How Often Should You Clean Your Gutters: 3 Simple Questions Provide The Answer

How Often To Clean Gutters- 3 Simple Questions That Provide The Answer

Gutter and Roof Cleaning is Hardly a Sexy Topic...

I don't expect you to jump up and down at the opportunity to learn about it right here, right now, either. Spending time thinking about it is the last thing you want to do.

But Here's The Deal:

If you own a house, you most likely have to take care of your roof and gutter or you'll be in a world of hurt!

Luckily for you, I'm here to tell you exactly what you need to know and exactly what you need to do when it comes to scheduling your roof and gutter maintenance. By the end of this post you'll know how often you need to have it done and hopefully take away a few key questions to ask when hiring a gutter cleaning company.

​I promise, this is not nearly as complicated as it sounds. If you're already worn down by the topic, and I honestly can't blame you for it, go ahead and see exactly how often to have your gutters cleaned. If it's the only thing you take away from this post you'll be in great shape :)

Now, Your Next Steps:

1. Read this post
2. Follow the steps in the post
3. Set up and schedule your gutter cleaning service
4. Make sure the company you're working with has a routine maintenance plan so you can put it on Auto-Pilot
5. Go RIGHT back to living your life

Asking how frequently you should have your gutters cleaned is a great question, and one that we've all asked ourselves at one point or another as homeowners. Let's be honest, pulling the aluminum ladder out of the garage right before spending half a Saturday scaling the side of your home doesn't really conjure up positive emotions.

Look:

You're not alone here! How about we look at a couple of key questions to determine how frequently you should have your service scheduled (or do it yourself for that matter)

You're probably wondering:

"How can 3 questions determine how frequently I need service?" The answer is pretty simple. It's not rocket science, we're talking about gutter and downspout cleaning and as long as you pay attention to a couple of key areas and acknowledge your environment and weather you'll be fine.

As a rule of thumb, you'll probably avoid the majority of issues with a cleaning schedule done twice per year. Spring and Fall would be a great place to start. Check out a couple of these sample gutter cleaning schedules we put together. Your circumstances might be different, but it should give you a good idea at least of a typical cleaning schedule.

​Without further ado, here are the 3 questions for anyone asking themselves,

How Often Should I Clean Gutters?

#1: Where Do You Live? Certain areas of the country have deciduous trees that drop their leaves like clockwork, it's usually October and November here in the Pacific Northwest. It's amazing, but you can literally watch the trees to figure out how much summer you have left. It's subtle at first, with the end of August, the leaves start losing a bit of that bright green color, and then in September it comes all at once. The leaves go yellow, brown, and red, and fall is in full effect before you know what happened. I bet you didn't know that the red, orange, and yellow colors in the leaves are actually there all year long? So why do the leaves look green then? Here's your answer, and why not learn a few other fall facts you'll hardly believe while you're at it. 

These deciduous trees, plants, and shrubs are basically going through a process of "dropping the parts that are no longer needed". The term deciduous isn't limited to trees either, think of deer and their antlers, or infants and their teeth. Same sort of concept. So what's the result? You get a TON of leaves and some nasty leftover byproducts; spinners, prickly items, and all of the items no longer needed. These seem to have a knack for clogging gutters and downspouts better than just about anything else. Add in the fact that the weather is getting cold and wet and you've got some serious backup issues. This is the time of year to absolutely have some service scheduled. You want to have your system cleared up and ready to go for winter, which we'll cover briefly later.

#2: What Surrounds Your Home? There are a lot of homes in the country that have trees and shrubs and bushes either very close to the house or even touching the house in some instances. This poses a problem when it comes to gutter and roof maintenance. Not only can insects and rodents use the direct tree-branch highway from the tree to your roof, the trees and branches themselves are going to deposit their items directly onto your surface. Be cognizant of the tree types you have hanging over your roof and gutter systems and if you need to trim a branch or limb back to provide a little clearance, definitely do so. Goes without saying here, but be sure it's YOUR tree before you start trimming. The branch might be over your roof, but the trunk of the tree you might notice is on your neighbors side of the boundary line.... Yup, Might need to look into that one before you gas up the chainsaw to be safe.

Another reason to be mindful of the trees and branches and foliage close to the home is that it typically prevents sunlight from hitting all of the roof and house surfaces. Here in Seattle, no sun = massive mold and moss. It might be a similar outcome for you depending on where you live and your climate. 

#3: How's Your Climate? Do you live in Seattle and enjoy 364 days of WET each year? Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit but let's be real for a minute. The months of October-April are dark and damp and wet, and it leaves a wide variety of issues open to advance and conquer on the well-being of your home. Poorly performing gutters and downspouts can lead to standing water either at the foundation or within the gutter itself. Both results are No Bueno. Water pooling by the foundation is an instant red flag, you can read more about that here if you've seen any standing water around your foundation in the past. Water really needs to be moved from location A to location B, and in the quickest and most efficient manner possible. That's essentially the purpose of your roof, gutter, and downspout system right? Move the rain off the house, into the gutter, into the downspout, away from the foundation, and into some creek or reservoir, right? It's a pretty straightforward process, but it needs to be monitored. A bottleneck in gutter performance can leave you with some pretty big headaches.

Bottom Line: The majority of homeowners need to have gutter cleaning and maintenance scheduled for 2x per year and they will be good to go! Have your gutter cleaning company set up a plan with you if any of the items mentioned above seem to be more impactful for your particular scenario  (lots of tree leaves dropped, foliage overhang, extra wet or cold weather).

If you found this post useful and want to see what other homeowner tips we've got for you, please enter your name and email below. We never sell your info or give it to anyone. It's purely for us to give you homeowner resources that we think will help!

If you're ready to schedule your gutter cleaning appointment, call or text us today 425-448-8484 or email us Here. Reference THIS post and we'll take 15% off your first service and set you up with priority scheduling for your annual follow-ups for all of 2019. Literally, we're going to let you jump the line in front of everyone else that we typically require scheduling to be done 2-3 months out. Don't Wait!

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