Gutter cleaning in Vanderbilt Beach.

Gutters this close to the beach fill with something most inland homes never deal with: sand. Fine beach sand blows up onto the roof and washes into the troughs with every rain, where it settles into a dense layer at the bottom that will not blow out and barely rinses. Mixed with leaf litter and salt, it packs down into something closer to grout than debris, and it is heavy enough to pull hangers out of the fascia.

Our gutter cleaning hand-clears that packed layer rather than pretending a blower will move it, flushes each downspout until it runs clear, and tests the full run before we leave. Sand is also what blocks a downspout at the first elbow, which is why the flush matters as much as the clearing does.

Salt in a wet trough corrodes aluminum quickly, so on a beachfront home a cleared gutter is a longer-lived gutter. The same sand is packing the door tracks below, which is window track cleaning. More on the area in Vanderbilt Beach.