Skip to main content

Cleaning Your Gutters the Quick, Safe, and Most Inexpensiv​e Way

I noticed that water wasn't draining properly through one of the downsprouts serving the gutter from the top-most part of the roof, about 20 feet high. One can tell that the downsprout was clogged because rain water would fill the gutter and spill over a corner of the roof. I had to get up there and remove the debris but it was so high up and am scared of heights.

I called around and received a few quotes. My sister said that she paid $100 to have her gutters at home cleaned but she might have said that she used a Groupon discount. Wife had someone come to the house and say it would cost us $300 to clean all our gutters. I decided to do it myself.

My neighbor Martin has a ladder that extends to 20 feet that he lets everyone in our culdesac borrow as needed. However, it wouldn't be long enough to climb on top of the roof (and I wouldn't even if it was long enough). I decided to get one of those gutter hoses that extend to limitless heights and spray super high velocity water. This one was called GutterMaster sold at CanadianTire for $50. Tried it out the other day and it worked quite well. I had to use my 6-foot ladder to get it to reach all the way up there and it did reach. The curved head let me clear the clogged downsprout in no time. My only beef is that
the hose seal isn't quite secure because water ran down my armpits the whole time. Good thing it's summer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How I Fixed My In-Sink Garburator

Our kitchen garburator had been out of order for the past few weeks and I thought I would give it some tender loving care this Christmas Holidays because we'll need it. It's a Mainline Model 1900 and has been very dependable for the past 6 years. This happened a few times before and all I did was run a wooden barbeque stick through the serrated edges of the garburator blade to dislodge whatever gunk was in there and that did the trick. It didn't this time and I was ready to spend some money.  I was tempted to call our plumber and have them fix this for me (here take my money) but I thought to myself, how hard can this be. I was also tempted to take the whole thing apart to clean whatever was causing the blade to not spin but I'm sure I would have lost a few fingers or two if I did that. What did work was using something everyone already has lying around the kitchen - a butter knife. Take the butter knife and find the gap in the blade to insert the tip of the kn...

Success Story Renewing my Okta Maintenance Certification thru Examity

 The Okta Certified Professional certification had to be renewed every 2 years and my maintenance exam was due on July 30, 2023. I was confident about passing the exam because I had just completed an HRIS mastering project and Okta. However, the exam format was unnatural using DOMC (discreet option multiple choice), so I had to study and review a fair bit of material to prepare.  After studying a decent amount, I scheduled my exam for Tuesday, June 27, 2023. After hitting the next page, there was an error so I hit the back button and tried again. I was able to get it scheduled but didn't know that the exam date was actually scheduled for Sunday, June 25, 2023, for some reason. There was a confirmation email stating that but of course, I did not read it because I was focused on the Tuesday, June 27th date. I continued cramming until Tuesday but realized in horror that I was a no-show when I logged in 30 minutes before the exam at 10:30pm. If you have ever done offsite exams, yo...

High-blood Pressure Scare

My wife recently had an elevated high blood pressure. It was very unexpected as she was always showing me how low her readings were every time we checked together. I have always been the one constantly monitoring both cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar readings and am really surprised to find out that her readings went through the roof last week.  My mother-in-law just left for Toronto last Sunday after a summer full of family gatherings. My wife complained days before that she had constant headaches and took the customary Advil whenever she feels the onset of migraine coming or when her time of the month is near.  This time was different however. She said that her head felt like it was about to explode and she decided to check her blood pressure readings at home. The reading came back systolic 230 and diastolic 130. After seeing this, I immediately drove us to Surrey Memorial ER to get her checked out.  If you have ever had the opportunity to wait in an emergen...