One thing I thought I would look forward to as a home owner was the satisfaction of household manual labor. This is our first home and we’ve now been in it for 3 years. I’m not mr. fixit by any means but I’m learning as I go. I’ve repaired toilets, replaced ceiling fans, repaired mailboxes, replaced sump pumps, repaired dishwashers, replaced garbage disposals, re-routed heat placement by adjusting ventilation doors, minor landscaping, and the usual duties like mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. If I’ve got the time to learn I’m willing to take on most things. (Although I try to steer clear of electrical and plumbing duties).
I’ve found the novelty really wears off after about 2 minutes when it comes to shoveling snow and raking leaves (we live on a corner lot). The lot is a size thats small enough that it doesn’t really require a tractor mower. We have 3 silver maples that tend to hang on to their leaves until early December depending on the weather, and that is rarely predictable in Wisconsin. The trees are large and provide wonderful shade in the summer for the entire house, and they are nice to look at. In the spring they litter the yard and the gutters with helicopters. In the fall the leaves cover the land but not all at once. Some are from neighboring parcels.
It’s hard to get a nice weekend to rake where I’m home, and most of the leaves have fallen. Often if the maples haven’t lost their leaves it’s futile to get out there. Not knowing if it will snow soon (never know in WI) this Saturday seemed like the time to get out there. The best thing about the project is the family time.
(The day after raking)
Of course not all the leaves fell. So on Sunday we ended up re-raking a lot of it. If you don’t get the majority of them they get wet in spring and your entire lawn smells of decomposing leaves. I managed to get up on the roof to clean out the gutters too. Not cleaning them out often results in waterfalls over them. Which is neat, but bad for a home. Water is one of a homes worst enemies. It’s best to direct it away from the home.
A few years ago I invested in some ‘lattice’ type covers for about $0.98/foot. I tried it out on one section because if they didn’t work well, I didn’t want to remove the entire length of the house. They worked fine for the first season. But now in the spring the helicopters fall into the slots and stick there from the sap. It looks like I’m growing a garden of helicopters in my gutters. They keep larger leaves out, but twigs and smaller debris gets gummed up in there from the sap and I have to remove them, clean it out and replace them again. My advice: don’t bother. It’s just easier to get up there 3 times a year for about 2 hours cleaning them out.
I’m too cheap to opt for the ‘leaf guard‘ or ‘gutter topper’ type devices. Have any of you had experiences with these? Do they truly work as promised? I’ve heard some pretty pricey quotes on them, and I just don’t trust them.
Technorati Tags: Fall, leaves, raking
