Are you an ant or a grasshopper?
By Mimi Vanderhaven
We all know Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper. The ant spends his summer gathering food for winter, while the grasshopper spends his sunny days singing and dancing. I doubt any of us is fully one or the other; rather, we are each sometimes an ant and sometimes a grasshopper, depending on the situation and our personal interests. Sometimes we prepare for a problem that has yet to materialize, and other times we wait until calamity strikes.
Well, on August 23, calamity struck.
That was the day of the torrential downpour, when much of Northeast Ohio received 4 to 8 inches of rainfall, more rain than we usually get in the entire month of August.
As gutters overflowed all over the region, destroying flowerbeds, flooding basements, and causing foundation damage, the grasshoppers started calling.
“Yep, the phones were ringing off the hook that whole next week,” recalls Anthony Alberino, founder of The Gutter Boys. “But that’s just human nature. Nobody wants to think about gutter cleaning on a beautiful summer day, but everybody thinks about it when we get a hard rain.”
Anthony and his team, however, do think about gutter cleaning on sunny days. “It’s our job,” he says. “We love working on beautiful summer and fall days because it makes gutter cleaning and gutter guard installation so much easier compared to doing it in the rain, cold and wind.”
Well, that seems like a win-win. On a beautiful fall day, we can go on a picnic while The Gutter Boys team cleans and covers our gutters.
More Than Rain
But it wasn’t just rainwater that caused a problem on August 23. It was also the high winds and tornadoes. Remember the mid-night sirens and cell phone alerts?
“Those high winds created a lot of debris that blew into gutters,” Anthony explains. “We’re usually not very busy in August, but we were last month. Gutters are clogged and overflowing, and it isn’t even fall yet.”
If you’ve been singing and dancing like a grasshopper this summer, now may be a good time to connect with your inner ant and call The Gutter Boys, whether you want your gutters cleaned or covered.
“We typically install over 100 miles of gutter covers every year,” Anthony says. “But some people don’t want to do that. That’s why we offer cleaning, too.”
To Clean or To Cover?
If you choose gutter guards from Anthony, you’ll get his popular stainless steel mesh guards with a special raised s-curve that promotes the self-shedding of debris. If you choose gutter cleaning, you can sign up for The Gutter Boys subscription service.
“This is a set-it-and-forget it way of keeping your gutters flowing freely,” Anthony says. “You can sign up for one to six cleanings every year—depending on the amount of debris your gutters collect—and we give you a significant price reduction”
That sounds like another win-win.
Of course, choosing to install gutter guards means no one has to clean your gutters because the debris stays out. “We really encourage that option,” Anthony adds. “Covering your gutters is better and safer for everyone involved.”
In Aesop’s fable, the starving grasshopper shows up at the ant’s door during winter, but the ant admonishes him and refuses to help, saying, “Why don’t you dance the winter away.”
The Gutter Boys won’t do that to you.
“If you wait until November or December and your gutters are packed with fall debris and overflowing, we’re still happy to help,” Anthony says. “But it’s so much better to get it done now. It’s extremely difficult to clean gutters that are filled with frozen leaves and ice, so please don’t wait too long.”
The Gutter Boys is headquartered at 1090 West Bagley Road, in Berea. The company has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and is bonded and insured. Call 440-454-7040 to schedule a free on-site consultation and estimate or visit TheGutterBoys.com for more information. The Gutter Boys also offers 12 months same-as-cash financing.