Gutter cleaning in St. Louis

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 driveway
• Downspouts flushed from the top with a hose and checked for flow at the bottom
• 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 put back where the mower moved them

The flush matters more than the scoop. A downspout plugged with a season of maple helicopters and one tennis ball will back up a spotless gutter, and the first you'll know is water on the basement floor in April.

When to clean gutters in St. Louis

Late May or June, after the silver maples drop their seeds and the sycamores shed their spring bark, and before the July storms. Late November into December once the oaks are finally bare — pin oaks in Kirkwood and Webster Groves hang onto leaves later than almost anything else, so a cleaning in early November under an oak is a wasted trip. Homes under heavy sycamore get a third visit in mid-October because the leaves come down in a two-week rush and can fill a gutter before the oaks have started. Guards cut this to one visit. The fall leaf-season guide has the tree-by-tree calendar.

Pricing

By the size of the house, not the hour. Single-story homes $120–$200, two-story $180–$300, and the three-story brick in Soulard, Lafayette Square and the Central West End is quoted after a look. If we find a repair while we're up there, the cleaning fee comes off it. No charge for the photos and no upsell — if the gutters are fine, we say so.

Cleaning that turns into a repair

Roughly one cleaning in four finds something. In order of how often we see it: a downspout elbow that's pulled apart, a corner weeping on the sunny side, spike hangers backed out on a long run, and soft fascia under a corner that has overflowed for years. Every one gets a photo and a price on the spot, good for 30 days. Prices for each are on the gutter repair page.

What a cleaning won't do

A clean gutter that still overflows has lost its pitch or is undersized for the roof. We'll tell you which; the cleaning doesn't change it. And a clean gutter under a big pin oak on Argonne Drive will be full again by Christmas. If we're cleaning the same house twice a year and the tree isn't going anywhere, we'll mention gutter guards, not as a pitch but because the arithmetic turns around year six.

Copper and half-round

Half-round gutters hold less than K-style and clog faster at the outlet, and copper scratches. We clean them with plastic scoops and no metal tools, and we check the bracket straps while we're there, because those are what fail on a half-round system. See copper and half-round gutters.

Doing it yourself

Single-story ranch, a good ladder, someone holding it: go ahead. Gloves, a bucket hooked to the ladder, flush each downspout from the top. Stop if the ladder has to lean on the gutter (it'll crush it), if you'd reach more than an arm's length sideways, or if it's two stories. We get gutter cleaning St. Louis calls every December from people who did the front of the house and thought better of the back. The back costs the same as the whole.