Slater Gutter Replacement & Gutter Guard Installation

Testing a system with a garden hose

You do not have to wait for rain to find out whether a gutter system works. A hose run into the far end of each gutter run, away from the downspout, tells you most of what you need to know in about ten minutes per elevation. Watch where the water goes. It should move steadily toward the outlet and disappear, leaving the trough essentially empty when you shut off. Water that pools anywhere and stays there after the flow stops means the pitch is wrong at that point. Water that reaches the outlet and backs up means the downspout or the drop is partly blocked, and that is worth pursuing before winter rather than after. Then check the bottom: each downspout should discharge freely, and if one runs slowly or not at all when the others are fine, the blockage is in that line. Finally look behind the gutter and along the fascia while the water is running, since a slow drip there is much easier to see with a hose than in a rainstorm. It is a genuinely useful annual check and it requires nothing but a hose and a ladder.