Oh, fall! Tis the season for outdoor maintenance, right? I’ve already shared how we did some major pruning in the front of the house (goodbye holly trees bushes).
Now is another fun outdoor home maintenance project – cleaning moldy gutters. Sarcasm intended.
Boo. This is not a project that I look forward to. I shouldn’t complain since we have lovely gutter guards that keeps all debris out of them. So really, I am only talking about the mold that grows between the guards and gutters. Every year a nice line of mold seems to accumulate. It’s probably just me but it feels like it is staring at me every time I pull up to the house. Whew, is it hard to take pictures of mold on gutters. Bare with me here.
Last year, on a whim, there was a beautiful day in October and I decided to clean those gutters. So I drug out a bucket, dish soap, and brush and spent two hours of intense upper body strength scrubbing. They ended up mostly clean and I ended up quite sore.
This year, I decided to try to work smart, not harder. I decided to give the cleaner we used to clean the vinyl siding – Clorox Pro Results Outdoor Bleach.
First, I attached the cleaner to the hose and sprayed down the gutters with the cleaner. After letting that sit a few minutes and work for me, I started scrubbing.
Wah-la! That’s the easy way to clean gutters! It took about 3 passes of spraying down and two rounds of scrubbing.
Here’s a before and after to really see the result:
After:
Then, I was feeling so good I decided to give cleaning the moldy brick that was hidden behind the giant holly bushes.
After checking to ensure that this cleaner was safe for bricks (it was) I did the same process as I did with the gutters. Spray, let sit, scrub, spray, repeat.
After about an hour worth of spraying and scrubbing I came away with clean gutters and clean bricks. What I thought were going to be two big projects turned into one pretty easy project. Now we can hang some Christmas lights (soonish) on this mold free house!
I know of a cleaner that doesn’t require any scrubbing at all and it’s Tough Jobs Bathroom cleaner with bleach. Simply spray on the gutters and hose off.
Great suggestion Patsy! Thank you!
Why not use a power washer to clean vinyl siding?
What I’ve heard about using pressure washers on vinyl siding is that it can be too powerful and hurt the siding. However, in some of the comments people have said it’s worked on the low pressure setting. I am just nervous about hurting our siding!