Gutter cleaning in Nashville

What a cleaning includes

• Every foot of gutter cleared by hand into a bucket, not blown into the flower beds or onto the driveway
• Downspouts flushed with a hose from the top and checked for flow at the bottom
• Debris bagged and taken away
• A ladder check of seams, corners, hangers and fascia, with photos of anything that needs attention
• Splash blocks and extensions reset if they've been kicked out of line

The flush matters more than the scoop. A downspout plugged with a season of hackberry leaves, a tennis ball and a bird's nest will back up a perfectly clean gutter, and the first you'll know is water pouring over the front lip in the next storm.

When to clean gutters in Nashville

Late November into early December, once the maples, oaks and tulip poplars have finished. Hackberries drop earlier, from late September, so a house under mostly hackberry can go a couple of weeks sooner. Late February or early March, before the spring storm season, to clear what blew in over winter and any maple seeds. Homes under pines or cedars need a third visit in late summer because the needles fall year-round and mat into a plug that holds water and freezes solid in a cold snap. With good guards, one rinse a year is usually enough. Fall leaf season in Nashville has the tree-by-tree timing.

Pricing

Cleaning is priced by the house, not by the hour. Single-story homes run $120–$200, two-story $180–$300, and the large homes on wooded lots in Brentwood and Forest Hills are quoted after we see the roof. If we find a repair while we're up there, the cleaning fee comes off the repair price. There's no charge for the inspection photos and no upsell; if the gutters are fine, we say so and leave.

When a cleaning turns into a repair

Roughly one cleaning in four turns up something: a corner that's been dripping, a run holding water in the middle, a downspout elbow that's separated. We show you the photo and give you a price on the spot, and if you'd rather wait, the estimate is good for 30 days. The usual finds, in order: a downspout elbow that came apart, a corner weeping on the south side of the house, hangers backed out on a long run, and soft fascia under a corner that overflowed for a few springs. All of them are on the gutter repair page with prices.

What a cleaning doesn't fix

A clean gutter that still overflows is either undersized or pitched wrong, and a cleaning changes neither. We'll tell you which. And a clean gutter under a big hackberry in Inglewood or Sylvan Park will be full again by Thanksgiving. If we're cleaning the same gutters twice a year and the trees aren't going anywhere, we'll suggest gutter guards because the arithmetic favors them after about year six, not because we need to sell them.

Doing it yourself

A single-story house with a good ladder and someone holding it: go ahead. Gloves, a bucket hooked to the ladder, flush each downspout from the top. Stop when the ladder would have to rest on the gutter (it crushes it), when you'd be reaching more than an arm's length sideways, or when the roofline is two stories. Hillside lots make this worse: the back of a Bellevue split-level can be twenty feet up while the front is eight. Gutter cleaning Nashville calls spike in early December from people who did the front and thought better of the back. No shame in that, and the second half costs the same as the whole.