The Honest Truth About Cleaning Your Gutters

Of all the things that fall to the householder, cleaning the gutters has the worst ratio of necessity to glamour. The job is genuinely important, in the sense that neglected gutters cause damp, rot, foundation problems, and in extreme cases collapse of small sections of roof line. The job is also genuinely unpleasant, in the sense that you spend an afternoon on a ladder removing handfuls of decomposed leaves, dead spiders, and the slow black sludge that forms between them.

The article below is the practical version. It does not pretend gutter cleaning is anything other than what it is. It does explain why the job matters, when to do it, how to do it without falling off the ladder, and when to hire somebody else instead. Cleaning your own gutters once a year is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. So is paying somebody to do it. The unreasonable thing is leaving them alone for a decade.

What happens when gutters are neglected

Gutters carry rainwater from the roof to a downpipe and away from the foundations. When they work, you do not notice them. When they do not work, water does several quietly destructive things.

It overflows the front of the gutter and runs down the wall. Brickwork is mostly waterproof in a normal driven-rain situation, but a continuous stream of water from above will eventually find a way in, particularly at window heads, around external pipework, and at the corners where mortar is most weathered. Inside, this shows up months later as a slowly spreading damp patch on the wall, the kind that gets diagnosed as rising damp when actually the source is a blocked gutter two floors above.

It overflows at the back of the gutter and runs down the fascia board behind. Fascia boards are wooden in most older houses and uPVC in newer ones. Wood absorbs the water, swells, eventually rots, and at the worst takes the soffit down with it. The repair is expensive (a few hundred pounds at minimum), particularly if you only notice when a section of fascia is hanging.

It pools at the foot of the wall, around the foundations. In the short term this is just a damp patch; in the longer term, particularly on clay soil that expands and contracts, it can contribute to ground movement and subsidence. In houses with cellars or basements, persistent foundation water leads to internal damp that costs thousands to put right.

It freezes, in winter. Water trapped in a blocked gutter freezes, expands, and pushes the gutter joints apart. Many fractured gutter joints are the result of one bad freeze ten years ago that was never noticed at the time.

All of this is avoidable. A clean gutter does its job silently and lasts for thirty years. A blocked one quietly causes hundreds of pounds of damage every year you ignore it.

When to clean

Twice a year is the right rhythm for most British houses. Once in late autumn, after the leaves have come down but before the worst of winter rain. Once in early spring, to clear anything that has accumulated through the winter and any seeds or moss that have settled.

Houses with overhanging trees may need an extra round in mid-autumn, particularly if you have a lime, sycamore, or oak nearby. The leaves from those trees fall in such quantity that a gutter can be entirely blocked within a fortnight.

Houses without overhanging trees can sometimes manage on once a year, in spring. But the autumn clean is the more important of the two, because it sets you up for the wettest season.

If you cannot remember the last time the gutters were cleaned, the answer is now, regardless of season. Houses where the gutters have not been touched in five years are surprisingly common and surprisingly easy to recognise from below; the gutters look slightly bowed, water marks streak down the wall beneath, and in summer there are often small plants growing out of them.

The ladder question

This is where common sense matters more than enthusiasm. A bungalow can be cleaned safely from a good extension ladder by a confident amateur. A two-storey terrace is the upper limit of what most people should attempt themselves. Anything above two storeys, or on a slope, or with awkward access, should be done by a professional with proper equipment.

If you are using a ladder, observe a few things that experienced trades take for granted. Set the ladder at the right angle, which is one unit out for every four units up; a ladder propped too vertical will slip backward, a ladder set too shallow will kick out at the foot. Tie the ladder to something secure at the top if you can. Have a second person at the base, ideally, or at least somebody in the house who knows you are working.

Wear thick gloves; gutters often contain sharp fragments of slate, broken glass, and the occasional rusty screw. Have a bucket on a hook to take the debris, rather than working into a bag balanced on the ladder. Move the ladder every few feet rather than reaching sideways; the temptation to lean is the single biggest cause of ladder accidents.

The actual cleaning

Working at one section of gutter at a time, scoop the debris out by hand into the bucket. Wear gloves. Do not pour the debris down the downpipe; it will block it. A typical autumn gutter contains a mat of compacted leaves, twigs, moss, seeds, and a layer of black silt at the bottom which is the slowly decomposed everything from previous years.

Once you have got the bulk out, take a small trowel or a plastic scraper and clean the bottom of the gutter to bare metal or plastic. The silt traps moisture and accelerates corrosion in metal gutters; in uPVC gutters, the silt holds water that should be flowing freely.

Test each downpipe by pouring a bucket of water in at the top and checking it runs out at the bottom. If the water backs up, the downpipe itself is blocked. Most downpipes have a small hopper or junction at one or both ends; pop the lid off and clear the blockage by hand or with a piece of straightened wire. For stubborn blockages further down the pipe, a drain rod or a length of strong wire fed from above usually clears them.

Once each section is clear, run a hose along the gutter from the highest point to the lowest, watching the water flow toward the downpipes. Any pooling indicates a sag in the gutter that may need a bracket adjusted. Any leak at a joint indicates a seal that needs replacing or resealing.

The smaller problems worth fixing while you are up there

Once a year on a ladder is a chance to do a few small things you would otherwise put off.

• Reseal any joints that are leaking. A small tube of gutter sealant from any DIY shop costs about three pounds and applies like silicone; clean the joint thoroughly, apply a bead, smooth with a wet finger.
• Tighten any brackets that have worked loose. A sagging gutter often just needs the bracket screw turned a quarter turn.
• Replace cracked sections. uPVC gutter sections are standardised; a damaged length can usually be replaced by a competent amateur in twenty minutes.
• Trim back any overhanging branch that is dropping into the gutter. The tree is the source of most of the problem.

Gutter guards: do they work

The honest answer is “sometimes.” Gutter guards, also called leaf guards, come in several forms. Mesh covers, brushes, foam inserts, hinged covers. They all reduce the amount of leaf debris that enters the gutter, but none of them eliminate it. Fine silt, seeds, and small particles still find their way in.

The risk with guards is that they give you a false sense of security. You stop checking the gutters because the guards are protecting them; meanwhile, silt has built up beneath the guard for five years, and now the cleaning job is significantly harder because the guard has to come off first.

If you have a lot of overhanging trees, guards reduce the number of times per year you need to deal with the gutters. They do not replace cleaning entirely. The best ones are mesh covers with a tight weave, fitted properly to the front lip of the gutter. The worst are loose foam inserts that themselves trap silt and need replacing within five years.

When to pay somebody else

I do this myself for our single-storey extension at the back. I pay somebody for the two-storey front of the house, where the ladder is awkward and the drop is unforgiving. The cost for a small terrace is usually between forty and eighty pounds for a full clean by a professional with a powered vacuum system; the work takes them under an hour because they have proper equipment.

For larger or taller houses, the cost rises but the safety case becomes more compelling. Falls from ladders are one of the most common serious household injuries, and they tend to involve middle-aged men cleaning gutters in October. Hiring somebody to do that part of the work is not a luxury; it is sensible delegation. Our broader thinking on this is in the twice-yearly maintenance checklist piece, which sets the rhythm we use for the seasonal work.

Gutters are unglamorous, but they are one of those parts of a house where small, twice-yearly attention prevents thousands of pounds of damage. The work itself takes a couple of hours. The work skipped, over years, can quietly cost more than almost any other piece of household neglect.

For a related angle, our piece on A Practical Guide to Caring for Hardwood Floors covers a closely connected problem.

For a related angle, our piece on The Real Reason Your Shower Has Lost Pressure covers a closely connected problem.