Kitchen Garden Forum

This is probably going to break the Olympic record for teaching egg-sucking, but I've discovered a useful dodge for cleaning out gutters with the minimum of work. (I have a bungalow).
Having tried one of those devices that drag everything along the gutter and finding it just pushed debris over the edge onto the path, I reverted to going along the gutters slowly scooping moss, leaves etc into a container balanced at the top of a stepladder. (OK, I know, I don't clean them out often enough).
However, I found a 5ft long piece of old plastic gutter of slightly smaller diameter than the house guttering and managed to slide it along underneath all the rubbish in the house gutter. Hey presto! Lifted it out with 90% of the rubbish, the sediment being washed away with the hose.
HNY to everyone.

Unfortunately we have a house, not a bungalow, so I won't be venturing up any ladder to try this useful tip. It's amazing though how much stuff accumulates in gutters. We don't have nearby trees so get very few leaves, but get a lot of small moss clumps accumulating on the roof slates which the birds, particularly pigeons & magpies) dislodge. On windy days we often find small moss clumps have blown down onto our patio.

I painted my cast iron gutters this summer and used a ladder stand-off attachment for the first time, made the job a lot easier so I guess it would apply to cleaning as well. Rubbish doesn't accumulate in my gutters, combination of correct fall and several feet of rainfall I think.

Excellent hint JohnN. Keep 'em coming.

Cheers, Tony.

JohnN wrote:This is probably going to break the Olympic record for teaching egg-sucking,

Correct.

JohnN wrote:However, I found a 5ft long piece of old plastic gutter of slightly smaller diameter than the house guttering and managed to slide it along underneath all the rubbish in the house gutter.

Or a garden trowel, is what I use.