The GutterBrush Blog

All of this rain gives you an opportunity to give your garden a nice hearty drink without chipping away at your efforts to conserve water and save money. Maybe it is time you consider a rain barrel and begin collecting the runoff from your gutters that would otherwise go to waste and even hurt your landscaping and cause leaking around foundations?

Although any old 55-gallon drum or keg will do, there’s no reason to litter your yard with these unsightly relics. Instead, give your local water department a call because many towns and municipalities now offer water barrels free of charge to local residents in an effort to increase sustainability and decrease public water supply usage. Those that don’t often hold workshops on other ways to conserve water, or offer incentives to citizens willing to secure barrels on their own.

If you are into DIY projects you can even make your own rain collection system  for very short money. Just be sure you correctly position them underneath your gutters’ downspouts to maximize the collection of runoff during the next rainfall. But remember, even if you filter it first, the water you collect is better suited for drenching thirsty garden than satisfying a thirsty throat.

If you’d rather just buy a rain barrel, there are some really neat ones available online at www.aquabarrel.com

Good luck!

Collecting water from the sky to be used on the ground.

We hope you find this spring cleaning checklist helpful.

Save for a few enthusiasts of home repair projects, one of the most dreaded for homeowners is roof repair. A roof that leaks can cause major damage to the structure of your home and, if left unchecked, could eventually lead to the damage of many of the possessions inside. Asphalt shingles, which are what you’ll find on most roofs, generally only last 15 to 20 years and can require a lot of maintenance and upkeep.

If you’re looking for an alternative to the exhausting process of roof repair and maintenance with asphalt shingles, you may want to consider rubber roofing. Worried that rubber roofing sounds like stretching out a dozen Goodyear treads over your home? Don’t worry–although rubber roofing materials can come in a roll for buildings with flat roofs, you can also buy rubber shingles, which look much like slate shingles and come in a variety of colors and designs.

Another advantage to using rubber roofing materials is that most rolls and shingles are composed of recycled tires, saw dust and slate dust, which are much more eco-friendly than other roofing materials. Although rubber-roofing shingles can be more expensive than asphalt shingles, rubber roofs are much more durable and less likely to crack and crumble through tumultuous weather and drastic changes in temperature. Rubber shingles are also much cheaper and lighter than slate shingles–if that’s the style you’re looking for–and are similarly fire resistant. Rubber roofing materials also last much longer and require less maintenance–most manufacturers warranty their roofs for thirty to fifty years, and some even carry a lifetime warranty. The first rubber roof, installed on a home in Wisconsin in 1980, is still holding strong today!

So to help everyone avoid becoming one of those statistics we wanted to pass along some of the tips presented by the AAOS:

•Warm up for at least 10 minutes with some stretching and light exercise before beginning work in the yard.

•Use a rake that’s comfortable for your height and strength. You can prevent blisters by wearing gloves or using a rake with a padded handle.

•Make sure that hats or scarves don’t block your vision, and watch out for large rocks, low branches, tree stumps or uneven surfaces.

•Vary your movements and alternate your leg and arm positions often. When picking up leaves, bend at the knees, not at the waist.

•Wear shoes or boots with slip-resistant soles.

•Don’t overfill leaf bags, especially if the leaves are wet. You should be able to carry bags comfortably.

•Don’t throw leaves over your shoulder or to the side. That kind of twisting motion places undue stress on your back.

•Inspect ladders for loose screws, hinges or rungs, and make sure it is free of mud, dirt or liquids.

•Make sure all ladder legs rest on a firm, level surface. Don’t use ladders on uneven ground or soft, muddy earth.

•Always face a ladder when climbing and descending.

•Confirm that the ladder is fully open and locked before you climb it.

•Angle ladders about 75 degrees from the ground.

•Don’t sit or stand on the top of the ladder or on its pail shelf.

•Use the right ladder for the job. Step stools or utility ladders are good for working at low or medium heights, while extension ladders should be used outdoors to reach high places.

The invention of the clothes dryer may have revolutionized laundry in the modern world the same way gutter protection did the attempt to keep gutters clean, but in current times with an increasing focus on conserving energy and money a natural alternative for many families is the move to drying your laundry out on a clothesline in the yard as well as harvesting clean water from gutters. It is estimated by some that clothes dryers use between 10 to 15 percent of all domestic energy and in our current economic climate there stands to be a lot of savings for the average home owner if they trade in drying all their laundry in the dryer to using a clothesline instead.

An outdoor line to dry your clothes on costs only as much as your particular set up; the arrangement that works best for you will likely depend on your individual yard. Some home owners like to have one long clothes line that stretches the length of the yard which can be stationary or can be accessed via a pulley system from the back porch, while others prefer a more compact rotary style clothes line that employs a single pole with concentric circles of lines that radiate outward which allow for a large amount of laundry to be hung in one small space. Perhaps it is time that such an environmentally-friendly (and pocketbook friendly) activity was more widely embraced the way it once was.

We want you to save 10% on ANY purchase of GutterBrush now through February 26th, 2010 at GutterBrush.com by using coupon code potus at checkout. Look at it this way: you can use your savings to help pay down the debt in the United States!

Figures on government spending and debt (last six digits are eliminated). The government’s fiscal year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

Total public debt subject to limit Jan. 22		12,245,872
Statutory debt limit					12,394,000
Total public debt outstanding Jan. 22			12,302,465
Operating balance Jan. 22				   142,454
Interest fiscal year 2009				   383,365
Interest fiscal year 2008				   451,154
Deficit fiscal year 2009				 1,417,121
Deficit fiscal year 2008				   454,798
Receipts fiscal year 2009				 2,104,613
Receipts fiscal year 2008				 2,523,642
Outlays fiscal year 2009				 3,521,734
Outlays fiscal year 2008				 2,978,440
Gold assets in September				    11,041

It has become clear that you don’t have to be the first to market to be a business success nor do you need to be particularly unique. You do not need to be revolutionary. But if you are not emergent in these seemingly very complicated times you may find yourself out of business or barely hanging on in a very crowded marketplace of products and ideas.  But there is one thing you do have to do and it comes in many varieties. You need to give potential customers and actual customers value. They need a reason to buy from you and contribute to the success of your endeavor and not go to another provider of a very similar service and/or product. So what are those things? First, you need to actually show up and provide the service you promote yourself as providing by answering your phone, responding to emails, solving whatever problems are within your purview while also trying to direct customers to solutions that fall outside of that aforementioned purview. Finally, market your brand and the services that strengthen it honestly and frequently in order to differentiate yourself from all of the other restaurants, shoe stores, graphic artists, grocery stores, farmers, and other multitudes of outlets. Service is the key to success and often is the most powerful explanation for why one firm or another emerges from a crowded and noisy brandscape while others simply fade away into obscurity.  Now, what are the roles of the people who help or hinder meeting these requirements?

It may be hard to believe but it will take a team of 36 window cleaners carrying electrolyte packs and wearing specialized clothing resembling moon suits three months to wash the new 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The building, which was initially to be named the Burj Dubai, stands at 206 stories tall, reaching half a mile into the sky. While most visitors will look out from the skyscraper to admire the view of the Arabian desert below, the window cleaning crews will be looking back in. A team of 36 cleaners, mostly made up of migrant workers, have been employed to man 12 state-of-the-art machines that travel along tracks fixed to the exterior of the building while its windows are washed. It is a daunting task, but someone has to do it. I wonder if it had gutters (not much need for gutters in the desert and more than 2000 feet above the ground) who would clean them and install gutter protection?