Cleaning out the gutters & trimming back rooftop branches today...

Dec 17, 2020 Last reply: 5 years ago 4 Replies

Cleaning out the gutters & trimming back rooftop branches today... o

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drain clogged o
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clearing drain o
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trimming branches



The rainy season is almost upon us in California, so I climbed up on my Werner ladder (I love that ladder!) and cleaned all the mud and oak leaves from the gutter.



The mud had stuffed the drain clogged, so a garden hose was used until the water ran clear out the underground drain fifty feet from the house.



The oak trees have overgrown the roof, so I'll need to sharpen my chain saw and cut them down a bit to size, where I was only able to trim them a bit with the Fiskars (I love that brand) of extendible trimmer while on the ladder.



The best gloves, bar none, IMHO, for outdoor garden work are those Harbor Freight TIG welding gloves. They're really long and soft and leather everywhere - you gotta try them just once and you'll love 'em.


The Werner ladder is an aluminum 28 footer (I should have bought the 32 as the multi story house dug into a hillside has many rooftops, some of which are at least 28 feet 0 inches, unfortunately (and it's tile, so my hundreds of pounds breaks them every time I go up there).

BTW, I have the Costco so-called "alumimum" ~7 foot Werner staircase ladder (adjustable about a zillion ways and all a PITA), which is, seemingly, as heavy as concrete, so there's "light aluminum" (also Werner) and heavy aluminum (Costco Werner).

I can't imagine owning a home without those two, where I wish I had an additional 25-foot staircase ladder for some of the ceiling fans which stopped working, and I wish I had purchased a 32-foot basic ladder instead of the 28 footer (lessons learned by making mistakes).

I belatedly realized you may have been asking about the gutters, which are, unfortunately, steel, so they rust and leak and which I "should" replace.

Your home, perhaps. I have a single-story ranch on flat ground. An 8-foot fiberglass ladder is good for almost everything we do. For anything that needs more height, we have a 20-foot extension ladder.

Cindy Hamilton

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