Gutter cleaning in San Antonio

What a cleaning includes

• Every foot of gutter cleared by hand into a bucket, not blown into the beds
• Downspouts flushed from the top 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 set back where they belong

The flush matters more than the scoop. A downspout plugged with a spring's worth of catkins and one tennis ball will back up a perfectly clean gutter, and you find out when it overflows onto the walkway in the first September storm.

When to clean gutters in San Antonio

Our calendar is backwards from most of the country. The big drop is spring: live oaks shed their old leaves in March and April and follow with catkins, and by the end of April a gutter under one is full. Clean in late April or early May, which also gets you ahead of the spring hail and storm season. The second visit is late fall, after the cedar elms and pecans finish in December. Homes without large trees can usually do one visit a year. If you have micro-mesh guards, one rinse from the ground. The tree-by-tree timing is in fall leaf season in San Antonio.

Pricing

Cleaning is priced by the size of the house, not by the hour. Single-story $120–$200, two-story $180–$300, large or complicated roofs quoted after a look. If we find a repair while we're up there, the cleaning fee comes off the repair price. There's no charge for the photos and no upsell: if the gutters are fine, we say so and go.

When cleaning turns into a repair

About one in four cleanings turns something up. In order of how often we see it: a downspout elbow that's come apart, a corner weeping on the west side of the house, spike hangers backed out on a long run, and soft fascia under a corner that's been overflowing for years. You get a photo and a price on the spot, and the estimate is good for 30 days if you'd rather think about it. Each of those jobs is described with prices on the gutter repair page.

What cleaning won't fix

A clean gutter that still overflows is pitched wrong or undersized, and we'll tell you which. A clean gutter under a big live oak in Terrell Hills or Olmos Park will be full again by next April. If we're cleaning the same house twice a year and the tree isn't going anywhere, we'll suggest gutter guards — not as a pitch, but because the arithmetic favors them after about year six.

Doing it yourself

Single-story house, a good ladder, someone holding it: go ahead. Gloves, a bucket hung on the ladder, and flush each downspout from the top. Stop if the ladder has to lean on the gutter (it'll crush it), if you'd be reaching more than an arm's length sideways, or if the roofline is two stories. Gutter cleaning San Antonio calls in May from people who got halfway around and thought better of it are common and nothing to be embarrassed about; the second half costs the same as the whole house.