If your Kansas City home is equipped with rain gutters, avoiding gutter problems keeping them clean and in excellent working condition throughout the year is an essential part of your home maintenance routine. Unfortunately, most homeowners aren’t likely to think about their home’s gutter systems at all until there’s a problem.
Top 5 Most Common Signs of Gutter Problems
At Smart Exteriors, we offer customers a lifetime solution that will keep you from ever having to worry about cleaning your gutters again. With over twenty years of experience as a top-rated gutter, roofing, and siding specialist in the Midwest, we’ve developed a strong reputation for excellence in our field.
Our team of seasoned exterior experts is always ready to share our expertise with those seeking to improve their home exteriors with the latest and most innovative solutions. To help you become familiar with some of the most common gutter issues we deal with on a daily basis, here are some of the most common signs of gutter problems you’re most likely to notice in your home, and what you can do about them.
1. Soffit / Fascia Rot
In a roof construction, the soffit is the material that connects the edge of the roof top to the outer wall of the home. Another important part of the roof structure is the fascia, which refers to the long, vertical boards that cover the outside edges of the rafters (where the gutters attach to the rooftop). These two important components are very susceptible to gutter problems like leaks and clogs, as water will drip down into the fascia, rotting the boards, which eventually will affect the soffit panels as well.
2. Landscape Erosion
Whether your home is on flat land or on a slope, gutter problems can quickly cause a problem with your landscaping. When downspouts and gutters become clogged from debris during a rainstorm, the water can divert into areas like lawn or garden. This heavy overflow of water, especially when combined with heavy winds can cause soil erosion in a matter of hours. Soil erosion can sabotage your lawn or garden, and in some cases, erosion can spread to your neighbor’s property as well.
3. Flooded Basement
Midwest homes know a thing or two about flooding. Basement floods can be caused by a number of factors, including structural issues, faulty window seals, sump pump problems, and others. Another common cause of a flooded basement is a clogged gutter.
When gutters become filled with leaves, dirt, twigs, and other debris,rainwater has no choice but to fall straight down to form pools around your home’s foundation. The water ruins the foundation of the home, causing cracks in the concrete. Water then finds its way into your basement walls through the holes in the construction, ruining your basement and any belongings you keep inside.
4. Stagnant Water / Mosquitos
Mosquitoes are more than just pesky nuisances that make us itch—they can also spread serious diseases like the West Nile virus, chikungunya, and malaria. For these reasons, keeping mosquitoes faraway from our homes is well worth the effort.
Clogged gutters can lead to flooding in your yard and around your home. These pools of stagnant water can quickly become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, as females are known to hatch between 100 and 300 eggs at once. In other words,keeping water from pooling around your property should be a top priority for any homeowner that wants to protect the household from these dangerous and bothersome creatures.
5. Foundation Damage
As we’ve mentioned before, one of the problems with clogged gutters is that the rainwater that falls is pushed out down to accumulate in pools around the home’s foundation. Aside from basement flooding, landscape erosion, and the other problems we’ve listed so far, this can also quickly cause your home’s structure to deteriorate from the ground up.
Foundation damage is a serious problem that can wind up costing homeowners a fortune in repair and renovation costs. For example, continuous water exposure will erode the foundation layers and cause cracks that weaken it over time,which could result in a major disaster if the house collapses or caves-in at some point. Excessive moisture can also create mold growth, which can be quite dangerous to your health (and hard to remove).
Superior Gutter Services in Kansas City
Smart Exteriors is proud to provide the area’s leading solutions for gutter protection, including Kansas City gutter guards and gutter cover systems. Building better homes for our friends and neighbors throughout Kansas City is our number one priority at Smart Exteriors, and we’re always researching the best products and installation techniques to keep our customers satisfied.
Our gutter protection products are carefully chosen by our team of experts for quality and performance and are backed by our 100% limited transferable warranty. For more information on Smart Exteriors and our exterior solutions for homeowners in Kansas City, Missouri, and the surrounding areas, give us a call now to reach one of our friendly and helpful agents over the phone. You can also fill out our online form to request a free, in-home pricing estimate for your Kansas City gutter services to get started planning your next home improvement project today.
