How Often Should Gutters Be Cleaned in the Pacific Northwest?

The national advice is twice a year. In the Portland metro the honest answer depends almost entirely on what is growing over your house.

A realistic schedule

• Open lot, few trees nearby: once a year, in late fall
• Deciduous trees near the house: twice a year — after leaf drop, and again before sustained winter rain
• Douglas fir or other conifers overhanging the roof: twice a year minimum, sometimes three times
• Rural or wooded properties in areas like Boring and Damascus: plan on more, not less

Why fir needles are the real problem

Leaves are big and mostly stay where they land. Needles are small, they travel, and they knit together into a dense mat that holds water and blocks downspout openings from the inside. A gutter can look reasonably clear from a ladder and still be draining at a fraction of its capacity.

What a full gutter does to a roof

Standing water in a full gutter can back up under the lowest courses of roofing. Overflow runs down the fascia and barge boards until the paint fails and the wood rots. And instead of being carried away, the water from your entire roof dumps at the base of the wall, which is how gutter neglect becomes a crawlspace problem.

We clear gutters and downspouts as a standalone service and as part of roof cleaning, moss removal, and maintenance visits. Because we are roofers, we also tell you what we notice about the roof while we are up there.