How often do gutters need doing?

There is no number that would be true of every house, and the Extension advice says to do it frequently without putting a figure on it. What decides it is what stands over the roof. A house under oaks or pines fills up sooner than the same house on an open lot. The check you can run from the ground: after a hard rain, look at where the water is leaving. If it comes off anywhere except the bottom of the downspout, it is time.

Does someone have to walk on the roof to reach the gutters?

Nobody has to: the tile roofing association's maintenance guide describes doing the job from a ladder with standoffs, and on tile it matters — the same guide warns that damage from foot traffic on tile may void the roof warranty. Moving a ladder around a house takes longer than walking the eaves. It is also the difference between a gutter job that leaves nothing behind on the roof and one you find out about later.

You are already washing my roof — do I still need this?

A roof wash sends its rinse water through the gutters and downspouts. Flushing is not emptying. If the trough already holds a packed mat of leaf litter and grit, water will not carry that out of it, and it is better taken out by hand first. Tell us, or send a photo of, what is in the trough.

Where does the debris go?

Tell us where you want it: bagged, or on your own yard-waste pile. It should not go down the downspout — pushing a blockage further along the pipe is how a downspout ends up packed at the elbow where nobody can see it — and it should not go into the street drain.

Gutter cleaning (inside the trough)

A gutter is the one part of the outside of a house whose job has nothing to do with how it looks. What matters is what is inside it, and whether water gets from the roof to the ground without touching the wall on the way. When it stops doing that, the evidence turns up somewhere else — on the wall below it, in the water it holds, and on the aluminium itself. This page is about the inside; the streaking on the outside face is a different job.

The mark on the wall starts at the gutter

The Stucco Manufacturers Association, writing about how to keep a stucco wall in good condition, names functioning gutters and downspouts as the single best way to prevent staining and efflorescence on exterior walls. That is worth reading twice, because it is a drainage answer to a cleaning question. When a trough fills and water goes over the lip instead of down the downspout, it lands in the same place every storm, and it takes whatever was sitting in the trough with it. The dark line down the wall at one corner, the white bloom that comes back after a house wash, the strip of wall that is dirtier than the rest of the elevation — those start above where you are looking. Washing the wall does not touch the reason. That is why a gutter is better cleaned before a house is washed than the other way round, and why on a house with packed gutters we will say so at the estimate rather than after. Everything that lands on the roof ends up in the trough sooner or later: leaf litter, pine straw, roof grit, the dust that settles between rains. The trough is the last chance to get it off the building.

Why a ladder and not your roof

The tile roofing association's maintenance guide makes the point plainly: gutter cleaning can be done from a ladder rather than by walking the roof, and ladder braces — standoffs, the arms that hold the top of the ladder away from the house — avoid damaging both the gutters and the tile. That carries more weight than it sounds: the same guide warns that damage from foot traffic on tile may void the roof warranty. Tile is strong where it is supported and brittle where it is not, so a man walking a tile roof to reach a gutter is risking somebody else's roof to save himself a ladder move. The alternative is to move the ladder. It is slower, and it keeps feet off the roof on a gutter job. The standoff matters to the gutter as well: a ladder leaned on the front edge of an aluminium trough deforms it, and a deformed lip is a gutter that spills at that spot from then on. Debris is better lifted out by hand, into a bag or a bucket, than flushed. It should not go down the downspout — a downspout is where you find last year's blockage, not where you put this year's.

Standing water, a few feet from a bedroom window

UF/IFAS Extension in Osceola County, which is inside our service area, puts cleaning eaves and gutters on its list of simple mosquito-control steps, for a reason that is hard to argue with: every mosquito needs standing water to breed. A packed trough holds water for days after a storm. It sits above head height, out of sight from anywhere in the yard. That part of this job has nothing to do with how the house reads from the street. Time in the trough does something to the gutter as well. The Norandex aluminium gutter warranty says that direct contact of aluminium with certain dissimilar materials, or contact with water run-off from them, is likely to result in corrosion. A gutter is a shallow tray with a lip, and it holds whatever came off the roof against the metal, wet, for as long as it stays there — screws, fastener heads, a scrap of flashing, whatever the last trade up there left behind. The debris is not really the problem. The debris staying is. So the service is exactly what it sounds like: get it out and get the water moving again. What came out is worth a look, because a handful of granules or a solid mat of pine straw tells you something about the roof above it.

What this page does not claim, and what a gutter job is not

This page does not say that a clogged gutter rots the wood at the roof edge, ruins the roof and undermines the foundation. No source we could stand behind says it, and a page that frightens you into a job it cannot support is not a page you should buy from. What is sourced is already above: walls stain and bloom when water does not reach the downspout, mosquitoes breed in water that sits, and contact between aluminium and certain dissimilar materials, or the water running off them, is what one gutter maker says is likely to result in corrosion. That is enough reason to do the work. We also do not sell gutter guards, gutter sealing or any retrofit — not because they are all bad, but because we have nothing solid to tell you about which ones do what, and we will not fit something to your house on a hunch. And the outside face is a separate matter: one gutter maker's warranty is voided by high pressure spraying, and the striping on the front is a separate service, gutter brightening, which we do by hand. If a gutter is clear and still spills, that is pitch or a hanger, and cleaning it twice will not fix it.

Common questions

How often do gutters need doing?: There is no number that would be true of every house, and the Extension advice says to do it frequently without putting a figure on it. What decides it is what stands over the roof. A house under oaks or pines fills up sooner than the same house on an open lot. The check you can run from the ground: after a hard rain, look at where the water is leaving. If it comes off anywhere except the bottom of the downspout, it is time.
Does someone have to walk on the roof to reach the gutters?: Nobody has to: the tile roofing association's maintenance guide describes doing the job from a ladder with standoffs, and on tile it matters — the same guide warns that damage from foot traffic on tile may void the roof warranty. Moving a ladder around a house takes longer than walking the eaves. It is also the difference between a gutter job that leaves nothing behind on the roof and one you find out about later.
You are already washing my roof — do I still need this?: A roof wash sends its rinse water through the gutters and downspouts. Flushing is not emptying. If the trough already holds a packed mat of leaf litter and grit, water will not carry that out of it, and it is better taken out by hand first. Tell us, or send a photo of, what is in the trough.
Where does the debris go?: Tell us where you want it: bagged, or on your own yard-waste pile. It should not go down the downspout — pushing a blockage further along the pipe is how a downspout ends up packed at the elbow where nobody can see it — and it should not go into the street drain.

Get a free estimate

Tell us what needs doing and roughly where you are. We will come out and look, or quote from photos if that is easier.

Step 2 of 4

Where is it?

Send it over and we get back to you within 4 hours.

Estimates are free, with no obligation and no pressure. We can quote in person or straight over text — whichever is easier for you. Send a photo and we can often price it from there. Send it over and we get back to you within 4 hours.