, safety is of course a priority. Before you get stuck into doing any gutter maintenance, just take a moment to consider a few safety precautions

Check Your Ladder

Make sure your ladder is secure and in good condition before climbing. Check for any broken or weak points and that the steps are clear. If your ladder is extendible or hinged, make sure it's fixed securely once in position.

Working with a Partner

Ideally have someone hold the ladder while you work. Have a helper feed the hose if you're using a pressure washer. Or have a person on the ground to empty your bucket and send it back up to you. A pair of extra hands and eyes will make the job easier and safer.  

Be Aware of Your Surroundings

Be aware of what's around your working space. Look out for low branches, phone lines, washing lines and other potential hazards. Also make sure the ground you're working from is solid and level when using a ladder.

Gutter Inspection

If you're doing routine gutter inspection, start at the lowest point of your guttering system and work up. This will ensure that any freed water and debris released as you go will be less likely to cause problems in guttering below.

The Right Tools for Clearing Gutter Blockages

So now let's look at the practical side of gutter cleaning, beginning with the tools you're likely to need.

Ladder

Either a good, solid A-frame ladder for lower gutters or a stable, extendable ladder for reaching higher gutters. Ensure your ladder has rubber feet to prevent slipping and only use it on level ground.

If you don’t have suitable ladders, there are of course many ladder types available. Something sturdy, versatile and easy to store would be ideal, telescopic and folding, for example.  

But be aware, if your gutters are higher up than you’re comfortable with climbing, then it’s time to get experienced help or call in a professional.

Protective Clothing

It may sound obvious, but clearing clogged gutters can be dirty work, so wearing overalls is a good idea, as are safety glasses. Also, wearing shoes with a good grip will help in what could be a wet and potentially slippery situation up ladders.

Get a pair of heavy duty gloves to protect your hands from sharp debris and contaminants, and to keep them warm when dealing with frozen debris.

Bucket Or Garden Refuse Sack

Use a bucket or heavy duty bin bag to collect debris as you clear your gutter. You want to avoid gutter debris from falling to the ground or even down into lower guttering. This will just make more work.

Gutter Scoop or Trowel

A gutter scoop or a garden trowel is often enough to clear blocked gutters. All that's required is a little elbow grease to remove leaf debris and dirt build up.

Garden Hose with Jet Nozzle

A garden hose with a jet nozzle should be able to clear loose debris. A bigger or more compacted blockage will need hand clearing before hosing clean.

Specialised Gutter Cleaning Equipment

If you don't relish the idea of going up a ladder and getting your hands dirty, then there are other, more advanced tools for clearing clogged gutters. The most straightforward is probably a pole clearer.

Telescopic Pole Gutter Clearer

The easiest and least expensive way to clear clogged gutters without ladders are pole cleaners. As you would expect, these are telescopic poles with a gutter clearing attachment on the end.

The pole attachments vary in design, but all do the same job. They enable you to clear clogged gutters manually from the ground.

Pole Pressure Washer Gutter Cleaning

If you have a pressure washer, why not get a gutter cleaning, angled lance attachment? You can use the high pressure water jet to clear a blocked gutter and clean accumulated dirt and sediment during routine gutter cleaning.

A gutter cleaning high pressure attachment will often have two water jets with variable jet angles.

Vacuum Gutter Kit

Perhaps the easiest way to clear clogged gutters is with a vacuum and gutter kit. This consists of a larger wet and dry vacuum with long pole attachments, enabling you to vacuum up gutter debris from the ground.

While a vacuum kit makes lighter work of cleaning gutters, and allowing you to clear higher up gutters from the ground, it’s a costly solution.

Image Credit: The Range

Leaf Blower Long Attachment

If you have a leaf blower you can buy gutter clearing attachments for it. But while a leaf blower will clear loose leaf debris, it won't be much good for clearing wet, more compacted blockages, making it ideal for regular, pre-emptive autumn gutter cleaning before leaf blockages happen.

Image Credit: STIHL

Damaged or Sagging Gutters

It's important to not only clear and clean your home's guttering system, but to also maintain its structural integrity.

During your inspection, or while clearing or cleaning, you may discover gutter sections that are sagging or gutter coming free from its fixing. If you do find a section of loose gutter, it should be straightforward to re-attach it with new screws.

For cracked guttering, gutter sealant might be enough to make the repair. Gutter sealant is rubberised, polybutene (or similar) permanent sealing material.

For more severely damaged gutters call in a professional.

How to Prevent Gutters Blocking in the First Place

It's a much easier job to maintain your guttering rather than having to clear blockages. Here are a few things that will help keep your gutters flowing freely all year round:

• Regular inspection is the key to clear gutters. Get into the habit of including gutter maintenance as part of your garden upkeep routine.

• Remove tree branches that overhang your roof spaces. This can significantly reduce the amount of leaves falling into your guttering system during autumn.

• Make sure your roofs don't build up sediment or moss or any other debris that could wash into your guttering system.

• Installing gutter guards will help prevent blockages. A gutter guard stops leaves and other debris entering your gutters while allowing free water flow. But they themselves can become clogged, over time.

Final Thoughts

Guttering systems can be quite complex networks, so it's really important to do regular inspections and maintenance to reduce the likelihood of blockages.

As we’ve seen, when clogged gutters do happen, it's a fairly straightforward DIY job to fix. We hope that you have found the advice in this guide helpful. For more practical guides and DIY home improvement articles, visit the Hiatt Hardware Blog.