Quote:
Originally Posted by legion
I use a leaf blower to clean my gutters. It take me about five minutes to do the whole house.
It used to take my about 5 hours by hand...
|
Bingo. Just got done doing this last week on the place where I'm living now. The only thing I'd say is you need to be VERY careful to not let the high-velocity air get under a shingle - it wouldn't take much to tear one (or more) off, particularly if there was a lot of overhang as seems to be the case above. Use the full-power setting sparingly (if at all) and always direct the flow of air downward or across the shingles/gutters at a slight downward angle.
Too much overhang on an asphalt shingle can't be a good thing. Over time, they're just going to droop, curl and in time, crack along that stress/bend. I'd say an inch of edge overlap is more than enough.
There's also an attachment that Sears/Craftsman makes for a standard shop vac that you can use to blow them out - I have that too, but found standing on the roof with the leaf blower to make much easier/shorter work of it, plus I could see into the gutter to see what I was doing and make sure they were completely clear - with the shop vac attachment you're standing on the ground so (1) you can't see in and (2) all the leaves and crap that come out shower down on you. Good choice for occasional clean leaf removal duty. Not a good choice for months/years of decomposing crud and glop and wet muck though. The leaf blower is far better for that.