Sydney Gutter Cleaning

Twice a year suits most Sydney homes — once in March or April after the summer eucalypt drop, and once in September or October before the storm season and the bushfire danger period. Shift the autumn clean to June if you are under liquidambars, planes or ornamental pears, because they have not finished dropping until then. Under a stand of gums or beside a big paperbark, twice a year is not enough and quarterly is the honest answer. A roof with nothing overhanging it can often stretch to once a year.

Water spilling over the front edge during rain is the obvious one, and by then it has usually been overflowing for a while. Earlier signs: plants growing in the gutter, a gutter line that sags or has pulled away from the fascia, dark tannin streaks down the fascia or the wall, mosquitoes around the house, water splashing off the ground at one particular spot, and a patch of garden directly under the roofline that is always waterlogged. Inside the house, a stain appearing at a ceiling corner or a cornice after heavy rain is very often a gutter, not a roof leak.

On a single-storey house with a low pitch, firm level ground all the way around and someone to foot the ladder, it is a reasonable job to do yourself. Above that it stops being about height and starts being about the ladder: over-reaching sideways, soft ground under one leg and leaning a ladder on the gutter itself are what put people in hospital, and falls from ladders are one of the most common serious home-maintenance injuries in Australia. Two storey, a steep pitch, a wet metal roof, overhead service lines into the fascia, or solar panels — that is where it is worth handing over. A professional also flushes and tests the downpipes and tells you what is wrong up there, which is the part a DIY clean usually misses.

We quote it rather than publish a rate, because the price is driven by things we need to see: how many metres of gutter there are, whether it is single or double storey, the roof pitch and material, how the ladder or platform can be set up, how many downpipes there are, and how long it has been. A compact single-storey home is a short job; a two-storey house on a sloping block with valleys and solar is not. Send a photo of the roofline with your suburb and we will give you a same-day ballpark, then a fixed price before anything starts.

Yes. Two-storey work is done from roof access with proper anchor points, or from an elevated work platform where there is no safe edge to work from. Steep pitches, three-level homes on the sloping blocks around the North Shore and the harbour, and roofs where the only access is over a neighbour's side path all get looked at before we quote, because the access is most of the job. What we will not do is a two-storey clean off an over-extended ladder on soft ground because it is quicker.

Both, always. Every downpipe gets flushed and watched, because a clear gutter feeding a blocked downpipe still overflows and it is the more common of the two faults. If a downpipe will not run, the blockage is usually either at the bend where it enters the ground or in the stormwater line, and we will tell you which so you know whether you need a plumber with a drain camera or just a better clean next time.

It goes in bags on the roof, comes down with us and leaves on the ute for green waste recycling. It does not get blown into your garden beds, tipped over the back fence or hosed into a stormwater drain. Anything that is not organic — tennis balls, roofing offcuts, the occasional cricket ball collection — comes out too.

It depends entirely on what is above your roof, and we do not sell it so we have no stake in the answer. Under big-leaf trees, on expensive-to-access roofs and on bush blocks where a metal mesh keeps embers out, it is often worth it. Under eucalypts and paperbarks it frequently disappoints, because fine leaves and bark mat on top of the mesh and hold water. Whatever you fit, "never clean your gutters again" is not true — guarded gutters still want checking about once a year.

Yes, and spring is when we are busiest with it. Ember attack is what takes most houses in a bushfire and a gutter packed with dry leaf litter is exactly where an ember wants to land. On bush-edge properties we generally do the gutters and the fine fuel around the house in one visit, and we would rather book it in September than in the middle of a hot windy week in December.

Yes. Strata blocks, schools, aged care, retail and industrial roofs are regular work for us, invoiced to the strata manager or facilities contact, with certificates of currency and safe work method statements provided before we attend. Box gutters and internal gutters — common on terraces, warehouses and older commercial buildings — matter more than domestic ones, because when a box gutter overflows the water goes inside the building rather than down the outside wall. See our strata and commercial work for how those contracts run.

We photograph it, show you and tell you plainly what we are looking at. We are gardeners and grounds crew, not licensed roof plumbers, so we do not re-hang, re-silicone or replace gutters — and you should be wary of anyone who offers to do all of it off the back of a cleaning visit. What we can do is get it clean, tell you how urgent it is, and keep the leaf load down so it does not accelerate.

All of them — the North Shore, Northern Beaches, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, CBD, Western Sydney, the Hills District and Southern Sydney. The leafy upper North Shore and the bush-edge suburbs are where we do the most of it, for the obvious reason.