Home made gutter cleaning contraption
 

Our house backs onto green belt with some very very tall tree's. Keeping the gutters clean can be a challenge. Or expensive to hire someone twice a year. Needed to come up with a way that was safe and economical...

This is my home made gutter cleaning vacuum/blower system. I take no credit for the idea. Credit to google and youtube.

All the pieces were bought form Homedepot, except for the vacuum. Craigslist... half the retail price, like new condition. Although Ridgid is homedepot's brand.

What's needed:
* Good shopvac
* 2 inch diameter pvc pipes cut into: 12, 5, 3, 2, 1 feet sections
All sections have tops with male threaded adapters cemented on, bottoms have female threaded adapters cemented except for the 1 foot section. That one section uses a 2x2 rubber flexible coupling that will fit snugly to shopvac
* Top piece, the J curl is a 90 degree and a 45 degree, 1-female threaded adapter and about 4-5 inch of pipe all cemented together
* The 1 foot pipe always stays fastened to the shopvac hose via a 2x2 flexable coupling and secured using its hose clamps. All other sections will screw on top of the 1 foot piece, using whatever length is required for that part of the roof.
Anything above 14 or 15 feet is tricky to control. Its like holding a wet noodle in the air
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the white pipes are central vacuum tubes, thinner and lighter. I use them for blowing out the gutters.
These white tubes slides perfectly inside the 1 foot black section tube and is secure together whit a 1.5 x 2 rubber flexible coupler. The other end is simply duct taped to the blower, (although i needed an adapter so the vac hose would fit over the end of the blower). I strap the blower to my waist with a tool belt.

The vacuum works well when things are a bit damp, leaves suck up nicely. Can be a bit of a hassle when dragging the vacuum around and stopping to add/remove sections of tubing as i walk around the house reaching the upper and lower gutters.

The blower i simply carry around on my belt but creates a mess to clean up on the ground after.
Blower works best after a few days of hot dry weather. The leaves are light and dry.

pics of blowing device

one more pic

Haha, nice! Does it reach the second floor?

does it actually suck enough to pick up leaves/dirt? I would think a tube system of that length would loose it's umpf and not be effective.

Nice.

A ladder and my hands have always worked for me in the past, though. :p

'course now I don't have gutters on my house :lol

Pretty smart

the highest section of gutter i have is around 22 or 23 feet and i can reach it. A bit wobbly to handle but managable.

My theory is, as long as there's no leak in the tubing, the suction should be the same if the tube was 2 feet or 30 feet. If there's any physics people that have other theory's, please let me know!
Just think, in houses with central vacuum systems, how many feet of tubing must they run?

I first tried the ladder and hand techniqe and found it took waaay too long. And being up 22 feet on a ladder just totaly freaked me out. 12 or 13 feet wasn't bad but the higher areas was scarey

^ you are correct, considering no loss of suction it would not matter.

but chances is there might be some.

How good at it is it at sucking in larger debris that almost clog the tube?
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Haven't had any clogging issues yet. Leaves and small twigs suck up easily
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Of course there are pressure losses in piping as ducts/pipes get longer and have more bends, from the friction on the fluid. Fluid Dynamics 101.

Head Loss in Piping Systems

I mean the whole jobs of an HVAC designer is to calculate these losses and size fans & ducts appropriately.

It's not going to make a measureable difference on your 20 foot vacuum pipe.

Regardless, this tool is pretty awesome. I just cleaned my gutters a couple weeks ago, I could have used this thing. I don't know why I didn't think of something like this myself :p