How to maintain your gutters (and why it matters more than you think)

Guttering is the least glamorous part of a building. Nobody chooses a house for its downpipes, and nobody notices a gutter that is doing its job. That is exactly the problem: by the time guttering makes itself known, it has usually been failing quietly for a season or two.

A blocked run costs a few pounds to clear. The damp, spoiled plaster and rotten fascia boards that follow from ignoring it run into the thousands. Of all the maintenance jobs we are called out for, this is the one where a small amount of attention buys the most.

What guttering is actually doing

A pitched roof sheds an enormous volume of water. A modest three-bedroom semi with a 70 square metre roof will shed roughly 700 litres of water in an hour of heavy rain. Guttering exists to catch all of that and put it somewhere sensible, well away from your walls and foundations.

When it cannot, that water goes over the edge and runs straight down the face of the building instead. Brickwork that stays saturated through winter never gets the chance to dry out, and that is how you end up with penetrating damp on an internal wall that has been fine for forty years.

How often it needs doing

Twice a year is the honest answer for most properties, but it depends far more on what is growing nearby than on the age of the guttering.

The signs that it needs doing now

• Water spilling over the front edge during rain rather than running to the downpipe
• Plants — genuinely, small saplings — growing out of the gutter run
• Staining or algae streaks on the wall directly below a joint
• Sagging sections where the bracket spacing has given way under the weight
• Water pooling around the base of the building near a downpipe outlet
• Peeling paint or soft, spongy timber on the fascia board behind the gutter

Doing it yourself, safely

On a single-storey extension with safe ground for a ladder, this is a reasonable job to take on yourself. On a two-storey house, it is genuinely not — falls from ladders are one of the most common causes of serious injury in home maintenance, and no gutter is worth it.

1. Set the ladder on firm, level ground at roughly a 75-degree angle, and have someone foot it.
2. Never lean sideways beyond the stiles. Move the ladder instead — every time.
3. Scoop debris out by hand into a bucket hooked to the ladder, working away from the downpipe.
4. Flush the run through with a hose and watch where the water actually goes.
5. Check the fall: standing water more than about 5mm deep means the brackets need adjusting.
6. Inspect each joint from below afterwards, during or just after rain, for drips.

When clearing is not enough

Clearing solves blockages. It does not solve worn seals, dropped brackets or guttering that was never set with enough fall in the first place. If a run is clear and still overflowing, the problem is the installation rather than the debris.

Failed seals

uPVC gutter joints rely on a rubber seal that hardens and shrinks with UV exposure. Fifteen years is a fair life. A dripping joint on an otherwise sound run is usually a five-minute seal replacement, not a reason to replace the whole thing.

Sagging and standing water

Brackets should sit at roughly one-metre intervals, closer where snow load is likely. A run that has been carrying wet debris for years will pull its brackets out of line, and once it holds standing water the extra weight accelerates the problem.

Is it worth fitting gutter guards?

Sometimes. Mesh guards genuinely help under deciduous trees, where the alternative is clearing three times a year. Under pines they are often counterproductive: needles mat on top of the mesh and form a dam that is harder to clear than the gutter would have been.

Our honest view is that guards reduce how often you need to clear, but they do not remove the need. Anyone selling them as a permanent fix is overstating the case.