Cleaning the gutters

In My Humble Opinion
1

So our new (to us) house has gutter guards. After a year of living here without any (apparent) issues, we finally had some seedlings sprout up above the garage. I got the ladder out to go up and remove them (the seedlings). There is a LOT of organic matter in the gutters, and clearly need to be cleaned out.

The gutter guards are really nice - I imagine someone spent a whole lot of money on them. They appear to be metal screens covering the top of the gutter, attached by what look like rivets on the front side, and tucked under the shingles on the back side. It is not an easy proposition to lift them up to clean the gutters.

Do these things have an expiration date, or do I just have a really shitty cleaning job ahead of me? (Or rather, does someone from Angie’s List have a really shitty job ahead of them, since there’s no way in hell I’m cleaning out the 2nd floor gutters myself?) Any tips, tricks, past experiences, etc. out there?

2

I’ve installed my own gutter guards like that, but they clipped onto the gutter rather than using rivets. They were these ones:

The clips are like a hinge and the guard can easily be swung back. Do yours not have the hinge?

3

Without lifting any gutter guards, a pressure washer can easily push the crud along to the spout.

A regular hose nozzle can do the same, but will take longer.

Erosion is your friend.

4

BTW, metal gutter guards make for cheap and effective grill inserts for folks who want to protect their Jeep Wrangler radiators.