After a few years of large oak leaves clogging the gutters we decided to take the gutters down and pour a sidewalk under the drip line. Our house is under a canopy of large oak trees.

organicsue - you might try posting this on the Home Repair forum. There are lots of conversations about gutters and gutter cleaning over there.

I once had a house with a gutter screen, came in a roll, reduced cleaning to what could be done with a garden hose. I've the opinion that shop vacs are really good for the shop and of limited usefulness for these interesting additional uses. As noted above, see Home Repair Forum - GardenWeb too.

The ceiling of the porch on one of our homes rotted out. It was explained to us that water ran down the nail that was holding up the gutters into the ceiling of the porch. We had an insurance man over for some reason and I mentioned it to him and he said gutters cause more damage than not having any.

Check out this video linked below. My hubby has the same blower, but has not has not got it set up to do this yet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Leaf Blower set up for Gutters

We live in Canada and our house has Maple trees and our neighbour has walnut tree and an oak tree.. collectively they drop piles of leaves so for the rain gutters l now do the following.. Having both knees repaired and replaced, ladders are out for me so l made my own contraption to clean the leaves from the ground . We have a 6.5 horse power shop vac.. I made an extention out of ABS pipe along with making a hook at the the end ( to look like a candy cane) that connects to the original flex hose that comes with the shop vac. I start the shop vac and roll it along on the ground or walkway in front of the house or on the 44 foot deck on the back side of the house holding one end of the ABS pipe extension and having the hook part in the rain gutter... it cleans the rain gutters out nicely and all the mess is in the shop vac ready to empty in my choice of disposal container... Works well and a cheap tool to make...\