Gutter Cleaning in the Lower Mainland

Our rainfall is the whole problem

Depending where you are in the region, annual rainfall runs from roughly 1,100 mm out in Delta to well past 2,000 mm on the North Shore. That's an enormous volume of water moving through a system of aluminium troughs about 12 centimetres wide.

And it isn't only autumn leaves. Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock shed needles year-round, and needles are far more troublesome than leaves — they mat together into a dense felt that holds water like a sponge, they pack into downspout openings, and they slip straight through most inexpensive gutter guards. A roof surrounded by conifers can plug a gutter in the middle of July.

What a blocked gutter actually costs you

Gutter cleaning is unglamorous, and it's also the cheapest preventative maintenance on a house. When a gutter overflows, water doesn't politely land on the lawn:

• It runs behind the gutter and down the fascia board, which is wood, and which rots. From there it reaches the soffit and the edge of the roof deck.
• It dumps at the foundation instead of being carried away, saturating the soil against the wall — the usual cause of basement seepage and, over years, settlement.
• It freezes. A gutter full of wet debris during a cold snap becomes a channel of ice, and the weight pulls fasteners out of the fascia.
• It creates a seedbed. Standing organic matter in a trough grows moss, and it's genuinely common to find maple and hemlock seedlings rooted in a neglected gutter.

A fascia replacement runs into the thousands. A gutter cleaning does not.

What's included

• Full hand-clearing of every accessible gutter run
• Debris bagged and taken away — not blown into your garden beds
• Every downspout flushed and flow-tested to confirm it actually drains
• Clearing of downspout blockages where they can be reached
• Gutter faces wiped down at the front where needed
• Before and after photos, including sections you can't see from the ground
• A note on anything we spot — loose spikes, separated seams, sagging runs, damaged fascia

Downspouts are where the job usually gets skipped

This is the part worth asking any gutter company about. Scooping the troughs is straightforward and it's what most of a gutter cleaning looks like from the street. But a perfectly clean gutter that drains into a plugged downspout will still overflow in the first serious rain — and from the ground, it looks exactly like a job that was never done.

Blockages typically form at the top elbow where the outlet narrows, or at the bottom elbow where the pipe turns toward the drain. Neither is visible from inside the trough. We run water through every downspout on the house and confirm it comes out the other end, and we clear what we can reach when it doesn't. If a blockage is somewhere in an underground drain line, we'll tell you where the problem is rather than leaving you to discover it in November.

How often, realistically

Twice a year covers most Lower Mainland homes: once in late autumn after the leaves have finished dropping, usually mid-to-late November, and once in spring to clear the winter's needles, seed pods and roof grit.

If your property is heavily treed — particularly conifers directly overhanging the roof — three visits a year is more realistic and still cheaper than the fascia work you're avoiding. An open lot with nothing overhanging can often manage on a single autumn clean. The one timing mistake we'd steer you away from is cleaning too early in the season: a gutter cleared in early October will be full again by the time the rain really starts.

Gutter guards: an honest assessment

Good guards genuinely help, and cheap ones make the situation worse. That's the short version.

A well-made micro-mesh guard keeps leaves and the bulk of needles out and will meaningfully reduce how often you need someone up a ladder. What it won't do is eliminate the job — fine needles, shingle grit and airborne debris still accumulate, and on mesh systems they can form a mat on top that sheds water straight over the edge rather than through it. Plastic snap-in screens and foam inserts, on the other hand, tend to trap debris inside the trough where it's harder to get out than if there'd been no guard at all.

If you have guards, we work with them — removal and reinstallation adds time, so it's factored into the quote. If you're considering them, we're happy to tell you what we see holding up on Lower Mainland roofs.

What affects the price

• Linear footage of gutter. The main factor, and roughly proportional to your roofline.
• Number of storeys and roof pitch. Access drives the time more than the debris does.
• How long it's been. Two years of packed, composted debris is a different job from an annual clean.
• Gutter guards. Removing and refitting them adds time.
• Bundling. Gutters combined with roof cleaning is the most common pairing, since roof debris is where the gutter debris comes from.

What customers say

Frequently asked questions