How many times a year should you clean your gutters?

In general, you should plan to clean gutters at least once or twice a year. But if you have a lot of tall trees near your roof, you're going to have to do the work more often. Gutters should be cleaned six times during the year, with at least three cleanings during the fall season. Both location and climate affect the ideal number of cleanings, as well as your overall approach to gutter protection services.

In general, we recommend cleaning gutters, whether you do it yourself or do it professionally, twice a year. We typically find ourselves cleaning gutters for regular customers in late spring and early winter. For most homes, gutters should be cleaned twice a year. For homes that have numerous trees with large leaves or pine needles and see rain or snow frequently, gutters should be cleaned three to four times a year.

For homes with no trees around them, gutters can be cleaned once or twice a year. For gutter cleaning in Vancouver, where it rains most of the year, you may need to do it more often, especially if your home is next to trees that move frequently. As you may have already discovered, you should wait as long as possible until December or January to clean your gutters. It may seem like a lot to keep up with, but spending just an hour checking and possibly cleaning your gutters several times a year is worth the amount of money you'll save on potential damage.

The tried and true method of cleaning gutters by hand is more effective, but a high-pressure hose can help eliminate blockages in downspouts. The first factor that affects how often you should clean gutters is the number of trees you have around your home. However, gutters don't usually need to be cleaned as often, as long as you keep an eye on the system. While the best first line of defense is to clean gutters on a routine basis, there are some warning signs you can look out for to make sure the problem doesn't progress to something more serious.

If there is ice, it's very likely that you won't be able to properly clean the gutters that day without damaging them. While it may be tempting, ignoring the task of routine gutter cleaning can have substantial consequences. In regions with a lot of flora and fauna, it is common for gutters to need to be cleaned more frequently. For example, if you have pine or eucalyptus trees in your garden or other trees that lose their needles throughout the year, you may need to clean the gutters about once every three months.

If your gutters don't get too crowded during the fall because there are no trees around, you can clean them once just before winter. The next factor affecting how often you should clean gutters is the size of the leaves on the trees surrounding your home. At FiveCoat Roofing, we've been cleaning roofs and gutters throughout the Portland area for more than 40 years.