Gonna be a Long Day…

It’s raining today.

Not the gully washer storms that happen in the spring and summer. The drizzle and rain of North Texas in the fall/winter.

And I’m dealing with three big dogs that are mostly inside, when they’d be outside letting off steam. Think of 5 year old boys, stuffed with candy, only with teeth that have zero capacity to wipe their wet feet before running around the house. Really, I could light up the fireplace and the two older dogs would happily curl up. That won’t be happing with hurricane Jasper, who has already been in my office, soaking wet, a half dozen times.

It’s going to rain most of the day, so walking is out of the question, at least when we normally walk. So I’m betting in half an hour it’ll be nuts in here.

Luckily, I prepared a bit.

When rain looked imminent, I took some time to clear the gutters. Usually what happens is I blow this off, then look at the cameras and see a waterfall in front of them when the rain picks up. I’d wait for a break, and slog out there to clear them. But one side of the house, and in front of the sunroom will flood. So in a rare case of forward thinking I cleared things out.

I used to simply climb up on the roof and duck-walk around the perimeter clearing as I went. That ain’t happening any longer. My old as will fall and break a hip. I’ve gone up and used a leaf blower, which works well if what’s in the the gutters is dry.

But you can’t beat the time tested method of climbing up and down a ladder clearing them by hand. Sucks to do, but it works better.

I found a tool to do this:

I can’t remember where I found this or where I bought it. I seem to recall it was on a facebook feed way back when I had a facebook account. I do remember it was made in China, of course, cost like $25, and took forever to show up. Matter of fact, I was about to start the process of finding out WTF when it showed up.

Then I got really pissed.

What showed up was the top, black part. about $.50 worth of extruded plastic that I paid $25 for. A fancy ice scraper, so to speak. Worse yet, it didn’t have a threads for a standard extension pole. Funny, the video in the ad clearly showed a pole. So on the pile it went, sitting on my workbench for months before I fiddled around trying to make it work. I ended up filling a piece of conduit in it, sticking an extension pole with the threaded part removed over it, and pop riveting it in place.

A lot of work that I shouldn’t have had to do.

That said, I’ve been using it since and it works really well. With an 8′ reach in either direction, you only have to move the ladder a few times for each side of the house. The hook part plows the debris over the edge and under the gutter supports, and the scraper edge sweeps it clean.

So there it is. A gutter tool.

Don’t know what it’s called, don’t know where to get it. But worth finding one if you need to clean gutters.

And for probably the 100th time, I’ll be pricing gutter guards. Screw this cleaning stuff.