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00:00:18
Speaker 1: All right, time to get back after the work around the house. And boy, right now there seems to be plenty to do, that's for sure. Joining us right now is the man behind Gutter Brush. You've heard him many times on this show, Randy Schreiber.
00:00:32
Speaker 2: Randy, how in the world are you?
00:00:35
Speaker 3: I am great, Gary. Great to be with you always. Thanks for having me.
00:00:39
Speaker 1: Man, I'll tell you what. I was trying to tell the gardening guy that it's his tree's fault. You know, we switched daylight savings times and they got all honked off and stressed out and lost all their leaves.
00:00:50
Speaker 2: What do you think?
00:00:51
Speaker 3: It happens quick this time of year. It's all of a sudden, they're beautiful colors, then they're dropping everywhere.
00:00:56
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, yeah.
00:00:58
Speaker 1: Hey, before we kind of get started, maybe I preach it all the time. And, you know, I think, I was thinking today, what is this time of year?
00:01:08
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. I love the fall. It's my favorite. There's a little more work. We got the leaves.
00:01:13
Speaker 1: Leaves that get in the gutter are so easily ignored.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: It's out of sight. It's out of mind.
00:01:21
Speaker 1: And I'll bet you there's a lot of people that just say, so there's leaves in my gutter. I'd like to kind of give you give the listener because they're tired of hearing me. The reason why that's so important to keep those things, those gutters clean. You get leaves and sticks and pine needles and that can be a problem for your house.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: It can.
00:01:46
Speaker 3: And I know you talk to your folks all the time about the importance of keeping water away from the property, away from places.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: Where it can do damage.
00:01:53
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what can occur if gutters aren't functioning properly. If gutters clog or if the downspouts clog and water can't be directed from your roof away from your home, it leads to water backing up and entering in your soffits and fascia and rotting wood, maybe splashing around your foundation and resulting in water in the basements and just putting water where it's not intended to be around your home. So gutters are, as you mentioned, easy to overlook and something that's kind of out of sight, out of mind. But when they're not functioning well, they can lead to some expensive damage.
00:02:27
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker 1: Well, I've had gutter brush things to you for.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: Probably 20 years.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: And people always want to know what happens to all those leaves they can't get in your gutters. And you know, the really nice thing about it is they don't get in the gutters, and they may get a little bit on the roof behind the brush, they may be inside the brush, but there's always that nice refreshing wind, which over time will clear those out for the most part.
00:02:53
Speaker 2: True?
00:02:54
Speaker 3: It does, yeah. I mean, the brush basically just fills the space inside the gutter and creates a big, you know, protected channel where water can flow. So, I mean, different from screens and covers and other gutter guard solutions that folks may have seen. Ours is just a big cylinder-shaped bottle brush that fills your gutter and water flows through the bristles. Leaves and debris can't collect in your gutter and pack into a dam or block your downspout. So it's just really maintaining that channel for water to flow.
00:03:24
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: And of course, there's all different sizes of leaves.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: And I mentioned pine needles and You know, it's amazing that I'd get little tiny branches.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: That'll land on the roof behind a brush. And eventually, I don't know, I don't know where they go, but I usually don't have to go up and get them. That's for sure.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: And it's amazing how easily and simple that product works because the water does flow through the brush.
00:03:53
Speaker 3: It does. Yeah, I mean, the bristles really tend to draw the water into the gutter instead of, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to try to keep the leaves and debris out of your gutters. And what happens with a lot of times the covers or screens is dirt and dust and pollen and things that are coming down your roof line can fill the screens or the pores on top of those products or clog the narrow opening in some of the covers. And and eventually they require maintenance. I guess any of these systems could require maintenance at some point. Sure. That's where our system is so simple. There's no tools, no fasteners. You're just putting three-foot sections of brush in your gutter and keeping it really protected. Simple way to keep things flowing.
00:04:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you have nothing in those gutters and you don't clean your gutters, obviously they don't flow, and Randy just described what happens. But, you know, they start decomposing quickly. And they start getting to be like a big blob of mush it there. And seriously, and then you get into winter and you get, you know, the water freezes. I mean, it's a very destructive thing. I can't encourage people enough not only to clean their gutters right now. And if you have any type of system, at least give it a peek and make sure everything's fine. And then start thinking about next year. I mean, this year for the leaf fall season is kind of kaput, I think.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: Is it not?
00:05:19
Speaker 3: We're still getting some leaves up here in the northeast, and I guess different parts of the country probably have different levels of fall foliage coming down.
00:05:27
Speaker 2: But you're right.
00:05:28
Speaker 3: We're coming into the winter months, and if you're living in a geography that gets snow and ice and things like that, if you've got a lot of leaves and debris that are stuck in your gutters, they're going to
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freeze in there and potentially die. create a blockage and create more problems in the wintertime. So now's the best time to address maintenance, whether you've got a gutter guard or just cleaning your gutters out before the winter weather rolls in.
00:05:49
Speaker 2: Sure, sure.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: I'm broadcasting my show from Charlotte today, and I'm looking out the window right now, and there's still green leaves out there. There's a lot of leaves on the ground, too. And what brought this whole thing up is I happened to look in their gutters, Randy.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: Not good. Not good.
00:06:06
Speaker 3: Not good.
00:06:07
Speaker 2: We can help with that. I know. I'm going to be very gentle. I don't want to be that guy, but there's.
00:06:14
Speaker 1: A few leaves in those gutters, like to the top. So since we're at that time of year, as always, you've probably got a little special running.
00:06:25
Speaker 2: We do.
00:06:26
Speaker 3: It's kind of our busiest time of the year when this becomes top of mind for most customers. Like I said, it's easy to ignore most of the year, but when leaves are falling and you're starting to see things like that build up in your gutters, it becomes more top of mind. This is when we try to give customers the best pricing of the year. Black Friday is a big sale time for most people, but as you mentioned, the leaves don't wait for Black Friday.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: They're coming down now, so.
00:06:52
Speaker 3: We're going to try to give people the best pricing we can, and that's why we run a big fall promotion or kind of an end-of-season promotion where customers are going to save basically 25% off. Our whole website is 25% off right now. But your listeners, as you've been probably our longest-standing partner that's discovered our product 20 years ago, we've got a special offer for your listeners where if they order on our website or give us a call and use the code GARY, they're going to get 30% off. So you'll see we've got a great sale on the site, but your folks get a bigger discount.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: How about shipping, Randy?
00:07:33
Speaker 3: Shipping is free within the continental U.S. Oh, okay. Throughout the whole U.S., we ship for free. So for your listeners, 30% off plus free shipping.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:07:44
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk a little bit about, you know, Totally transparent. I've got this little section of roof. It's about three feet long, and it's a five-inch gutter, and it's a really steep roof, and there's a saddle, so it's a congregation point.
00:08:02
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: And these locust leaves kind of, you know, they hang behind the brush a little bit. My point being is about every two years, that little three-foot section, I might have to pull the brush out and take a hose and squirt it off and slide it back in. That's the only maintenance I've had.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty easy compared to other systems, I guess.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. No, because people always ask me, and I'm sure they ask you, so what about this leaf or what about this thing? And I'd say 99%, 95% of them it's going to take care of, and the other 5% you might have to pull them out and squirt them off one time.
00:08:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, we try to set honest expectations, and I would never want to tell somebody that they'll never touch their gutters again. As you mentioned, if you've got a lot of pine needles or maple helicopter seeds or very small things that are traditionally tough to keep out of gutters, at some point you're going to have to pull some brushes out and shake them out. But most customers tell us that they may have been cleaning gutters with a heavy load of pine needles five or six times a year, and since they installed the brush... They may have to address maintenance, like you said. Every year and a half or two years, they pull some brushes out and shake them out a little bit and slide them in.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: In my house, it's one brush.
00:09:20
Speaker 3: That's great.
00:09:20
Speaker 2: It doesn't take very long at all. It doesn't take very long at all.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: People also ask me, they're like, if I put gutter brush in my gutters, won't I get ice dams?
00:09:30
Speaker 2: And I quickly say no.
00:09:31
Speaker 1: And then you quickly tell me it actually helps prevent them.
00:09:36
Speaker 3: We discovered that early when we started working with this product. We got a lot of phone calls from people in northern climates with snow and ice that had previously a lot of trouble with ice dams and ice buildup. They reported back that since they've installed the brush, they had a lot less trouble. We believe it's basically because the brush is black in color. It tends to warm up a little bit when it's exposed to sunlight. And just the presence of the brush in the gutter reduces the amount of snow and ice that can pack in there and build up during winter weather. So we've had a lot of great feedback that it's improved the winter performance of a gutter flow.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: And that makes total sense because, you know, the reason the ice dam forms is it's the overhang of the roof that be on the house so there's no heat underneath it so you're adding kind of a portable heater here i mean that yeah that works great.
00:10:29
Speaker 3: It also works with you know heating we have customers who use with heating cables or heat tape and that works just fine oh cool just yeah just yeah just the brush alone has been reported by a lot of customers to really improve the winter performance in general.
00:10:42
Speaker 1: So you've been doing the gutter brush stomp for about 20 years?
00:10:46
Speaker 2: Is that right?
00:10:48
Speaker 3: It's a long time to have my mind in the gutter here, you know?
00:10:53
Speaker 2: You're doing a good job, though, and they're built to last.
00:10:56
Speaker 1: That's true, because like I said, I've had them in my home from pretty
much the get-go.
00:11:03
Speaker 2: How about commercial uses?
00:11:04
Speaker 1: There's got to be people listening right now who live in condos, and those gutters collect, too. It's not just houses and churches and, you know, any type of property managers? You sell a lot to them?
00:11:17
Speaker 3: We are. That's one of our biggest growth areas right now. I mean, we've always, you know, the traditional residential gutters and homeowner gutters for the DIYer has been always our biggest sale or biggest source of interest. But the last couple of years, we've had more and more folks from the commercial side coming over. Agricultural buildings, pole barns, you know, warehouses, storage units, A lot of these types of larger commercial or industrial buildings have got large, unique gutter systems that really can't be protected by typical screens and covers. And our brushes come in six different diameters, from as small as 2 1⁄4 inches for very small drainage channels all the way up to 8-inch diameters for some of the largest commercial and industrial systems and, like I said, pole barns, warehouses, metal buildings, churches, and schools. So we've had a great interest in those larger gutters.
00:12:08
Speaker 2: Excellent. Do you have 10 more minutes per chance? Sure. Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: Well, I want to tell everybody about your business. I love, you know, it really is a good American story. And so we'll talk a little bit about what the business is and your success and why protecting the gutters is so doggone important. So Randy Shriver, sit tight. He is with Gutter Brush. We'll take a break and finish our conversation with Randy. You're at home with Gary Sullivan.
00:12:36
Speaker 4: Help for your home is just a click away at GarySullivanOnline.com. This is At Home with Gary Sullivan.
00:12:59
Speaker 1: Leads are falling and gutters are clogging, so Gutter Brush isn't waiting for Black Friday. Their lowest prices of the year are right now. Everyone gets 25% off applied automatically at gutterbrush.com. Now my listeners get 30% off with code Gary. I've had gutter brush on my own gutters for over 20 years and it prevents clogs, cuts down on cleaning and slides right in. No tools, no fasteners.
00:13:22
Speaker 2: Made in the USA.
00:13:23
Speaker 1: Go to gutterbrush.com or call 888-397-9433.
00:13:27
Speaker 2: Code Gary.
00:13:28
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00:14:51
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00:14:53
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00:14:57
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00:14:57
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00:15:16
Speaker 2: Randy Schreiber, he is my guest.
00:15:17
Speaker 1: He is with Gutter Brush and we've been talking about what the Gutter Brush is. And folks, to make it really simple, it's three foot bottle brush.
00:15:26
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:15:27
Speaker 3: Yep.
00:15:27
Speaker 2: Comes in different sizes. Just slide it in. That's all you got to do.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: If you're short on the end, you got a couple 18 inch pieces. If that's too long, you can kind of cut it or you can bend it into each other and just slide it in. It's really ultimate protection. And The question, I guess, before we get into the company, Randy, is how do people know what size of gutters? You mentioned different sizes of gutters. How do they know what size or how do they measure it and how.
00:15:55
Speaker 2: Much to order? Sure.
00:15:58
Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, most residential properties we deal with would have what's called standard 5-inch K-style gutters. Those are by far the most common type of gutter in the U.S. for residential properties. There is also a 6-inch K-style, which is for... oversized gutters or maybe a lot of the newer homes with larger roof lines have those larger gutters. But typically, you're going to take a tape measure or ruler and just measure across the top of the gutter from the back of the gutter where it meets the home or fascia out to the outer edge of the gutter. And if that's about a five-inch measurement, that's a standard size gutter. That's the most common. If it's six inches, that's a larger gutter. There are different types of gutters. There's fascia gutters out west. There's some different shapes and styles. But We've got a page on our website where we have a lot of images and graphics to help identify the gutters. And you can always give us a call. We're happy to speak to customers and make sure they're comfortable and they know what size they need. And then it's just approximate
footage, so it doesn't have to be an exact number. As you mentioned, you get a ballpark, and we actually have a– a new satellite tool online where if you give us your address, we can usually pull up a satellite image of a roof line and give you a pretty close measurement of how many feet you have. So it might not be right down to the foot, but it's close enough to get you a ballpark of how many feet you'd need.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: Sure. So should they call you? Can they order it online? How does that work?
00:17:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, they can order online. So all of our items are available at gutterbrush.com. And it's a pretty simple process. We're trying to make the website as easy as possible to just click the footage you need and the size gutter you have. And we drop ship all over the country every day from our warehouse in Massachusetts. Or you can give us a call. We're always happy to speak to customers and make sure that we understand their needs and can answer any questions. And then we can process orders over the phone as well. And so anyone's welcome to give us a call. I'll give the number here if that's okay.
00:18:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, please.
00:18:02
Speaker 3: The phone number, our main number is 888-397-9433. So again, 888-397-9433. And you'll catch either myself or my colleague, Alex. We have a small team. Everyone's based in the U.S. And we're happy to help you.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: So when's this sale? How long does this sale run?
00:18:24
Speaker 1: I know it's called the Black Friday, and it's going on right now, and everything's 25% off. If you use the code Gary, it's 30% off. So there's the big carrot.
00:18:35
Speaker 2: But how long does the sale last?
00:18:38
Speaker 3: We're hoping to keep the sale going through the end of the month, through the traditional Black Friday timing. So we started it early just because, as you mentioned, the season is kind of right now, and if we don't want to make people wait until the end of the month to get themselves protected, so The whole site's 25% off for all visitors right now. But for folks that know us through you and your program, if you use the code Gary during checkout, you're going to get 30% off. So that's just an extra bonus for your audience.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Super.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: So let's spin the wheel back. I think it was probably the early 2000s.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: I met your dad.
00:19:12
Speaker 1: And he was telling.
00:19:14
Speaker 2: Me about this brush thing. And that's the way I described it. It's this brush thing.
00:19:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, there's little hoods for gutters. There's foam sponges. There's metal grates and everything. And I was intrigued because it was so simple. And he did the same thing, just slide it in and all that. And the only thing I was worried about, to be honest, back in the day was that the sun would rot the bristles, which is not true.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: It doesn't do that.
00:19:46
Speaker 1: It actually increases warmth and prevents ice dams, which you guys didn't know either.
00:19:52
Speaker 3: So that's kind of a cool story.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: So, you know, we all invent things or try things because there's a problem that hasn't been solved to everybody's liking. It's either too expensive or it doesn't work. So tell me a little minute or two about How did the gutter brush come into being?
00:20:13
Speaker 3: It was kind of a funny story. It was kind of an accidental discovery. I grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania and used to spend a lot of time with family up at a little cabin up in the mountains in Pennsylvania. And my first job growing up was to get up on the roof and clean out all the leaves and stuff that would build up in the gutters very quickly after we left. And my dad inherited that role when I went away to school. And he found an old, like, We think it was an old chimney brush. It was like a twisted wire brush that he said that might be a handy tool to scrub the mud and leaves and dirt out of the gutter as it was always on the to-do list. And so he took this old brush and was scrubbing things out of the gutter. And as luck would have it, he got distracted, had to come off the roof and forgot that he left the brush kind of laying over the downspout area and had intended to go back up there, but got sidetracked and So it didn't get back up on the roof until the next visit, which was a few months later, and all the gutters were full of leaves again as they quickly became full. But the place where the brush was laying over the downspout was still there, and that area was flowing, and there was a couple pine needles and stuff in the brush, but the downspout hadn't clogged. And so that was sort of the light bulb moment when we said, I wonder if you just filled your whole gutter with a big cylinder-shaped brush, if you could have an effective filter and a A better mousetrap than some of the screens and covers we had tried in the past.
00:21:34
Speaker 2: I'll be darned. I love it.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: Well, a great story. Family and business. Made in the USA. Again, the sales, 25%. Anything on the website, 30% for the gutter brush. Use the coupon code Gary, gutterbrush.com, or you can give.
00:21:52
Speaker 2: Them a call at 888-397-9433.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: Easy for me to say. Randy, have a happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for calling in. I appreciate it.
00:22:03
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Gary. Same to you and yours. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Good talking to you.
00:22:09
Speaker 1: All right.
00:22:09
Speaker 2: Let me give you the phone number. You can grab a line. And Jim and Mary, you'll be up first and second. It's 800-823-8255.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: And you're at home with Gary Sullivan.
00:22:35
Speaker 4: Solutions to your home improvement are as easy as calling 1-800-823-TALK. This is At Home with Gary Sullivan.