More Pine Straw at the Bamboo Lagoon

After the clean off

We are expecting a big storm here and by experience, I know that cleaning up pine straw is much easier done when dry than wet so I really wanted to at least get it off the roof and solar panels even if it didn't make it into the bin.

In order to get to it, I have to get on the roof in two different spots in order to not damage the solar panels. The first spot, allows access to the gutters as well so I figured while I was up there, I would clean gutters, and move some pine straw.

In order to make the new downspout screen, I had to take one of the other ones out for sizing, and then tin snips and some hardware wire made an easy job of it.

New screen for downspout

The roof was nice and dry and the view always takes my breath away. Gutters were not too bad, although I had to rebuild a screen for one of the down spouts. The back porch side of the gutter can be reached from a painting ladder, but was blocked by another project (subject for another post) so there was a bit of a diversion during part of this day of tasks. The pine straw was pretty massive but easy to move.

Pinestraw before cleanup

While I was up there, I also cut off a few limbs from the pine tree that were hanging too low over the panels and house. The pine tree is so big compared to when the panels were installed so they really don't get sun like they should anymore.

Pile off the roof

Once done, we had a pretty big pile of pine straw with some limbs in it. I was able to get all the limbs into the bin as well as get some of the drainage areas cleaned out of leaves so that we wouldn't have too much run off in our sloped yard. The rest of the pine straw will go in next week's bin.