How Often Should You Clean Your Gutters in East Texas?

It's one of the most common questions we get: how often do these things actually need cleaning? The honest answer for East Texas is more often than most people think, because between the oak trees, the pines, and the spring storms, our gutters collect debris just about year-round. Here's the schedule we'd give our own family.

The short answer: twice a year, minimum

For most homes around Tyler, plan on cleaning your gutters at least twice a year. Once in late fall, after the leaves have dropped, so your gutters go into the rainy season clear. And once in late spring, after the oak trees finish dropping catkins and the worst of the spring storm debris is done. Those two cleanings catch the bulk of what falls, and they keep small clogs from turning into packed, waterlogged messes that weigh the gutter down.

Under pine trees? More often

Pines play by different rules. Loblolly pines shed needles throughout the year, not in one season, so a "twice a year" schedule can leave a gutter under pines clogged for months at a time. If your house sits under pines, you're looking at three or four cleanings a year to keep ahead of it, or gutter guards, which is the route a lot of our customers under pines end up taking. We wrote a separate post on what actually works against pine needles, because the cheap screens don't.

Signs your gutters are already overdue

You don't have to climb up there to know. Your gutters will tell on themselves:

• Water spilling over the sides during a hard rain, instead of going down the downspouts. That's the big one. A clean gutter doesn't overflow in a normal storm.

• Plants growing in the gutter. If there's grass or a little sapling up there, there's been standing dirt and water long enough to grow things.

• Sagging or pulling away from the house. Wet debris is heavy, and a gutter full of it will bend its hangers and start to droop.

• Dark streaks running down your siding under the gutter line. That's dirty water overflowing and staining the wall.

• Mosquitoes hanging around the eaves. Standing water in a clogged gutter is a mosquito nursery.

• Birds or wasps moving in. Debris-filled gutters make fine nesting material and shelter.

If you're seeing two or three of these, your gutters aren't just dirty. They're not doing their job at all.

What clogged gutters actually do to your house

This is the part people don't connect until there's a repair bill. A clogged gutter overflows at the roof edge, and that water goes exactly where you don't want it. It soaks the fascia and soffit behind the gutter, and wood that stays wet rots. It can work back under the edge of the roof. And the rest of it dumps straight down at your foundation, and on East Texas clay soil that is its own problem. Clay swells when it's soaked and shrinks when it dries, and that cycle works on a foundation over time. Add in flower beds washed out and mosquitoes breeding overhead, and a skipped cleaning gets expensive in a hurry. We have a whole post on the foundation side of it if you want the details.

A quick word on doing it yourself

Plenty of folks clean their own gutters, and on a one-story house with a good ladder it's doable work. Just respect the ladder. Move it often instead of reaching, and don't lean a ladder against the gutter itself, because a gutter won't hold you and it'll bend under the pressure. On a two-story house, or if your roofline is awkward, that's where we'd say hand it off. We clean gutters all over Tyler, Longview, Lindale, Whitehouse, and Bullard, and a cleaning costs a whole lot less than a fall or a rotted fascia board.

Keep it on a schedule

Twice a year for most homes, more under pines, and don't wait for the overflow to remind you. If yours are due, or overdue, call Cyclops Gutter Services at 903-347-3806 for a free quote on a cleaning.