Al Carrell: You know, autumn leaves are considered to be a thing of beauty, and I was inspired. I wanted to sing that song, Autumn Leaves. But there's a contract with the station here that says Al Carrell will not sing. Let's talk about autumn leaves though. In spite of their beauty, they also can get in the way. You've got to get them cleaned out of the gutters. If you don't you're going to have dams built up here. That is going to mean that the water will overflow, it will cause rotting, it may even cause problems in the winter time if there's any freezing, so we want to get those leaves out of there. If you're going to reach into the gutter, be sure you wear gloves, cause you don't know what you're going to run into.
Now one of the easiest things to do is to come along with a whisk broom and use that to get these leaves out of the way. If you don't want to do that, you can get a spatula out of the kitchen, and that's a good way. Just go along. The big thing is that you're going to have to get on a ladder and you're going to have to move the ladder every time you get through with the space that you can reach. And don't try to over reach. There's a real easy way, if you can do it safely, and that is to get your leaf blower and get it into the action, because once you turn that thing on, it's going to really kick up the leaves.
Sometimes when you get all the leaves raked out, you find a surprise. The down spouts are all clogged up with leaves and gunk. One thing you can do is use your plumbers snake and work it down through there. And sometimes you're going to have to go back down to the bottom and start at the bottom and work it up. But if you do that, eventually you're going to get it unclogged. I think the clog was right here. We'll find out because next, after you do this, you want to turn on the hose. And just send it on down there. I can see it's working out okay. After you've got the downspout completely flushed out leave the hose running and take it up to the very end of your gutters and let some water run through there and see if it's going to be okay. You don't want to have any dams in there. It looks like this is running out okay.
Episode 012 1995 - 96 Season
| Heating and AC | Fireplace Checkup | Faux Walls | Cleaning Gutters | Backyard Putting Green | Bi Weekly Mortgage Payments |LIST |
To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #012.