Welcome to our website and to our first blog. Here we hope to be as informative and helpful as possible with some of our insights and experiences with everything related to home improvements, buying homes, mortgages, investments – the lot.

Given the name of the website, we’ll be focusing mostly on gutters and information regarding new products, what’s in the works, home DIY projects but we’ll also be including lots of great articles on all other topics related to your home.

So lets get into it… First post is as you’d expect – about gutters.

Gutters

Gutters have been around for a very long time and like everything else in life have evolved over the years. The earliest forms of gutters are thought to have dated back to the Indus Valley civilisation between 3000 BC and 1500 BC.

Traditionally, gutters have been important for two main reasons;

1. They keep the rain water away from structural components of the building; and
2. They collect rain water for subsequent use.

Keeping rainwater from critical components of the building is very important. It cannot be underestimated how damaging water can be at times. Water trickling off the roof down the walls and sides of buildings over time can be very detrimental to the building’s condition.

Collecting rain water for various purposes was and is another major advantage of guttering systems. Over time, it was only a logical procession to create a water storage facility that was fed by guttering systems from buildings. Water then could be used for washing, cooking, watering, drinking, etc.

Nowadays, guttering systems are somewhat taken for granted until they start causing problems. Typical issues with gutters include corrosion and blockages. Both requiring maintenance to either prevent or rectify.

Gutters that become filled with leaves and other debris will carry moisture that can take a very long time to dry out. In the days of metal gutters, this would allow corrosion to begin and accelerate very quickly this facilitating the need for regular maintenance in particular cleaning the debris out. These thankfully most gutters are made out of aluminium which helps to delay or prevent the corrosion process.

Debris build up in gutters poses another problem apart from corrosion – water blockage. This is an issue simply because blocked gutters will prevent the gutters from doing exactly what they were designed to do in the first place – drain or carry water away from the building. A blocked gutter will cause water to overflow, flooding areas of the house that could cause a lot of damage. This of course is further compounded in extremely heavy rains.

Another important consideration about debris-filled gutters – they can be a fire hazard. Consider gutters that are filled with dried out leaves, twigs and other combustable material how quickly they could ignite in the event of a nearby bushfire. In Australia, this has been a known problem for many years and householders are educated on the importance of cleaning out gutters in bushfire season.

There are many ways to help combat these problems and we will create further articles on topics such as gutter maintenance, gutter guard, and hiring roofing companies to inspect and help with gutter maintenance, or gutter replacements.