Gutter cleaning in Sacramento

What a cleaning includes

• Every foot of gutter cleared by hand into a bucket — nothing blown into the beds or onto the neighbor's car
• Downspouts flushed with a hose and checked for flow at the bottom
• Buried drain lines checked where the downspout feeds one; a plugged line flagged and quoted
• Debris bagged and taken away
• A ladder check of corners, seams, hangers and fascia, with photos of anything that needs attention
• Splash blocks and extensions reset

The flush matters more than the scoop here. On older Sacramento homes the downspout drops into a drain line under the lawn, and a line packed with silt and roots will back up a spotless gutter. You won't know until it overflows at the corner in the first big storm.

When to clean gutters in Sacramento

This is where most people get it wrong, and the answer is later than you'd think. Our leaf drop runs late. London planes and elms start in November and are still dropping into January; liquidambars drop their balls through February; oaks and redwoods never really stop. A cleaning in early October is a cleaning of dust and ash, followed by a winter's worth of leaves landing in a clean gutter.

• Late November to early December — the main cleaning, after most of the deciduous drop and before the heaviest storms in December and January.
• Late January or February — a second pass under London planes, liquidambars and camphors, where the first cleaning is full again by then.
• Late September — only if you're under redwoods or oaks and the gutter hasn't been touched since spring, so the first storm doesn't meet a summer's worth of needles and acorns.

If you have good guards, one visit a year is usually enough. Fall leaf season in Sacramento has the tree-by-tree calendar.

Pricing

Priced by the house, not the hour. Single-story homes run $140–$230, two-story $210–$350, and large or complex roofs are quoted after we see them. Drain-line jetting is a separate line if the line is plugged. If we find a repair while we're up there, the cleaning fee comes off the repair price. No charge for the inspection photos, and no upsell — if the gutters are fine, we say so.

Cleaning that turns into a repair

About one visit in four turns something up. In order, the usual finds: a downspout elbow that's separated, a corner weeping on the south side where the sealant baked, spike hangers backed out on a long run under a tree, soft fascia under a corner that's been overflowing for years, and on tile-roof homes, a gutter hung too high behind the tile lip so half the water was never landing in it. Each gets a photo and a price on the spot, good for 30 days. They're all on the gutter repair page with typical costs.

What a cleaning won't fix

A clean gutter that still overflows is pitched wrong, undersized, or draining into a dead line. We'll tell you which, but a cleaning doesn't change it. And a clean gutter under a London plane in Land Park will be full again by New Year's. If we're cleaning the same house twice a winter and the tree isn't going anywhere, we'll suggest gutter guards — not as a pitch, but because the arithmetic starts favoring them around year six.

Doing it yourself

Single-story, a good ladder, and someone holding it: go ahead. Gloves, a bucket hung from the ladder, and flush every downspout from the top. Stop when the ladder has to lean on the gutter, when you're reaching more than an arm's length sideways, when the roof is two stories, or when it's tile — walking on concrete tile cracks it, and a cracked tile is a roof leak. We get a lot of gutter cleaning Sacramento calls in December from people who did the front and thought better of the back. No shame in it; the second half costs the same as the whole. Cleaning gutters yourself: safety and when to stop has the rest.