Today I attempted to clean some commercial box gutters with the Omnivac. The gutters were filled with pine needles then a layer of soil then some well established weeds.
Usually when you see well established plants the Gutter spike is used to break up the roots before using the Omnivac. We tried this to no avail so we tried blasting with the pressure washer / trying to break up the roots with a gutter spike again, but to no avail. Out came the ladder and the manual way of doing things
The problem is that pine needles interlace with each other make a mat that traps leaves which rot, turn to soil, fill in the mat which makes perfect growing media for weeds etc. The whole length of the gutters were matted into one long piece of turf. It was hard to pull apart by hand let alone remotely.
So beware gutter vac users - Omnivacs + pine needles don't mix so well, so go prepared with a ladder, a suitable risk assessment, some gloves and a bucket !!!