7 Signs of Gutter Damage on Your Home
If you are like many homeowners, your rain gutters are not something you often worry about. They need routine gutter cleaning, but otherwise, their purpose is incredibly simple.
It’s not until your gutters aren’t doing their job that you realize just how important they are!
WHAT DO GUTTERS DO?
Gutters and downspouts go virtually unnoticed on most homes in Topeka. They blend into the home’s exterior unless the homeowner chose copper or wood … materials that are definitely meant to stand out! Most home exteriors are made of durable yet lightweight aluminum or vinyl siding.
The point of gutters is to create a route of minimal resistance for rain to get off your roof. When they’re in good shape, your gutters will route runoff away from the home’s foundation and landscaping, protecting your home’s exterior from mold and mildew, the foundation and basement from leaking water, and the gutters themselves from wear and rust.
When gutters are damaged, it can lead to thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to your home and surrounding property.
ARE YOUR GUTTERS DAMAGED?
Gutter damage is too easy to repair to be the reason for any major home repairs! Inspecting your gutters is easy and safe. If you see any of the following issues, it’s a good clue that your gutters have some type of damage.
Once you find a possible gutter problem, you can decide whether it’s something you are comfortable repairing or remedying on your own or if it’s something you’d rather call a gutter service to handle.
Sitting Water Near Your Home
Pooling water near your home is a sure sign that your gutters or downspouts are not directing the rain runoff away from your home the way they should be. Standing water can result in mold, weakening of your foundation, and provides the perfect habitat for mosquitoes. Plus, it will make the areas around your house consistently soggy and muddy.
Mold or Mildew
Either one of these is a sign of gutter damage, whether you see mold or mildew on the gutters or on the sides of your house. Mold and mildew mean there is a lot of moisture in that area – a potential issue with the rain gutters could be the cause. Remember that mold and mildew are likely to appear on the north side of a home anyway, so if that’s where these substances are growing, it may just be because that area doesn’t get a lot of direct sunlight on it. This is a situation where the advice and expertise of a professional in Topeka would be a great help.
Rain Pouring Over the Gutter
You will have to wait until it’s raining to discover this gutter issue. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that you have gutter damage. It might just be that the gutter is full of debris and needs to be cleaned out. Either way, you need to have it looked at 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 issue we mentioned before could definitely lead to a basement leak. Egress windows and even cinder block walls will only block out so much water. That’s why it is so important to keep your gutters in good shape!
Landscaping or Lawn Damage
Rain gutters pour directly onto the ground in most cases, and landscaping should be designed to work with this flow of water to help it disperse into the ground. But, a leaking gutter or clogged gutter will cause rainfall to overflow or pool in areas where it isn’t supposed to. This standing water can kill plants by force or by overwatering. It might also displace flower bed building materials like mulch or rock.
Water Marks
Water marks are a visible sign that there is excessive moisture on a surface. Water marks are sometimes left behind even if pooling water has evaporated or dissipated. You will usually see water marks under the rain gutters or behind the downspouts. This is a usually an indication that water is pouring down the outside of the gutters and not staying inside of them.
Visible Gutter Damage
The final sign of gutter damage is by far the simplest to find. If your gutters are bent, sagging or cracked in the middle, they have damage. Following a storm, it’s a good idea to walk around your home to identify any damage to the roof shingles, outer walls, and rain gutters. These inspections are in addition to your routine home inspections.
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR GUTTERS?
Here are a few simple tips TruClean Topeka Gutters recommends to help prevent gutter damage:
Clean your gutters out at least once each year. You can lengthen the amount of time between gutter repairs by keeping them cleaned out. As with anything else, the better you maintain your rain gutters, the fewer problems you’ll have with them.
The optimal time to clean out 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 offer this service so you don’t have to handle the work or the risk.
Check your gutters often. Signs of damage can be visible from the outside of the gutters. Just a quick inspection – with both feet firmly on the ground – will reveal any of the signs we wrote about above.
We’d recommend that you do an exterior home inspection following each season to be sure that your gutters are working correctly.
When you see signs of gutter damage, act fast. Taking care of an issue before it becomes too bad can save you time and money. A small crack, for example, can be sealed, or the section of gutter with the crack can be replaced very affordably and quickly.
But, if you let the problem go on too long, you might end up making repairs in your basement, replacing vinyl siding or redoing an entire area of landscaping.