Step one. Bought the van.
Hello Everybody, First post. I camp a lot in tents but after spending three days straight in a tent in the rain at Dolly Sods I swore I'd make a change. Here it is. Bought it Wednesday. Dro...
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This post will be a bit different because it's not about me working on the van but me working ON the van. You'll get what I mean in a jif.
Last weekend I knew it was time to clean the gutters. All the leaves were down and it hadn't a rained in days so what was in the gutter should be mostly dry. The backside of the house is no problem but the front side is. The roof is too steep to clean the gutters safely from above. Using a house ladder doesn't work well since I can't lean it directly against the gutter and the overhang is such that I can't reach into the gutter from underneath.
So thinking about the problem when I got one of my "ideas". After a quick trip to the hardware store I brought home the following. Two 2" 90 degree PVC street elbows and one 2" 45 degree street elbow. Around $5 total. Use duck tape to join them together as shown.
This picture was taken after I was done. They weren't his scratched up new.
Pull the van up close to the front of the house. Lean a step ladder against the side of the van. Used an old towel to protect the side of the van.
To the top of the van run an extension cord. Then put my shop-vac on top of the van. Tape the PVC elbows to the end of the extension tubes that came with the shop-vac.
Turn on the shop-vac and see if this idea works.
Not only did it work but it worked amazingly well! I wished all my ideas turned out like this. You can see from the inside of the elbow it even sucked out that grunge that collects on the bottom of the gutter.
I've angled the 45 degree elbow on the end to allow me to get in below the support pieces that go across the top of the gutter every so often. It's a full size shop-vac and here's the inside after doing just half of the gutter.
When I got the lowest end of the gutter I had a couple times where a mess of wet leaves clogged the end of the elbow. I just swung the mass to the opposite side of the van and pulled the flexible hose from the bottom of the extension pieces. With the suction broken the mass would fall off to the ground.
Even though I was working from below the gutter and couldn't see what was going on the suction noises gave a kind of audio feedback along with what you can feel as the elbow moves in the gutter.
The job went really quick. Had to move the van once to get both ends of the gutter. One caution. Don't get too absorbed in what you're doing and walk off the end of the van. No I didn't do that. Also people driving by tend to slow down and stare. Don't know why.
I tried to get Tiger to take a picture of me working on the roof of the van.
Unfortunately he was in one of his "moods".
Last weekend I knew it was time to clean the gutters. All the leaves were down and it hadn't a rained in days so what was in the gutter should be mostly dry. The backside of the house is no problem but the front side is. The roof is too steep to clean the gutters safely from above. Using a house ladder doesn't work well since I can't lean it directly against the gutter and the overhang is such that I can't reach into the gutter from underneath.
So thinking about the problem when I got one of my "ideas". After a quick trip to the hardware store I brought home the following. Two 2" 90 degree PVC street elbows and one 2" 45 degree street elbow. Around $5 total. Use duck tape to join them together as shown.
This picture was taken after I was done. They weren't his scratched up new.
Pull the van up close to the front of the house. Lean a step ladder against the side of the van. Used an old towel to protect the side of the van.
To the top of the van run an extension cord. Then put my shop-vac on top of the van. Tape the PVC elbows to the end of the extension tubes that came with the shop-vac.
Turn on the shop-vac and see if this idea works.
Not only did it work but it worked amazingly well! I wished all my ideas turned out like this. You can see from the inside of the elbow it even sucked out that grunge that collects on the bottom of the gutter.
I've angled the 45 degree elbow on the end to allow me to get in below the support pieces that go across the top of the gutter every so often. It's a full size shop-vac and here's the inside after doing just half of the gutter.
When I got the lowest end of the gutter I had a couple times where a mess of wet leaves clogged the end of the elbow. I just swung the mass to the opposite side of the van and pulled the flexible hose from the bottom of the extension pieces. With the suction broken the mass would fall off to the ground.
Even though I was working from below the gutter and couldn't see what was going on the suction noises gave a kind of audio feedback along with what you can feel as the elbow moves in the gutter.
The job went really quick. Had to move the van once to get both ends of the gutter. One caution. Don't get too absorbed in what you're doing and walk off the end of the van. No I didn't do that. Also people driving by tend to slow down and stare. Don't know why.
I tried to get Tiger to take a picture of me working on the roof of the van.
Unfortunately he was in one of his "moods".
