Gutter cleaning in Pittsburgh

What a cleaning includes

• Every foot of gutter cleared by hand into a bucket — not blown into the flower beds or onto the neighbor's roof
• Downspouts flushed with a hose and checked for flow at the bottom, including any that go into a drain pipe at grade
• Debris bagged and taken away
• A ladder check of seams, corners, hangers and fascia, with photos of anything that needs attention
• Splash blocks and extensions reset where they've been kicked out of place

The flush matters more than the scoop. A downspout plugged with a season of maple seeds and a tennis ball backs up a perfectly clean gutter, and in December that backed-up water becomes an ice plug that splits the elbow.

When to clean gutters in Pittsburgh

Late June, after the maple and elm seeds have finished dropping. Mid to late November, after the oaks and sycamores have let go — pin oaks hang on longer than anything else, so if you have them, the later the better. The November clean is the one that matters: a gutter that goes into winter full of wet leaves freezes solid, and that's the ice that pulls hangers and bends the lip. Homes under hemlocks or spruce need a third visit in late summer. With good guards, one visit a year usually does it.

Pricing

Gutter cleaning Pittsburgh-wide is priced by the size of the house rather than the hour. Single-story homes run $120–$200, two-story $180–$300, and three-story rowhouses or homes on a hillside with a long drop on one side are quoted after we see them. If we find a repair while we're up there, the cleaning fee comes off the repair price. No charge for the photos, and no upsell — if everything's fine we say so and leave.

Cleaning that turns into a repair

About one visit in four turns something up. In order of how often we see it: a downspout elbow that's come apart at the bottom, a corner weeping on the south side of the house where the sun works the sealant hardest, spike hangers backed out on a long run, and soft fascia below a corner that's overflowed for years. Everything on that list is on the gutter repair page with prices. If we find a box gutter lining that's failing, that's a different conversation and it's on the box gutter page.

What a cleaning won't fix

A clean gutter that still overflows is undersized or pitched wrong; cleaning doesn't change that. And a clean gutter under a big silver maple on a Dormont street will have seedlings growing in it by July. If we're cleaning the same gutters two or three times a year, we'll mention gutter guards — the arithmetic starts to favor them around year six.

Doing it yourself

Single-story homes with a good ladder and someone holding it: go ahead. Gloves, a bucket hooked on the ladder, and flush each downspout from the top. Stop if the ladder has to lean on the gutter itself, if you'd be reaching more than an arm's length sideways, or if the ground on the downhill side of the house is more than a story below the eave — which describes a great many Pittsburgh houses. We get a lot of December calls from people who did the front and thought better of the back. Half a house costs the same as a whole one.