The New Outside, 6

Well, here it is all done.  The gutter guys were in and out so fast, I hardy got any pictures (and I was pretty worn out by that time).

The house looks GREAT!

The neighbors have commented on it (favorably).

I am thrilled!

See the downspouts?  I have 6" gutters and downspouts, and a gutter cover that will keep leaves out (finally).

And this siding is smoother than the old siding.  No place for mildew to get into for a long, long time.  A lot easier to keep clean!

And something else.  The workers were very careful about my plants all around the house.  Very little damage.  I watched them moving the ladders around, and they really worked to not damage them.  That matters.

I will be giving them an "A" rating all the way on Angies List.

STORMS!

Well, we have had some surprising stormy conditions here lately!  The first was Friday night.  For one thing, I didn't know it was coming.  We don't watch much live TV here (well, Fox and Golf channels, but they aren't big on local weather).  It was eerie.  Around 11 pm, Dad commented on how dead still it was outside.  And just then, "the train came through the station".

The wind suddenly whipped up to near hurricane level, the rain started, and the lights began flickering.  I'm not too worried about the lights because we have underground cables here; a power outage is rare and usually lasts only a few seconds to a few minutes.  Its been years since it was a whole hour.  I LOVE our underground cables!

But the rain started driving against the front windows higher up and harder than I can recall seeing even in the few hurricanes we get in MD.  Naturally, I had just noticed this past week that my back rain gutter was coming loose at one end.  These things never happen at the beginning of a drought, of course.  I'll have to arrange for a repair soon, but I'm sure gutter repair companies will be busy for the next month with damages from fallen tree branches.

The rain only lasted a short while, but we got 1/2" of rainfall.  I'm glad of that!  I would have liked more.  I've been watering selected parts of the gardens, but nothing beats rain falling everywhere.  Some long-established shrubs were wilting and the 1/2" of rain perked them right up.

There wasn't too much tree damage in the neighborhood.  After lesser winds, I've awakened to the sounds of chainsaws.  But I went out and found a dozen broken branches in the yard.  I collected them to bring then up front to pile in the utility trailer, when I realized I had walked RIGHT PAST a major tree branch fallen on the hosta bed, LOL!  I haven't moved it yet, its way too big for me to lift.  I'll have to haul out the chainsaw.

I have to laugh, of the entire neighborhood, I may be the only person having to use a chainsaw this weekend! 

It could always be worse.  One nice thing about my property is the huge mature oaks and sweetgums.  One bad thing is the huge mature oaks and sweetgums!  There is one old oak directly west of the house (from where the strongest winds come).  Every severe wind, I wait to hear it crack and fall onto the house.  I regret that I will have to have it cut down some day before it crashes onto the house.  I wonder if my insurance company will partially pay for preemptive tree-cutting?

Raingutters Again

Well, at least I cleared the gutters over the deck today.  I have a mesh screen over them now.  I think I will pull them off.  They don't work!

They get covered with oak flowers, leaves, and twigs.  It finally occurred to me today that the rain runs down the roof, hits the debris on the top of the raingutter mesh, and flows right over it onto the deck.


Now, when I originally built the deck, I installed a proper flashing against the house.  In spite of that, rain got into the basement wall below.  So when I had the deck door replaced 5 years ago (believe it or not, but LC the cat cracked the double pane seal by head ramming it - I was there when it happened), I had the professional replace the nearby boards and the flashing.

Then again, the gutters fill with debris even with the covers and block the downspouts, so maybe the rain is backing up into the walls from there.  I don't know.  So I am going to take the covers off so I can clean them out a couple of times each year until someone designs a gutter cover that actually works.  From the research I've done, NO gutter cover actually works...

So I used a stepladder to clean out the gutter and downspout hole over the deck.  The cover made it a miserable effort, but I managed it.  Then I got out the old extension ladder.  The nylon rope had rotted (nylon rope rots?).  I found a replacement rope at the Home Depot.  I put it on wrong the first time and had to re-install it while it was up because I couldn't lower it because it was caught in the gutter (stabilizer bars wedged in the gutter covers).

Don't laugh yet, it gets better...

When I had the rope attached correctly, I pulled on it.  The pulley popped off.  I'm going to buy a new one as soon as they go on sale.

Meanwhile, the gutter has loosened right over my corn, and the washout beat several plants right out of the ground back when it rained in early June.  I replanted them and placed a sheet of plywood at an angle against the house to deflect gutterfall (naturally, that was the last rain for a month).  I only had to do that because my attempts to install new gutter nails was useless.  I think the board on the roof is rotted.

Meanwhile, 3/4 of the raingutters are clogged with debris.  I fear it is time for a roofing/gutter professional to do some repairs.