Ted's Blog

Ever since before I bought my house there have been problems with the gutters. One of the things in my home inspection report (14 years ago!) was to re-attach some gutters that had come off and were directing water towards a side door of the house. They fixed that, but that same gutter caused problems later. I bought some new, bigger nails and tried using those to keep the gutter up, but it kept coming loose. I think when it would rain the water would concentrate the parts that were loose and sagging and pull the nails out even further. So I was thinking I could probably get new gutters, making sure the gutters were graded higher in between the downspouts so water would flow correctly. This would be expensive, so I was looking on the internet for advice on gutters and found out about gutter screws. Instead of nails they use long screws that replace the nails and hold the gutter securely even if the nails were slipping out of the holes before. I mentioned these to a friend at work and he said that's what he used on his house when he installed new gutters and that I had used gutter screws a few years earlier when I helped him install a gutter at his neighbor's house. I remembered it once he told me about it. The screws have a Robertson head which works kind of like an Allen wrench, but with a square wrench instead of a hex one like an Allen wrench. I'm not sure why they use this, but they include a Robertson drill bit in the package so you can attach it to your power screwdriver or drill and drive the gutter screws. I bought a box of 10 screws at Home Depot to try them out and installed six last night and four more tonight. I think these things will work great and probably save me several thousand dollars in the short term since I won't need new gutters for a little while longer. I still need to do something because I have some water damage going on in some places, so that still needs to be looked at . . .