Gutter talk

We have some large trees in our yard, as do many of our neighbours. Its nice to have such magnificent specimens and to watch the truly wonderful native parrots which frquent them throughout the year.

But trees shed leaves, so this week I have spent some time sitting on my roof cleaning leaf litter from the guttering. Its a tedious job and not without its dangers. In the area where we live, having gutters full of leaf litter is not recommended for two reasons.

Firstly, during heavy rain the water cant get off the roof quickly enough so banks up in the roof valleys which feed the gutters and ends up entering the house and running down walls, windows and doors. Secondly, gutters blocked by dry leaf litter can cost you your home during a bushfire.
We are prone to bushfires in dry years and embers carried on the wind can land in your gutters and set fire to the leaf litter, fire which can quickly spread into your roof.

The conventional wisdom is that you clear leaf litter from your gutter before the bushfire season starts. Not only does this prevent fire from taking hold there, but it means that you can use rags to block the holes at the top of the the drain pipes and flood the gutters with water as an added precaution against bushfire.

For anyone who collects the rainwater from their roof it is important to keep leaf litter and everything else which is animal or minerals out of your water tank.

So what can you do to stop leaf litter clogging up gutters in the first place?
You might want to consider some form of gutter guard like:

http://www.gutterguardian.com.au/
http://www.gumleafgutterguard.com/
http://www.aussiegutterprotection.com.au/
http://www.theleafman.com.au/

Arguably a better approach is to install guttering which is designed so that any leaves or debris which lands on it will be blown away by the next light breeze.
Formerly called Enviroflow its now called Smartflow Check it out:

http://www.enviro-friendly.com/smartflo-guttering.shtml