Safe and cheap DIY gutter inspection on a two-storey house
by Stephen Hewitt | Published
Figure 2 shows a home-made tool for inspecting the gutters of a two-storey house from the safety of the ground. The idea is to mount a mobile phone on the end of a long pole and record a video while walking it along the gutter, with the camera looking downwards from above.
Figure 1 shows one view of a gutter obtained using the tool.
This prototype was constructed in less than an hour with parts that cost a few pounds.
It consists of 3m of poly pipe and about 2.4m of a wooden plank. Ideally it would be longer, but this prototype has proven practical to use. Such pipes are commonly used for waste water. It and the plastic clips to hold it are in DIY shops in Britain including chains such as Wickes and B&Q.
The clips holding the pipe onto the plank are about 60cm apart. The pole telescopes by the pipe sliding through these clips and this is an important feature for practical use. An earlier prototype, which was a rigid pole 6m long, was inconvenient to lever off the ground. With this design, you can start the video recording on the phone with the pole only slightly inclined then hold the pole vertically and then extend it by sliding the pipe vertically upwards. Once the pole is fully extended, you swing a small shelf on a pivot round to support the pipe and prevent it sliding back down. This shelf is shown at the bottom of Figure 2.
The mobile is mounted in a mobile case. In England in 2025 I easily found one in a charity shop for a pound or less that holds the phone securely enough, even if it was intended for a slightly different phone.
There is no pan and tilt control with such a simple device, but it is possible to change the camera viewpoint by rotating the pole, either turning the camera in to look more over the roof or turning it out to look down past the edge of the gutter