Gutter maintenance is dull work that pays for itself. A gutter does one job: it collects the rain that runs off the roof and delivers it to the drains, so none of it lands on the wall, the fascia or the footings. The moment it stops doing that, water finds another route. It spills over the front lip and runs down the brickwork, it seeps out of a failed joint, or it sits in the trough and soaks the board behind. Most of this is preventable with an hour or two of attention at the right times of year. This guide covers what to look for, how to clear and check a gutter safely, which faults you can deal with from the ground, and which ones need someone with a scaffold.
What a gutter is up against
Whatever the material, a gutter faces the same four enemies. The first is debris: leaves, moss washed off the tiles, twigs, grit from granular tile surfaces and the odd tennis ball. Basingstoke has plenty of mature trees along older roads and in the newer estates, and a gutter under an oak or a silver birch fills quickly in autumn. The second is standing water, which comes from a gutter that is not level or has sagged between brackets. The third is frost, which splits joints and loosens brackets when trapped water freezes. The fourth is time: sealant dries, rubber seals harden, painted metal rusts and plastic goes brittle in the sun.
A well-fitted gutter has a very slight fall towards each downpipe, brackets at regular intervals and sealed joints. If you want to see the parts named, our guide to fascias, soffits and guttering shows how they fit together.
A yearly rhythm that works
Gutters are best checked at two points in the year. Late autumn, once most of the leaves are down, is the main one. Late spring is the second, after the winter has had its chance to loosen things and before summer storms. If you have a tree overhanging the roof, a third look in mid-winter during a heavy downpour will show you what is really happening. Our answer on how often gutters should be cleaned goes into the timing in more detail.
The best inspection is also the cheapest. Wait for steady rain and look, from the ground or a window, at what the gutters are doing. Water should run along the trough and into the downpipe. It should not pour over the front, drip from joints, trickle down the wall behind the pipe or hang in sheets from the outer edge. Each of those signs points to a different cause, and noting which one you see saves guesswork later. Our answer on why gutters overflow works through the common ones.
Staying safe while you do it
A fall from a ladder does far more harm than a blocked gutter ever will. A ladder on soft ground, a ladder leaning on the gutter itself, or a long reach sideways are the usual causes. If you can do the job from a stable position at ground level, a window or a flat roof, do that. If you must use a ladder, set it on firm, level ground at a safe angle, make sure it extends above the gutter line, and have someone foot it. Never lean the ladder against the plastic gutter, because it will crack or the whole run will pull away from the board.
Anything higher than the ground floor of a house, or any roof you cannot reach from a safe platform, is work for people with the right equipment. We do not recommend walking on a roof to reach a gutter. Tiles break underfoot and slate is slippery. If the job needs a scaffold tower or a roof access system, that is the point to call someone in. Wear gloves, because the silt can contain broken glass, nails and animal droppings, and wear eye protection if you are using a hose.
Clearing a gutter properly
Start at the end furthest from the downpipe and work towards it, so the dirt you move is not pushed into a section you have cleaned. A plastic scoop or a small garden trowel is better than your hand, and a bucket hung on the ladder catches what you take out. Tip the debris onto a sheet or into the bucket rather than the lawn, because rotting leaf litter makes a mess of a flower bed if it all lands in one place.
When the bulk is out, flush the gutter with a hose from the high end. Watch how the water travels. It should move steadily to the outlet. If it ponds anywhere, the gutter has sagged at that point or has lost its fall. Watch the joints as the water passes and note any that drip. Take the hose to the downpipe afterwards and make sure the water coming out at the bottom is flowing freely. A downpipe that gurgles and backs up is partly blocked, and our answer on how to unblock a downpipe shows the safe way to clear it.
Do not use a pressure washer on a gutter. It can blow joints apart, strip paint from cast iron and aluminium, and force water behind the fascia. A garden hose is enough.
Moss, silt and what the roof sends down
Gutters on tiled roofs collect more than leaves. Concrete tiles shed grit from their surface as they weather, and that grit settles into a grey sludge along the trough. Moss growing on the tiles breaks off in lumps after rain and washes into the gutter, where it holds water like a sponge and feeds new growth. If your gutters need clearing of moss every year, the cause is on the roof, and cleaning the roof will do more than cleaning the gutters. We cover the link in our page on moss blocking gutters.
Silt also matters because it raises the floor of the trough. A gutter with an inch of sludge in the bottom has lost part of its capacity, so a heavy shower overtops it long before a clean one would. Clearing to bare plastic or metal, not just removing the loose top layer, restores the full depth.
Joints, brackets and sag
After cleaning, look along each run for three faults. The first is a leaking joint. On a uPVC gutter, the joint is a clip with a rubber seal inside. Seals harden with age, and a drip from the underside of the clip is a worn seal or a joint that has pulled slightly apart. Sometimes the seal can be refreshed, sometimes the section needs replacing. Our guide to leaking gutter joints explains how to tell which. Cast iron and older metal gutters are bolted and sealed with mastic or putty, which dries and cracks over time.
The second fault is sag. Brackets are normally fixed at regular spacings along the fascia. If a bracket has pulled out of rotten timber or snapped, the gutter drops between the fixings, water ponds at that point and the weight of the water pulls the neighbouring brackets down as well. Sag that you can see from the ground is worth a closer look, and our answer on why gutters sag explains the causes.
The third is movement at the board. If the screws holding the brackets are loose in the wood, the board itself may be soft. Press a thin blade into the fascia behind the gutter line. If it sinks in, the board needs attention before the gutters do, and our page on rotten fascia boards shows what that means.
Gutter guards, brushes and other gadgets
Guards promise to keep leaves out, and in some places they help. Mesh and brush types stop larger leaves, but fine silt, seeds and moss still get through, and a guard under a heavily leaf-laden tree can clog on top so that water runs over the front anyway. Guards also make inspection harder, because you cannot see the trough underneath without lifting them. Whether they suit your house depends on the trees and the roof, and our answer on whether gutter guards are worth it weighs that up.
Ordinary maintenance gadgets such as a gutter-cleaning pole with a hook, or a telescopic wand that attaches to a hose, are useful from the ground on a single-storey roof. On anything taller they reach awkwardly and miss the middle of the run.
Signs that maintenance is no longer enough
There comes a point when the gutter is no longer worth cleaning. Several joints that drip on a clear day, a run that has lost its fall in more than one place, plastic that has gone chalky and cracks when touched, and cast iron that is rusting through at the back are all signs of this. The same applies if you find the same brackets keep working loose, because the board behind is probably failing. Our guide to the signs your gutters need replacing lists them in more detail, and it is worth reading before you spend another weekend on a gutter that is past repair.
When to call someone in
Call a roofer when the work is above a safe reach, when you find rot in the board, when water is running down the wall behind the gutter, when a bracket has pulled out of the timber, or when you see daylight or old nests in the soffit above. Bird nests in the roofline are protected while in use, so if you find one, wait until the young have gone and ask for advice before disturbing it.
On a Beacon survey we look at the whole roofline, not just the gutter, and photograph the problems so you can see them. Where a clear-out and a seal will do, we say so and quote for that. Where the run is finished, we say that too and give a fixed written price for replacing it. The full list of what we do on this part of the roof is on our guttering, soffits and fascias page, and the number to ring is 01256 213956.
