Walked past the same clogged gutter for 6 months before my neighbor finally said something

I was out watering plants last Tuesday when my neighbor from two doors down came over and asked if I'd noticed the water dripping behind my siding during storms. Turns out a $7 bag of gutter scoops from the hardware store fixed it in 20 minutes, and now I'm wondering what other obvious stuff I've been ignoring that someone else could spot in two seconds. Has anyone else had a random stranger point out a service issue you somehow missed completely?

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher5941mo ago

Oh man, I actually saw a YouTube video about this exact thing once. Some guy walked around his house with a Flir camera and found like 5 things he'd been missing, including a leaky pipe behind a wall he never would've caught otherwise. Now I kind of want to borrow one just to see what I'm ignoring.

gray_smith671mo ago

Jump right in on @christopher594's idea about the Flir camera because it's a great example of how we get blind to the little things. I borrowed one from a local tool library last year and found a cold spot in my attic where insulation had settled, which was probably costing me more on heating bills than I realized. Since then I've made it a habit to walk around the house after every big storm and just look at the roofline and gutters with fresh eyes, because it's amazing what you stop seeing.