Spring is all about light rain showers, new blossoms, sunshine and cleaning! Spring cleaning is a huge project that includes interior and exterior cleaning tasks. When it comes to exterior spring cleaning, one of the most important tasks is drain cleaning and maintenance. This includes cleaning, repairing and maintenance of the eavestrough, downspout, yard drain and your roof. Here’s why you should add them to your spring maintenance list and how much it can cost you…
Eavestrough
Eavestrough is essential to safely transfer rainwater or melted snow water from the roof to the downspout without damaging the walls of the home. A section of the roof extends over the exterior walls and a trough is mounted at the end of it to collect the rainwater. Due to their broad size, the eavestrough also houses tree debris, dirt, layers of dust, pets, blocks of frozen ice or any other obstructions that won’t let the rainwater successfully drive through the downspout. Cleaning your eavestrough of any such obstruction is essential as blocked rainwater can harm your exterior walls causing damage, flooding and paint peeling off. Heavy debris can also lead to an eavestrough cracking or breaking down. A local eavestrough maintenance professional can help you clean and fix it for spring.
Downspout
Image Courtesy: Northwood Roofing Ltd.
The biggest challenge in maintaining a downspout is periodically cleaning it without damaging it. The same obstruction that clogs an eavestrough, can become an obstruction in downspouts as well. However, unlike an eavestrough, you can’t just climb up a ladder can remove the debris using gloves. As downspouts are enclosed and bolted to the exterior wall of your house, it requires special tools to clean them. You can hire a local plumber or spring cleaning company to unclog the downspout and bolt them back in the wall if they have come loose due to the weight of the debris.
Roof Care
Image Courtesy: Mega Roofing & Exteriors Inc
Whether you have a roof made of asphalt shingles, metal, slate or wood, it’s highly important that it’s taken care of to avoid water damage. You can take care of your roof during winter by roof raking and removing the snow pile regularly by hiring a snow removal specialist. But in spring it’s important to remove any remaining ice presence, and water puddles between shingles, remove debris and repair or replace the damaged shingles. Your roof condition can highly impact the functioning of your eavestrough and downspout. Make sure you hire a verified roofing professional for the job.
Yard Drain
A yard drain, also known as the landscape drain, is the drain basin located on your lawn that helps drain the excess water from the downspout directly in the big municipal drain or dry wells. It helps to avoid residential yard floods. These drains are located in your lawn bed on a low-lying area usually covered in a metal grate. Fallen leaves and lawn debris can easily clog the yard drain, obstructing the rainwater from draining away. A professional yard drain cleaner will also flush out the drainpipe to ensure no blockages are left unattended.
Below are the average costs of drain maintenance services across different cities in Canada:
| City | Average | Minimum | Maximum |
| Barrie | $1,599 | $100 | $50,000 |
| Calgary | $1,516 | $100 | $38,000 |
| Edmonton | $1,691 | $100 | $40,000 |
| Hamilton | $1,715 | $110 | $15,000 |
| Oshawa | $2,788 | $100 | $45,236 |
| Ottawa | $1,189 | $100 | $28,494 |
| Toronto | $2,423 | $100 | $50,000 |
| Vancouver | $6,099 | $100 | $50,000 |
*Costs based on 11,879 verified Canadian homeowner reviews as of March 2022
Running regular maintenance checks on your different exterior drains will help you save from expensive repairs and replacements. You can hire a drain maintenance company, a local plumber or even a landscaper to go through your spring drain maintenance checklist.
