Frozen Gutter Anyone?

It makes it real easy to clean gutter when thier full of debris popsicles…:smiley:

i just jam a putty knife in the chunk and chisel and pull out in big bricks of leaf. I can’t get the stuff stuck on the bottom but i am looking forward to Mr Squeguee telling me how to do that this winter. I just don’t get why people call me in December when they could have called me the week before thanksgiving.

ya, there’s a small window of opportunity when the ice still has a thin layer of water underneath and hasn’t frozen solid to the gutter itself. I’ve been fortunate enough a few times to get that.
This year was easy. Warm November. Last year there was an early November freeze and we had to go out in the pouring rain when the temp. went up and before things froze again. Not fun!

The Stanley Wonder Bar works great in frozen gutters. Has the perfect curve for getting between the gutter and the ice and not beating up your hands or the gutters. Great year for gutters in Illinois. No frozen gutters. First time in several years.

I used that method yesterday and it worked great!

We use a similar tool but its thin with a screwdriver type handle.

Just a word of caution. Last year while chopping out some ice I had to pay to have a 10 ft long section replaced on a gutter do to ice. I used a screw driver to start breaking up the sections of ice so I could pull them out. When I came down off the ladder I noticed about every 2 ft or so, big dimple marks on the bottom of the gutter. I could have left it and the customer would never have known but I would not have been able to sleep that night. Just be careful with how hard you poke around. And when done look over the bottom of the gutter.

Dont really need to be replacing gutters thats for sure. I found if you tap on the outside of the gutter, sometimes the ice block will break free, sometimes. This one they wern’t frozen completely and still had a little water in them. Managed too pull everything to me, break a piece off and pull again. But I have used a 4 inch putty knife to get under the ice from the side and that works for me.:smiley:

Yeah I had the same thing Friday. I’d like to get through next week with the same out come.

Interesting

The key is to get your tool under the layer of ice and leaves. It can be done easily if you get water flowing inside the gutter. For obvious reasons, I wouldnt recommend turning on the customers outside water unless its above freezing outside.

[/quote][quote=winderwarsher;59250]The key is to get your tool under the layer of ice and leaves.

well that doesnt sound like fun :slight_smile:

heres a pic of my perfect ice corner from last week

This week we have done several frozen gutters. Used a putty knife to get under it and they came out in chunks. Worked great. Now someone is going to say use a heat gun from home depot to much time for me to do that. Water does expand a little when it does freeze. But for some reason the leafs help keep it together.
But if a gutter is over 2" of frozen Ice. I walk. Tell the customer I’ll be back. Cause if I don’t I could do some damage. Guess what they under stand.

Paul
Show Me Cleaning Window Cleaning Kansas City, Missouri, Mo. Kansas City, Kansas, Ks

We tend to schedule gutter cleaning in the winter months by the weeks, rather than the days due to the freezing. Customers understand this 100% of the time. When a day comes that it isn’t freezing we schedule all the jobs in order the most efficient way. We tend to do a lot more per day by doing that. Another, thing we’ll do is just schedule them in the afternoon when the sun tends to thaw them out.

i did the same thing this year… booked gutter cleaning jobs by the week… it worked well for the most part but had so many gutter cleaning jobs we had to start early, finish late and couldnt put anyone off even with the weather (rain, snow etc)… otherwise we would have lost jobs. we’re still cleaning gutters, with no end in sight… going to need to sharpen my 5 in 1 :slight_smile:

Here’s my issue with gutter cleaning in light of getting the frozen debris out with our “crow bar”… best way to put it…its a slim firm metal piece. It helps but it takes MORE TIME. We end up wasting more time when we cant get it out and have to come back. I just hire more people each year to work for us as we get busier so we can continue doing it when it thaws out. We are able keep the customer service up this way. When a customer asks if we can do it while its freezing, I’ll tell them it’ll cost ya. :slight_smile:

Just what I have been thinking…this is the second year in a row I came up short. I have about 110 gutter customers…none of them want you to start to clean until all the leaves are down…naturally…I was really boogie-ing…the weather was doing well… until the first snowstorm…then the second…then the freeze…I still have about 15 left…gonna give it a shot on saturday…but I think Im done…its been in the 20’s and teens tonight. I have been using that crowbar since last year…I attached it to a wooden pole…works awesome…Is there any other options?? I really dont want the customers to wait till spring.

so what do you do when you have a cold week where you have 30-40 gutter cleaning jobs and 30-40 the following week? you dont muscle it out and work as much as you can, as much as it sucks so you dont have to push the following weeks people back and then the following and then the following while the weather is getting colder and colder all the while taking the chance that you might lose jobs?
we were working 6 days a week and muscling through it so we could get to everyone, if we didnt we wouldnt have been able to keep booking more people…

One other thing that works on frozen gutters is to give the underside a few taps with a rubber mallet. Don’t go crazy but a few taps on the underside will sometimes seperate the debris pops from the bottom of the gutter and you can pull them out.

Good Tip…and I happen to have one in the shed…Will give it a shot…Tanks!:wink: