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How Clean Gutters Prevent Expensive Water Damage

How Clean Gutters Prevent Expensive Water Damage

Cleaning out your gutters is an easy task to forget for every homeowner, but if you continue to let them fill, it will have expensive consequences. Keeping clean gutters is a way to primarily prevent water damage to your home. As your gutter continue to fill up with leaves, sticks, and other debris, any bit of rain will see that debris swept towards the downspout.

Unfortunately, debris isn’t often easily flushed out the downspout, but instead forms a clog. Once this happens, the water will find other ways to get out. It will build up in your gutters and spill over the sides. This is where your problems begin. If water is overflowing over your gutters, it causes problems like:

  • The water that overflows from your gutters is being dropped straight on your foundation. This can cause basement flooding or damage to your slab over time, especially during particularly wet years.
  • Overflowing water often gets on to your soffit and fascia. The soffit will often have small holes to help get air to your attic, which will let water in. The fascia, which can be made from wood or vinyl, is prone to rotting or mold growth.
  • If your gutters are hung particularly tight to the roof, it can also invite water right under your shingles, promoting wood rot and roof damage.

Fortunately, gutter cleaning need not be a major pain point in your life. If you don’t want to climb up a ladder and scrap leaves out of your gutter every season, why not have someone else do it? If your gutter needs cleaned, but you don’t want to be the one to do it, contact us today. The professionals at Patriot Services are skilled in making homes look beautiful, and we are no strangers to dealing with overflowing gutters.

Pressure Washing: Should You Choose Hot Water or Cold Water?

Anyone that has ever washed a dish, washed clothes, or even taken a shower will know that when it comes to the temperature of water that is best for the job, hot water is the way to go. However, most people imagine pressure washing as a cold water only sort of affair. This isn’t the case. In fact, if you are looking for a pressure washing service, one that offers hot water pressure washing is usually an indicator of a good service.

Pressure Washing: Should You Choose Hot Water or Cold Water?

In many cases, cold water can get the job done with pressure washing. Combined with a detergent, it can remove many stains, but like with washing your dishes, hot water gets the job done better. The molecules in hot water move faster, and as such, collide with stains more often. This makes them better at dissolving and breaking down everything from dirt to oil compared to cold water.

It is not that cold water cannot remove these stains, but it will often take a higher pressure to remove stains like oil whereas hot water can do it faster and with less pressure. Hot water also comes with a few extra benefits including being a natural sanitization method. This means it not only removes unwanted stains like algae and mold, but it will actually kill the spores. What this ultimately means for your home is that it will often stay cleaner for longer compared to cold washes. Of course, this is really only a benefit form buildings that have frequent mold or algae problems. Buildings will still get dirty from ambient dirt blowing in the air.

Many homeowners don’t realize that a hot water pressure washing is even an option. However, if we have piqued your interest, contact us today. Our services can help your home or business look as good as new again.

Why Schedule Regular Pressure Washing For Your Business?

Dirt, dust, cobwebs, bird droppings, mold, algae, exhaust – If you own commercial property, your buildings are at risk for all these harsh elements and many more. Not only do these contaminants affect how your building looks, but eventually, if left unchecked, exposure to these elements will degrade the exterior to the point where it needs more than a simple cleaning. However, this can all be prevented with regular pressure washing, but what exactly does it have to offer to your commercial building?

Why Schedule Regular Pressure Washing For Your Business?

Maintain The Property Value

You may not have any plans for selling your commercial property now, but there will come a day when you might want to. While you may still find buyers for a badly aged building, people will pay much more for a building that has seen its fair share of maintenance and still looks great despite its age. Pressure washing slows down the degradation of a building’s exterior and keeps to looking better for longer.

Increases Aesthetics

If someone could put the same building side by side and pressure wash one regularly while letting the other be at the full mercy of the environment, the difference would be shocking. Even just minor cobwebs can affect the exterior appearance in a major way.

Create a Healthy Environment

Not only do external contaminants look bad, they aren’t great for your health either. Bird droppings can carry diseases, mold can be toxic, and general grime is attractive to insects and other invaders. By engaging in regular commercial pressure washing, you can control these contaminants to keep your building workers and the customers that visit there healthier.

Are you a building owner and sick of trying to clean the exterior with ineffective and outdated methods? Contact us today to see what the power of pressure washing can do to help your building maintenance.

The Perks of Hiring a Professional to do Your Window Cleaning

Window cleaning seems like a simple enough task that anyone can do it, so why would you bother hiring a professional cleaner to do it for you? It turns out that there are plenty of good reasons why hiring a professional to clean your windows is a great idea, for both residential and commercial properties. And in this post, we will take a look at a couple of the biggest perks of hiring the pros.

The Perks of Hiring a Professional to do Your Window Cleaning

  1. They Have The Right Cleaning Products: Just as a hair stylist has high end beauty products that you wouldn’t find in your cabinet at home, so too does a professional cleaner have cleaning products that you might not necessarily have at your commercial building or home property. And those cleaning products are designed to provide the highest quality window cleaning possible. If you want windows that not only won’t streak after cleaning, but remain cleaner and clearer for longer, opt for a professional commercial cleaner who is armed with the right gear.
  2. They Are Helping You Improve Your Brand Identity: If you run a business and own or rent commercial property, running a company doesn’t give you a lot of free time. And it is highly unlikely that you have the time of day to think about how clean your windows are when there are more pressing matters at hand. However, the truth is that the appearance and cleanliness of your windows plays a role in the way the public perceives your professional image. The level of cleanliness also affects the strength of your brand identity. If you want a company image that exudes pristine cleanliness, hire a professional cleaner who will be able to routinely clean your windows when you don’t have the time.
  3. Clean, Clear Windows Make Your Home More Beautiful: Although you may be able to clean your windows in your home without the help of a professional, the truth is the final result won’t look as flawless. Additionally, cleaning all the windows in your home can end up taking several hours. And if you’re doing that on a regular basis, that’s a lot of time accumulated that could be spent on other things (like hanging out with the family). By investing in professional window cleaning for your home, you can enjoy a beautiful home and have enough free time to spend with loved ones.

For more information, give us a call today to learn more about all of our window cleaning and maintenance services.

Window Cleaning – Get Ready for the Spring and Summer Seasons

Spring is the perfect time to think about preparing the exterior of one’s home for spring and summer parties, including events such as high school and college graduation parties, a child’s birthday party or perhaps just a casual get together for family members and friends. Of course, after a long winter of chilly temperatures, a home’s exterior often looks a little neglected. Since warmer temperatures typically means family schedules become even more busy, it can be quite challenging for a homeowner to find the time to take care of all those outdoor chores begging for attention.

Window Cleaning - Get Ready for the Spring and Summer Seasons

 

Why Spring?

Spring is always a great time to spruce up the exterior of a home. It’s probably been at least several months since residents have even taken a walk around their home, so they may not be aware of the less than ideal appearance of their home. During the winter season, dirt, leaves, and other types of grime had plenty of time to creep into all the crevices around windows, and the local birds may have left several “presents” on both the glass and other surfaces of the windows.

Spring is also a good time to clean up a home’s exterior since it is just prior to the premiere time for family outdoor events — when homeowners are inviting guests over for a variety of special parties and other outdoor activities. For many busy homeowners, the party and/or event planning itself is enough to fill their plate, leaving no time for outdoor cleaning and preparation.

Why Patriot Services?

We clean all of a home’s exterior window surfaces so homeowners can focus on the activities that are most important to them — like planning an outdoor party for their child’s first birthday, a college graduation, or a Memorial Day bash. No matter how high or how large the window, we make sure it is cleaned thoroughly and is free of spots when we are finished.

If you need help getting ready for your family’s outdoor events this year, we can help! Please contact us today to set up an appointment.

Protecting Plants From Pressure Washing

When you hire a team to pressure wash your home, you are taking a great step towards a cleaner and more beautiful exterior. However, pressure washing can be dangerous to plants in the right circumstances. Pressure washing companies are typically very careful not to trample on plants as well as not to spray the highly pressurized water on plants either. The problem comes from the fact that most pressure washing companies use a technique called soft washing to safely clean houses.

Protecting Plants From Pressure Washing

Soft washing uses a lower water pressure that poses less of a risk to the exterior but uses additives like bleach to clean effectively. As you would expect, bleach can be harmful plant life. In most homes, the vegetation should be planted far enough from the home to avoid direct exposure to soft washing, but steps still need to be taken to protect from splash back.

When soft washing the exterior of the home, typically the best protection from splash back is to wet the plants before soft washing. This layer of moisture will protect the leaves from chemical burns caused by the bleach additive. As the amount of bleach used is typically not enough to cause serious damage, a coat of water is more than enough protection.

In some cases, companies may also use tarps to protect any landscaping. However, tarp usage is more common with soft washing roofing when a lot of water has the potential to spill over gutters and onto the plants below. Tarps are only used when there is a large potential of exposure and a coat of water will not be enough to protect the plant.

You put a lot of effort into your landscaping, and you deserve a home that looks just as good. If you are looking into pressure washing for your home, contact us today to see what we can do for you.

Strategies to Keep Leaves Out of Your Gutters

Cleaning your gutters is just one of those things you have to do. The gutters play a crucial part in ferrying away rain so it doesn’t run down the side of your home, eventually damaging organic materials and inviting mold growth. The biggest obstacles in your gutter? It is the leaves, for sure. Handful after handful of leaves is a huge pain, but there are strategies you can employ to limit the amount of wet leaf mush you need to pull out of the gutters throughout the year.

Strategies to Keep Leaves Out of Your Gutters

Trimming

It is generally never a great thing when a tree grows branches over your roof. Primarily, if those branches fall, they land right on your expensive rooftop. Furthermore, those branches also shed leaves directly into your gutters. It is a great idea to trim those branches away.

Find Problem Trees

When cleaning your gutters, you will probably note some leaves more than others or you will have to clean the gutters more often due to spring shedding of organic matter from trees like maples. If you see one tree leaf in particular or a lot of spring shedding in your gutters. It may be worthwhile to remove problem trees.

Get a Gutter Guard

If you want to defeat the leaf menace in your gutters for good, you could always consider a gutter guard. Unfortunately, you will still need to keep the leaves off the guard as well to promote good drainage. This can be an issue if you have a lot of leaf build up on your roof as well.

There is one final solution, and it is the easiest of all. If you have a leaf build up in your gutters, why not just hire us to clean it out? Contact us today and we can help you get clean gutters without a day spent precariously balanced on a ladder.

Why Keep Your Windows Clean?

If you were, for example, to have a monster truck driving in front of your window every day splattering it with mud, the reason to keep a clean window would probably be pretty apparent. Windows are the doorway for your eyes to the outside world. Even when you can’t be outside, you can look through a window and remember it is there and waiting for you. Furthermore, they invite precious light into your home to chase away that depressing drear.

Why Keep Your Windows Clean?

However, the primary reason to keep clean windows isn’t actually just for aesthetics. That is really just a bonus. In fact, window cleaning serves a valuable purpose. It doesn’t take much for very temporary dirt to transform into very permanent scratches. Dirt and other contaminants are often abrasive in texture. As such, with a little wind and movement, that dirt will leave permanent scratches on the window. The more dirt, the more risk of damage. So in essence, the reason to clean your windows is not just because it looks nicer, but because it is a regular maintenance task that you need to do to keep your home looking great. Failing to do this task is probably going to burn you in the future as restoring windows that are very scratched can be much more expensive.

The bad news is that cleaning windows is tedious work, but the good news is that you don’t actually have to be the one doing it. Like many home maintenance tasks, window cleaning can be parceled out to professional services that will do a great job and do it quickly so your afternoon is left free. If you have a home with dirty windows and are starting to form some concern about scratches, contact us today. Patriot Services can make sure every window, even those pesky second story ones are left clean and scratch-free.

Tasks To Do on The Exterior Before Selling Your Home

If the time has come to sell your home, your attention will primarily turn to the inside of your home. You will want to make sure everything is clean, repaired, and looks good so potential buyers can imagine themselves living there in a positive way. However, a potential sale can be unraveled on the curb outside. If your home doesn’t look great on the outside, that is the first impression that it leaves. Some can get past that with a stunning interior, but with a few simple tasks, you can make sure they don’t have to.

Tasks To Do on The Exterior Before Selling Your Home

So if you are selling your home, what are some exterior tasks to have done?

  1. Power Wash Your Home – This should always be on the top of your list if you are going to sell a home. Dirt and cobweb-free exteriors look better and can effect opinion even on a subconscious level.
  2. Weed Your Landscaping – If you have even basic landscaping, it is best to make sure that it is weed and leaf-free before showing it. You want your yard to look well maintained as well as your home.
  3. Clean Your Windows – When people are buying a home, a lot of time they will look around the house and then check out the windows to see what the view is like. You don’t want them looking out dirty windows as that suggests a poorly maintained home.
  4. Clean Up Your Front Door Exterior – Any real estate agent should tell you to sweep away leaves and clean the area around your entryway. It is the area where realtors spend time fiddling with keys and potential buyers end up just standing there looking around. You want them to enjoy what they are looking at.

If you are looking to sell your home, or simply want a clean and beautiful exterior, contact us today to see what we can do to restore your home to looking great.

Why Cleaning Out Gutters is Critical to a Healthy Home

Cleaning your gutters is one of the most important things that you can do to maintain your home. The fundamental purpose of your gutters is to catch rainwater and divert it away from your home. When your gutters become clogged and this process is disrupted, it can cause some real damage. You definitely don’t want a large pool of stagnant and disgusting water accumulating on your roof. This can act as a breeding ground for mosquitoes during the summer, but it may also inflict some water damage on your roof. Since this certainly isn’t an expense that you’re going to want at any time in the future, it’s best to consistently have your gutters cleaned out. It’s better to go to the small trouble of cleaning your gutters now than it is to have an enormous expense later on.

Why Cleaning Out Gutters is Critical to a Healthy Home

Fall is a particularly difficult time when it comes to roof maintenance because those leaves are fluttering down practically nonstop and contributing to that large pile of muck that tends to accumulate. It’s important to get these off of your roof since they are more than capable of filling your gutters and clogging them up, which can really throw a wrench in the drainage system of your home.

You should also consider that having clogged gutters can really detract from the overall image of your house. For instance, if you have guests over, a healthy roof will leave a much better impression than it would if it were weighted down by muck and water damage. In addition, don’t forget that water damage could scare away potential buyers if you are planning on putting your home on the market.

Patriot Services is a veteran-owned business that provides quality gutter cleaning services. If you need your gutters cleaned out, please feel free to contact us. We can help you keep your home in prime condition!