How often should gutters be cleaned?

A gutter is a narrow channel with a low sill, and anything that lands in it stays there until the rain pushes it towards the outlet. Leaves are the obvious load. Moss is the quieter one: it loosens from the roof slope, particularly on shaded slopes, and washes down into the gutter in clumps. Roof tiles also shed grit as they age, and concrete tiles can leave a gritty sediment that settles at the low end of a run.

So the interval is set by the house, not the calendar. A bungalow in an open estate with no trees nearby may fill slowly. A semi with a sycamore in the next garden can fill after a single windy week. Overhanging branches, a flat roof draining onto a pitched slope above the run, nesting birds and a roof that sheds moss all shorten the gap. Look at what lands on the ground around your house in autumn and you have a fair guide to what lands in the gutter above it.

Autumn is the main job. Once most of the leaves are down, a clean clears the runs before winter rain tests them. Spring is a good time to look again, because winter storms drop twigs and moss and the new growth is only just starting. After a gale, a visual check from the ground costs nothing and tells you whether anything has dropped into the runs or knocked a section out of line.

Heavy summer downpours deserve a glance too, since a blocked gutter shows itself most clearly when it rains hard. Stand outside during a storm, with the right clothing, and watch the edge of the roof. Water that falls cleanly down the downpipe is healthy. Water that spills from the front of the gutter, runs down the wall or pours from a joint tells you which section to look at. A separate answer on gutters that overflow in heavy rain explains what each pattern means.

Some signs say the gutter is already doing harm. Green or black staining on the wall below the run means water has been overflowing for a while. Small plants growing along the gutter tell you that silt has built up deep enough to root in. A sagging section means the weight of debris and water is pulling on the brackets. Damp patches on a ceiling beneath the eaves, or peeling paint on the fascia, point to water reaching the roof edge.

If you see any of these, do not wait for the autumn clean. A short run of blocked gutter can soak the wall behind it and rot the fascia board it hangs from, as our guide to damp from a blocked gutter explains. The cost of the clean is small beside the cost of rebuilding rotten timber. A downpipe that gurgles or runs dry while the gutter above is full is blocked lower down, and that needs rodding, not scooping. See blocked downpipes for how that is cleared.

There are three common methods. Clearing by hand from a ladder or scaffold lets you see the condition of every joint and bracket. A gutter vacuum on a pole cleans from the ground or a platform and suits a house with a clear run of wall. A cleaning tower or a mobile platform reaches higher eaves and awkward corners safely. Each has a place, and which one is right depends on the height, the surface below and what the gutter is made of. Our pages on gutter cleaning and gutter vacuum cleaning cover both, and the cost to clean gutters sets out what drives the price.

Whatever the method, a clean is also an inspection. While the channel is empty, we check the fall, the joints, the bracket spacing and the condition of the fascia behind. If a repair will do, that is what we tell you, with pictures, rather than steering you to new gutters.

Many owners do their own downstairs gutters from a stable ladder or platform. Fall injuries on ladders are the real danger in this job, not the dirt. Do not lean out from a ladder, do not work alone and do not climb onto a roof or a conservatory to reach a run. If the eaves are two storeys up, or the access is over a lean-to, a flat roof or a glazed roof, let a contractor with the right access equipment do it.

Older houses can have asbestos cement rainwater goods. Health and Safety Executive guidance puts asbestos cement gutters and downpipes in the non-licensed category while they are carefully handled and never broken up. Do not scrape, scrub or drill old grey fibre cement gutters. If yours look like that, ask a professional to check before anyone brushes or cuts them. For roofs with gutter guards, see our page on gutter guards before assuming they remove the need to clean. The hub page on guttering, soffits and fascias lists everything else we do.