10 Best

Rain Gutter Cleaning Tools

of December 2023

Your home is your most important financial investment. It only stands to reason that proper maintenance of your home is equally important. Depending on where you live, you can experience severe damage from hurricanes, floods, or even tornadoes. But even heavy rain can cause structural damage to your home. The gutters on your roof protect your home from water damage from torrential downpours, by directing the water down a drainpipe and away from the building’s foundation. But if your gutters get clogged, they won’t be able to drain correctly. That’s where rain gutter cleaning tools come into play.

We’ll see that there are scoops and spoons that are specially constructed from removing debris that accumulates in your roof’s gutters. You can also use a pressure washer cleaner to blast impacted leaves, twigs, and silt that accumulates in your gutters. Some of these handy devices allow you to clean your gutters while still standing in your yard. That’s a much safer alternative than having to ascend a ladder to clean your gutters.

We’ll go through some of the rain gutter cleaning tools on the market nowadays. You’ll have no problem selecting the right tools, depending on your home’s needs and the weather conditions in your area!

Why do they install rain gutters on roofs?

Gutters channel the rainwater that rolls off your roof and directs it through a drainpipe. If you didn’t have any gutters, the rainwater would just fall off the roof and pool around your home's foundation, which can erode the foundation over time, or leak into your basement and even cause flooding in severe cases.

Why do I have to clean out the gutters on my roof?

Just like you don’t want rainwater collecting around your house’s foundation, you also don’t want it to collect inside the gutters on your roof. If dirt, leaves, and other debris clog up your gutters, this can lead to water seeping into your roof when there are heavy rains. This may even cause structural damage over time, either to your roof or to the walls of your home. Also, standing water in the gutters could end up becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes and attract other pests. So, it’s wise to make sure that rainwater flows freely through your gutters. You can also consider installing a rain barrel to collect rainwater running off your roof so that you can use it later on to water your lawn!

Looking at the Best Reviews Guide’s list of gutter cleaning tools, we find that they fall into a few categories:

• Manual scoop: There are manual scoops that are designed to help you clean out the gutters on your roof. For example, one of the simplest is The Wedge Gutter Cleaning Scoop. It has holes to let water drain through so that you can remove more debris or leaves from your rain gutter as the water goes through the holes. It is 4 inches wide, so it will fit easily into the gutters on your roof, whether the gutter is 5 or 6 inches wide.

The Wedge Gutter Cleaning Scoop

• Scoop attachment: There are also spoon and scoop attachments that you put on the end of an extension pole. An example is The Gutter Tool Gutter Cleaning Spoon and Scoop. With the extension pole, you can clean out the gutter while standing on one spot with your ladder. You won’t have to move your ladder constantly to get to every spot! There is also a hook on the scoop which allows you to hang the scoop from the rungs of your ladder when you’re ascending or descending. That allows your hands to be free, for greater safety.

The Gutter Tool Gutter Cleaning Spoon and Scoop

• Pressure washer cleaners: You can purchase nozzles and tubing that attach to a pressure washer. For example, the AgiiMan Gutter Cleaning Tool Pressure Washer includes 6 straight rods that are each around 15” in length, and a straight or curved wand to which you attach a nozzle. The total length is around 102”, allowing you to reach the roof of your house even while standing on the ground!

AgiiMan Gutter Cleaning Tool Pressure Washer

• Gutter guards: As the saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Gutter guards consist of a micromesh that clips onto your gutters, letting rainwater through and keeping leaves and debris from clogging up your gutters. The Raptor Gutter Guard is a gutter cover that you can install yourself. It comes in sections that you slide into place underneath your roof shingles, and then screw down to secure them. (But, some customers were disappointed with the gutter guards that they bought when they found out too late that they don’t fit their gutters well.)

Raptor Gutter Guard

Here are some customers’ impressions about the rain gutter cleaning tools that they bought:

• Use the pressure washer without extension: One customer said that he tried attaching an extension wand to his pressure washer. He said that it didn’t work so well, because the high-pressure blast of water was too hard to control, and he cracked the siding on his house. Another customer said that the blast of water almost broke the windshield on his truck! His solution was to use the pressure washer with a ladder, to get a proper angle at the debris.

• Brush not stiff enough: One person who bought the Trenton Gifts Telescopic Gutter Cleaning Brush said that the wand telescopes well. But, the brush tends to twirl around when you try to clean out debris. The only way it would work is if you tape the brush into a fixed position. So, the rigid plastic scoops are probably a better option.

Trenton Gifts Telescopic Gutter Cleaning Brush

Here are some features to look for when choosing rain gutter cleaning tools:

• Using a manual cleaning tool: With a manual gutter scoop, you’ll probably have to reposition the ladder frequently to clean out the gutters entirely. But there’s still a bit of a technique to doing it effectively. The manufacturers of the Gutter Tool Gutter Cleaning Spoon and Scoop recommend first cleaning the gutter within arm’s reach. Then use the scoop to start shoveling the debris toward you. How far you can reach will depend on how far your extension pole reaches.

• Be sure about the attachments: The pressure cleaners will typically have parts that snap together. Be certain that the inlet diameter of the nozzle matches that of your pressure washer machine. This also applies to the scoop attachments: make sure that their diameter matches the telescoping pole’s diameter.

• Versatility of pressure washer cleaners: If you purchase a pressure washer cleaner, you’ll see that it’s capable of much more than just cleaning the rain gutters. For example, the Selkie Pressure Washer Extension Wand has 5 nozzles that emit water in a cone-shaped spray of 15, 25, 40, or 65 degrees. The nozzles are color-coded, and the code is standard for all pressure washers.

  • The 0-degree nozzle is for shooting a direct jet of water at high, hard-to-reach areas. That’s probably the setting that you’ll use to clean your rain gutters.

  • The 15-degree nozzle is for pressure cleaning hard surfaces, such as brick or concrete.

  • The 25-degree nozzle is for wood or painted surfaces.

  • The 40-degree nozzle is for rinsing windows or screens.

  • The 65-degree nozzle is already a much gentler spray and can be used for washing your car.

Selkie Pressure Washer Extension Wand

The Selkie Extension Wand also includes angled spray nozzles. They’re curved at 30, 90, and 120 degrees. These angled nozzles give you more options to clean hard-to-reach areas. For example, the 120-degree bent nozzle will allow you to clean underneath your car without having to bend. And the 30-degree bent nozzle is good for cleaning the top of your car.

Final Verdict

We went over some of the features of today’s best rain gutter cleaning tools. If you want a versatile tool, then it would make the most sense to buy the pressure washer tools, assuming you have a pressure washer. If you just want to do occasional light maintenance, it might be enough to just buy a scoop to get out debris. Either way, with all of these tools around, there’s no reason for you to suffer water damage just because your rain gutter is clogged!