Is It Dangerous to Clean Your Own Gutters?

If you’ve ever climbed a ladder to your roof and started reaching into your gutters, you might have heard a voice in the back of your head asking, is this safe? Depending on your situation, gutter inspection and cleaning could be a safety risk, and it comes with many potential dangers. And yet you have to keep in mind that cleaning your gutters is an essential and highly beneficial practice, with the following advantages:

Maintains home value: Keeping clean gutters will help maintain your home value. A house with dirty, broken or overflowing gutters doesn’t look nice, but it also speaks to the structural integrity of your home. Gutters that maintain good curb appeal will symbolize what the rest of the home will be like and help keep your selling price where you want it.
Defends against pests: Clogged gutters are ideal places for pests and rodents to call home, and there could even be diseases and other decaying matter lurking if you neglect maintenance. Keep your gutters empty and clean, and you’ll have confidence that no animals or bugs are bedding in your house.
Protects foundation: Your gutters collect rainwater and drain it away from your home. When clogged gutters inhibit this process, the water can overflow, dripping down onto the foundation and affecting the structural integrity of your home. If your gutters are overflowing, this will also likely mean that water is getting onto the roof and creating damage there, as well.
Reduces Costs: By avoiding overflow and water damage to your roof and foundation, you’ll spend less time and money repairing and replacing parts of your home. Investing in a professional service to clean your gutters will be worth it in the long run — you won’t be putting more money into larger repair projects later. Professional gutter cleaning is affordable and will be much less than any future problems pertaining to your home’s structure.

With all of the advantages of gutter cleaning, you could be tempted to try it out yourself. However, there are many gutter cleaning dangers that you should be aware of before you decide to go this route. When it comes to gutters, there are many aspects to keep in mind — how often to clean gutters, the advantages of doing so — but how to clean gutters safely should be one of your top priorities.

Why Cleaning Your Own Gutters Is Dangerous

Is it dangerous to clean gutters? Cleaning your gutters might not seem like such a dangerous practice at first glance, but once you get up there, you might start to change your opinion. While saving money by not hiring a service may be appealing, it’s always better to air on the side of caution when it comes to climbing ladders and reaching into gutters. Other than just falling and injuring yourself, there are many reasons you should leave gutter cleaning in professional hands.

Here are some reasons why cleaning your own gutters is dangerous.

Slips and Falls

Climbing a ladder in itself demands attention and focus. Combine this with the precarious situation of cleaning out the gutter debris, and you could have a recipe for a bad accident. This might be a breeze for a trained professional, but this could pose a challenging test for the homeowner who isn’t used to being on a ladder. The situation can be hazardous if you’re on your own — you won’t have another person to stabilize the ladder, and it could wobble, slide or shake and cause you to fall. Even with another person with you, the ladder can often shift when you’re reaching up into the gutters. It’s easy to start leaning one way and accidentally lose your balance. Figuring out how to clean narrow gutters or a unique gutter system while you’re on a ladder could be disastrous. In addition, in most homes, you cannot reach some of the gutters without getting onto the roof. Or you have that one gutter in the back that requires a 40ft ladder that weighs 100lbs and really needs two or more people to set it up.

Deciding to get on the roof to clean could be even more dangerous. Shingles are often slippery with rain, ice or mold, and one wrong misstep could cause a slip and bad tumble off the roof. Nearly half a million people are treated for ladder-related accidents every year, so it’s not as though this is a rare occurrence.

The reaching and leaning actions that go into cleaning your gutters make for a precarious time on the ladder. It’s best to leave this practice to a professional service for your own safety.

Pests

Gutters drain water away from your home, but their walled sides and trenchlike design also make them an appealing place for pests to nest and mold to grow. If you climb up to clean your gutters one day, you might be shocked to find an animal staring back at you. There are many different types of animals that could be lurking in your gutters, including:

Birds: Often, the assortment of materials in a gutter makes an excellent base for a bird’s nest. If the birds lay eggs, they could even become territorial and act aggressively if they feel encroached upon.
Squirrels: If you have several trees in your yard with branches overhanging your roof, then your gutters could be a popular spot for squirrels. Branches create an accessible channel through which squirrels can access your gutters. Often they will use gutters as ways to navigate to other trees.
Snakes: With smaller rodents, such as mice, living in gutters, reptiles may be attracted to the smell of prey. Snakes can climb downspouts or slither along branches into the gutters.
Possums: Larger animals, such as possums and raccoons, can even find their way into your gutters. Possums could be particularly troubling if they have a litter of babies in your gutters. I have actually pulled a trapped possum out of a downspout!

You never know what’s going to happen when you accidentally infringe upon an animal’s home. Without the proper equipment, you could leave yourself liable to getting bitten or exposed to disease.

Mold

Another threat to you concerning gutter maintenance is mold. Because of the wet nature of your gutters, mold can easily find a spot to grow and spread. Decaying leaf matter also contains mold spores, and if you choose to clean your gutters on your own, you could expose yourself to their harmful effects. Inhaling these spores can create various adverse health effects, including wheezing, red or itchy eyes, and even more intense reactions for allergic or asthma.

Mold is another reason why you should avoid cleaning your own gutters. The various health risks outweigh any of the potential positives, and you’ll be investing in your safety and well-being when you invest in a professional service that knows how to handle those kinds of dangers.

Diseases

Without the proper protection and gear, you’re also putting yourself at risk for several different diseases. As was mentioned earlier, animals can get into your gutters and start to call it home. These animals will leave fecal matter scattered around the gutters, which harbor pathogens and bacteria that can make you sick. This waste is often hard to identify, and if you go up to clean your gutters, you could be inhaling harmful bacteria without even knowing it.

When you’re up on a ladder balancing and reaching to clean out leaves, the risk of disease likely won’t be the first thing on your mind. But disease is another serious threat to cleaning your own gutters and one that could harm you without the proper knowledge and protection.

Electrocution

If you decide to clean your own gutters, you’ll also be putting yourself at risk of getting electrocuted. Power lines run to your house to give you electricity — when you set your ladder up to get to the roof, you could accidentally come into contact with a power line. This will put you at risk of being electrocuted.

Likewise, you might even damage power lines while cleaning your own gutters. Phone and cable lines are also at play, and messing with these lines in any way could cause damage.

To save money and avoid injury, find a trusted, reliable service that knows how to clean gutters safely.

How to Avoid Injury

With all of the dangers that come with cleaning your gutters, you could be wondering how you can keep your gutters clean and effective. To avoid injury, you could be wanting to look into equipment that could help you stay safe. You could try taking the various dangers into account and plan against them, using strategies or watching how professionals clean gutters to make the process safer. But ultimately — even with all the proper equipment — you’ll likely still be lacking the necessary skills that make the job safe, and spending a ton of money on equipment to do the job correctly.

The surest and best way to avoid injury while cleaning your gutters is to have a professional service do it for you. A professional service has the equipment, the knowledge, and — most importantly — the valuable experience necessary to do the job right and safely.

Hiring a professional service comes with many benefits, including:

Efficiency: When you clean your gutters by yourself, it takes time to get the ladder, move it around your roof gutters and reach each area. This is time that could be used in other avenues of your life. Ask yourself this…is your entire Saturday worth $150? With a professional service, they do the job quickly and efficiently, so that you won’t even have to get your hands dirty. Instead of going through a long, drawn-out process, your service can use their knowledge and expertise to clean your gutters while you commit time to other parts of your life.
Effectiveness: A professional service will clean your gutters quickly and effectively — even more so than if you were to clean them yourself. Our company has completed over 250,000 gutter cleanings, so we know exactly what to do and how to do it. You won’t have to worry whether the job was done right or if you could have done more — our professionals are there to ensure this and make your gutters as clean as possible and guarantee our work.
Safety: And lastly, you can take care of your own health and safety by choosing to hire a professional service. You won’t have to worry about animals, disease, electrocution or falling off the ladder. Hire the service and be confident in their abilities to do the job safely.

Choosing the safe and effective option to have a professional clean your gutters might be the easy part — you still have to find a trusted, reliable service that you know will do the job right. Luckily, A Better Gutter Cleaning can help you with all of your gutter needs.

Get A Better Gutter Cleaning

At A Better Gutter Cleaning, we help give you the quality work you need on your gutters. We’re a company that sets ourselves apart from the competition with several advantages:

Reliability: Our owners and managers are college-educated, holding various certificates and years of experience in the gutter industry. We’ve handled over 250,000 Metro Atlanta gutter cleaning jobs throughout our time in this business, and with each job, we’ve been dedicated to giving quality work. We’ve won several consumer choice awards and are widely regarded as one of Atlanta’s most trusted gutter cleaning companies. When it comes to gutter cleaning, you want to make sure the service you choose knows exactly what they’re doing. At A Better Gutter Cleaning, we are dedicated to completing a thorough job that satisfies you.
Convenience: We make it as easy as possible for our customers to schedule and pay for our services. With our unique customer portal, you’ll get text and email notifications when you schedule a service and reminders for your upcoming service. Once we complete your service, you’ll receive a link via text and email to pay online through a safe and secure transaction. It’s a simple and easy process that allows you to schedule services and make payments from wherever you want. It’s a perfect choice for those looking for convenience and some streamlined actions that will give them more time throughout the day to focus on other things. Its the easiest thing you’ll do all year.
Quality: With every job we do at A Better Gutter Cleaning, we’re committed to performing the best work possible. All of our crew foremen go through an extensive training and certification process. Here, they learn proper safety techniques, typical gutter problems and diagnostic techniques. Our reviews reflect our quality of work — we’re highly rated and consistently ranked as a top-tier Atlanta service company. We know what it takes to do a good job, and we’re dedicated to giving our customers the very best.

With all of the benefits of hiring A Better Gutter Cleaning, you can put gutter cleaning into the hands of trusted, reliable professionals who you know will do the job the right way.

Contact A Better Gutter Cleaning

A Better Gutter Cleaning is ready to help you with all of your gutter needs. We offer several different services, including:

Gutter cleaning services
Gutter repairs
Gutter installation
Shingle replacement
Vent Boot and flashing repairs
Gutter protection
Tree pruning
Skylights

With the vast range of services we offer throughout Atlanta, Georgia, and surrounding areas, we can get you what you need safely and effectively. With our professionally-trained staff and stellar track record, we’re your easy choice for gutter services. Contact us today!