"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- HL Mencken --
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-- HL Mencken --
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I have a serious problem with the gutters on the new house. I guess they're full of leaves or something, because they aren't draining. They've got an ice buildup, and as the snow is melting on the roof (absolutely bad insulation! Not just wind blowing the snow off. You can actually see ridges of snow over the rafters) the melt water is dripping over the edges of the gutters, and has built up icicles on the backside of the gutters, which is bad for the eaves and roof.
The more immediate problem is that the water dripping off the icicles has covered the driveway and porch stoop with a very thick layer of ice. Salt is ineffective, because the driveway slopes and within minutes the salt is washed away by the dripping water, down over the ice all the way down the driveway. And the stoop is cement, so I can't use salt there anyway. I tried kitty litter, but you just slide on the litter sliding on the ice. No traction.
I am worried that
a) the car will slide when I leave the garage, taking out the neighbor's car parked across the street, and
b) someone will slip on the stoop and sue me.
I guess maybe I need some gravel or sand, although I wonder how long it would take for that to become ineffectively buried in new ice. What I really need is the gutters cleaned, but can "they" (whoever "they" is, and that's another problem) do that when everything is all ice?
I have to figure it out, or locate some sand, or something, by Tuesday morning, because I'm having some very heavy furniture delivered then, and ice will make it very difficult and dangerous.
Sigh.
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An interesting detail, the temperature here is now 25 degrees F. The current temperature at the old house is 1.
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4 comments:
You might find a neighbor to hire to clean out the gutters. I had a terrible experience with "Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning". I don't recommend them - just a warning because they advertise like crazy.
Husband has theory that gutters were originally an industry practice to get rid of scrap metal. Now it's an industry of it's own. But he posits that gutters are more work than they're worth, and if you've got gutters, you've got ice dams and water is going to get into your eaves, no matter what.
Husband is wrong. Gutters have been around for a long time. They used to be made of wood. The purpose is to prevent rainwater ending up in your basement or undercutting your foundation, and sometimes to direct it into a cistern for household use.
Metal never has to search for a use. It's "scrap" only when a person has only a few pieces. In the aggregate, it's very valuable, as valuable as new because it can be reworked, as long as it's still metal, not rust.
Oops, that is my mistake. I thought I'd heard that somewhere. What he said was about Japanese houses often having a stone or cement waterway in the ground around the house to divert the water. He dislikes gutters and feels the water at the foundation is less destructive than ice dams in the eaves.
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