The Most Dangerous Gutter Cleaning Mistakes
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FOX RIVER GROVE, Ill. - illiNews -- Many homeowners, though, are reluctant to pay for professional gutter cleaning. If you're a committed do-it-yourself homeowner, you should know how to clean your gutters without making these common mistakes.

Improper footwear

You want supportive, closed-toe footwear with rubber, non-skid soles.

Overreaching

One common-sense safety principle is don't overreach—but it's easier said than done. Once you're up on a ladder, it's tempting to lean just a bit further to get that last bit of gunk. It's very easy to lose your balance and end up falling.

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Not wearing gloves

What's sitting in your gutters isn't soft and silky. It's spiky and sloppy and sharp, and it's not going to be fun to grab with bare hands. Gutters themselves can be a hazard too. They're made of sheet metal that has been rolled and cut, and they're studded with screws with sharp ends. As you grasp about in the muck, you run the risk of slicing open your hand if you're not wearing gloves.

Not using the right cleaning tools

If you're going the traditional route, you'll need the proper tools to clean out the gutters. That's more than a kinked hose, a bucket, and a ladder.

Not cleaning at the right time

When do you clean the gutters? In general, you'll want to do it in the spring and fall. Why? The point is to keep water flowing from the rooflines to your drainage system well before summer storms, if they're common in your area. This prevents damage to your house. If you live near pine trees, you might want to clean your gutters every three months.

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If you're rethinking how to clean the gutters, it's time to look at a better, safer, easier way. Gutter Sense is a lightweight, easy-to-use tool to clean gutters from the ground. It attaches to any 12- to 20-foot standard extension pole, so you don't have to climb a ladder to get the job done.

Gutter Sense's angled tongs also grab the gutter gunk for you, so there's no chance you're going to cut up your hands in the gutter (see #5). And it solves #6 because it's an easy-to-use, devastatingly effective tool for first- and second-story gutters. This only leaves #7, and we think it will be easy to eliminate as you'll no longer dread getting the job done.

Find out more here.