Hey Guys,
With all the talk and questions about exterior gutter cleaning, I thought I would make a little video showing you how I clean gutters. I probably brushed twice as much as what was necessary for times sake. If you were to allow a few minutes for dwell time, you could get by with a lot less, but dwell time on a video is boring! Also, when your filming something, you want it to be perfect, so I brushed more on purpose.
Wished I had a dirtier gutter to show you, but this was all I had…
Great stuff Micah!
Good stuff, Micah.
We’ve been using a pump up sprayer to apply the chem to the brush. It conserves a lot more chem that way, I’ve found.
That’s a great idea. I’ve thought about rigging up a spraying nozzle right above the brush. It would have a trigger down towards the bottom of the pole. You could spray the cleaning solution right onto the gutter… would save a lot of work lowering the pole and raising it back up again.
Either powered by a pump-up… or better yet a 12v pump
That’s what I wanted to do for this last job, but didn’t have the time to do it.
Let me tell you that know I’m really thinking that we might have a different kind of “dirt” in the gutters here and there, since the ones I see here are never uniformly dirty, they are streaked really really bad, so at the end, even if you clean it well, you might end up with some shadowing.
Thanks for posting the video, it made me see that what I was doing wasn’t wrong at all.
That was Gutter zap right ?
Nice video Micah! I like the dual angle of the brush you’re using. Is that the Mr. Long Arm brush that WCR sells?
I like my brush just fine but the dual angle would be an improvement.
No that is just a brush from a local janitors supply. They work pretty well for gutters and general pressure washing. The two different levels really help out.
Thanks for posting that video. I like the angle brush that you are using as well. Have to give one of them a try on the next job. I have been using a solution called Mold Armor sold at Home Depot. I use it straight out of the bottle on really tough gutter faces. Works really well and isnt that expensive. Nice video Micah.
Steve
Nice, where can I get one of those brushes?
Thanks for all the positive replies guys!
One important thing I forgot to mention, and I haven’t seen it mentioned yet, is that whitening gutters that have been re-painted doesn’t work very well. The cleaners really only work like this when it’s the original paint.
If gutters have been painted and are dirty from the electrostatic bond I’d recommend painting them again after a good regular cleaning.
Thank you, Micah, for taking time to make your informational video and sharing it with us. Good information and I appreciate it.
Thanks,
Wayne
Alright - I have been dying to ask this question for all of you folks doing gutter whitening. If you prewet the surrounding area, plus spray down the gutters themselves, what do you do about those windows you just soaked, and all the water film left behind? If you are doing the windows also, well then there is no problem. Seems to me like a forced sale - “Yeah we got your gutters looking like new, but you should really think about those dirty, hard water stained windows…” Someone please explain…thanks
Like you said, if I’m doing the windows too it doesn’t matter. If the customer did not buy window cleaning but did buy the gutter whitening I warn them in advance that the tap water rinse will get on their windows and leave spots.
At that point it’s their problem. They have a choice of getting the exterior windows cleaned or living with the spots.
I rarely do just the gutter whitening on a house though. Usually it’s power wash, gutter whitening, and window cleaning.
No forced sales here… I’m a lot more laid back then that. If a customer only wanted the gutter whitening done, they would be informed that the windows would get wet in the process, and may spot. That’s up to them to make the decision. If they absolutely did not want the windows touched, and did not want them to maybe become dirty in the process of cleaning the gutter, then I may possibly alter my methods to accommodate them. However my price would go way up. In fact it would probably be cheaper to clean the exteriors of the windows after the gutter cleaning. This would all be explained before any work was done, and the home owner would make that call.
it’s funny, I was wondering how long it would take before a negative comment was made on the youtube account for this video.
Like Richard, it’s very rare that I only clean the gutters on a house. 99% of the time gutter cleaning is an add on service to window cleaning, or pressure washing.
Which brings up another view point. Pressure washing can leave windows just as spotted and dirty as this method of gutter cleaning… so that’s why I try to sell window cleaning as an add on too the pressure washing service. If they decline, I make them aware that their windows may be less then perfect… it’s just par for course.
Micah-
My post may have come off a bit more harsh than intended, I was just dying to know. I figured any gutter service was going to be an upsell, but just wasn’t sure. Anyways great video - thanks!
No problem, and my comment about a negative comment wasn’t directed towards your comment on the video, I should have re-phrased that. Someone else posted a comment on the actual youtube page for the video instructing me to learn how to clean windows since I had just made a “real mess” out of them. lol.
I just read that and realized how it probably came across to you… Sorry.
Now I gotta get my mind out of the gutter.
