There are many things in life we take for granted, including vaccinations, refrigeration and, barring natural disaster, only dealing with water when and where we choose.
The last item is a big deal and is a long-term human project starting thousands of years ago.
The Neolithic Revolution forced people to innovate ways to get water to crops, including genetic modification of plants to allow them to do with less hydration.
The Egyptians irrigated vast fields with the life-giving water of the Nile.
As people began to live closer together, it became more important to move dirty water away from the home. The Indus Valley Civilization and the Minoans for instance, used flush toilets thousands of years ago.
And the Harappan civilization introduced a form of gutters as long ago as 3,000 BC. They used them to drain toilets. You don’t have to be a product of the modern world to want to move human waste away from human homes, and people made the connection between waste and disease long before our time.
Gutters became a sign of advanced civilization, so naturally the Romans, perhaps the greatest engineers of the ancient world, put gutters alongside roads. They built roads which sloped down on both sides, and the mud and gunk was swept away when it rained.
After Rome fell, progress in the West ground to a screeching halt before the Norman Invasion, when the Normans brought wine, gargoyles and the curse of ladders to Britain.
The gargoyles were used to “spit” the water away from the building, which helped to preserve the roof and keep the faithful from getting soaked with unholy water.
In 1240, the Tower of London debuted a downspout, which helped to protect the whitewashed walls and allowed the important work of torturing heretics and political dissidents to continue unimpeded.
When Henry VIII got mad because the church wouldn’t let him ditch his wife Catherine and marry the polydactic Ann Boleyn, he shut down all the monasteries in the country and the Brits stripped all the lead out of those buildings, which led to many more gutters, among other things.
It took a certain amount of American ingenuity to really get gutters going. Colonists used wooden gutters in a v-shape. Later gutters were metal lined but still wooden.
None of this was fun to clean, least of all the gargoyles. Cleaning gutters has always been a problem.
By the early 19th century, Yanks were making cast-iron gutters and running the water off into underwater drainage systems so well that people forgot about them – until they had to clean them, anyway. They didn’t have rubber hoses, so cleaning gutters and downspouts could not have been much fun.
You know the gutters most people have now, the open half-round type? The kind you have to climb on a ladder to clean? They were and still are a big deal.
Despite still requiring a ladder as a basic part of the service (to climb up and clean), half-rounds caught on.
By the 1960s, seamless gutter machines made cheaper, better and lighter aluminum gutters.
The ladders were aluminum too, but you had to buy them separately, and you still had to go up and muck out the things.
Honestly, our grandparents must have cursed progress.
By the 1970s, you could stamp out gutters on sight with a cool portable machine. These are great! But you still had to buy a ladder and until 3-D printing came along, you had to buy a ladder, climb it and pull the nasty brown stuff out of the gutter by hand once or twice a year just to keep the water from messing up your house.
Pretty clearly, gutters and ladders were heading for splitsville. Cleaning gutters is important but it is just not a fun job. But smart people were working on the problem!
By the early ‘80s, various systems had evolved to make cleaning gutters much less of a concern. Different ways to keep debris out of gutters were introduced; there is even a robot available.
But even with a robot, you still need the ladder to at least climb up and put it in the gutter and then retrieve it when you’re done.
Two shots at injuring yourself, in other words, and as much as you might like to, as often as we all deserve it, you can’t really sue yourself.
Being modern people and fond of our loungers, A/C and other blessings of sedentary contemporary culture, we seek out solutions to problems like this and the best solution is Gutter Glove.
The pros at Gutter Glove have several options to keep you from ever having to stare at the dirty, stinking fermenting mess that lives in your gutters, much less having to stick your hand in it. When you have Gutterglove guards installed, you are getting a product that is superior to all others on the market today.
The Pro, Ultra, LeafBlaster and Icebreaker lines are all equipped with the latest in debris-blocking technology, including a state-of-the-art stainless-steel micro mesh and anodized aluminum frame that resists corrosion and tears. The mesh present serves as an incredible filter, preventing pine needles, grit, leaves and more from ever clogging your gutters, eliminating the need to clean…forever!
And best of all, you can leave your ladder in the garage.
Gutterglove is the solution to climbing ladders and cleaning gutters in the Carolinas. Contact us today for a free quote.
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