How often should gutters be cleaned? For most Melbourne houses, twice a year: once in late autumn after the deciduous trees have finished dropping, and once in early spring before the storm season. Some houses get away with once. A few need four visits and their owners know exactly why.
The honest answer depends on what is growing near your roof, which way the house faces and what sort of gutters you have. Here is how to work out where yours sits.
The Melbourne calendar
Autumn is the obvious one. Through April and May the elms, plane trees and liquidambars in the older suburbs drop everything within a few weeks, and it all ends up in the gutters. Clean too early and you do it again. We usually book these once the trees are bare, which in most of Melbourne is late May into June.
Spring is the one people forget. Wattle and gum flower and drop through August and September, and the storms that come through in October and November arrive with enough water to test whether the gutters can move it. Winter here is wet but steady. It is the spring downpours that find the blockage, and by then anything sitting in the gutter has had all winter to compact.
If you only clean your gutters once a year, do it in late autumn. If you can do it twice a year, add a spring visit and you will not have to think about it again.
What makes your house need it more often
Gum trees
Gums do not have a season. They drop bark, leaves, twigs and nuts all year, and gum leaves are stiff enough to bridge across a downpipe outlet and hold everything else back. A house with gums overhanging the roof often needs the gutters done three or four times a year. Nothing about that is unusual and there is no gutter guard system that fixes it entirely.
Pine and conifers
Pine needles are small enough to get through most guards and they knit together into a mat that water will not pass. Two conifers along a boundary can cause more trouble than a big elm.
Bayside sand and salt
Around Brighton, Hampton and down through Beaumaris, fine sand blows onto roofs and washes into the gutters, where it settles into the base and sets like grout under the leaf litter. It does not look like much when you glance in. It is the thing that stops the gutters draining, and it is the reason a quick blow out on a bayside house often leaves the gutter no better than it was.
Box gutters and internal drainage
If your house has box gutters, especially a flat roofed extension or an older terrace, halve the interval. A box gutter is designed to hold water briefly and drain it through a sump. When that sump clogs, the water has nowhere to go except inside the house, and there is no overflow point to warn you. Twice a year is the minimum and once a quarter is better.
Bushfire risk
If you are on the fringe near bushland, gutters full of dry leaf litter are an ember trap, and that is a fire brigade recommendation, not a sales pitch. Gutters get cleaned before summer, every year, without exception. Metal gutter guards help here, though they still need checking.
What about gutter guards
Gutter guards change the interval, they do not remove it. A good mesh system stops leaves and birds getting in, which is worth having if birds nesting in your gutters is the problem you are trying to solve. What still gets through is fine material: seed, grit, broken down leaf, pine needles. That builds a layer on top of the guard or a shallow bed underneath it, and eventually water sheets over the front instead of going in.
With guards fitted, most houses go from twice a year to once, and the annual visit takes longer because sections have to come off and go back on. Anyone selling you a guard system as maintenance free is selling you a future roof problem.
How to tell yours need doing
You do not need to go up a ladder to check. From the ground you can often see plants growing out of the gutter line, sagging between brackets, staining down the fascia where water has been running over the edge, or a downpipe that stays dry in the rain while the gutter overflowing beside it does all the work. Any of those and it is overdue.
If you do want to look properly, the safest approach is a phone on a selfie stick held over the gutter rather than a ladder you are not confident on. Most falls at home happen off ladders that were only meant to be up there for a minute.
What happens when you leave it
Water is the whole issue. A blocked gutter sends it over the edge and down the wall, into the eaves, or back under the first course of tiles. Give it a couple of wet winters and you are looking at rotted fascia, damp in the ceiling, mould in the corner of a room, or water pooling against the foundation of the house. Repairing that damage costs many times what clearing the gutters would have. That is when gutter cleaning stops being maintenance and starts being costly repairs.
Clogged gutters also rust from the inside. Wet debris sitting on the metal for years takes the coating off and the gutter goes at the seams, and then the whole run needs replacing rather than cleaning. Regular clearing prevents that damage, and it is why we push maintenance visits over one big rescue job every five years.
Questions we get asked
How do you tell if your gutters need cleaning?
Look for overflow in heavy rain, staining down the fascia, plants in the gutter, or sagging. If you cannot remember the last clean, it needs one.
What happens if I do not clean the gutters?
Water goes where it should not: into the eaves, down the walls, against the foundation, or under the tiles. Water damage builds slowly and then shows up all at once after a big storm, months after the gutters actually blocked.
How much should you expect to pay for gutter cleaning?
It comes down to storeys, how many metres of gutter and how full they are, so we quote each house rather than publishing a price. It is free and we can often do it from photos.
How much does it cost to get gutters cleaned in Australia?
Averages across the country are not much help for one house in Melbourne. Access and roof type change the number more than the city does.
If it has been more than a year, book it before the next storm rather than after. We work seven days across Melbourne, the bayside and southern suburbs and the Mornington Peninsula, and our gutter cleaning Melbourne page sets out what a visit includes. Call 03 8682 8767.