Gutters have one job: move water away from your house. When they're blocked with leaves, pine needles, and debris, they can't do that job. The water backs up, spills over the edge, and ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be. In most cases, that means the water runs down the side of your house, pools along the foundation, and starts to work its way into areas that are very expensive to repair.
The most common damage we see from neglected gutters is rotted fascia boards. The fascia is the board that runs along the edge of your roofline that the gutters are attached to. When gutters are full and holding water, that water sits against the fascia constantly. Wood rots. Replacing fascia is not a catastrophic expense, but it's not cheap either, and it's entirely preventable.
The more serious issue is foundation damage. Water that consistently pools along the base of a house creates hydrostatic pressure against the foundation. Over time, this causes cracks, moisture infiltration, and in older homes, structural shifting. A foundation repair in the Fraser Valley runs $5,000 to $20,000 or more depending on the severity. That's a number that's hard to think about when the fix (cleaning your gutters twice a year) costs a fraction of a percent of that.
The cost of a gutter cleaning is negligible compared to what happens when you let it go. Most homes in our area need it done at least twice a year.
Get a free quote→There's also the issue of basement flooding. Homes where the grading directs water toward the foundation, combined with blocked gutters that can't redirect it away, are significantly more likely to see water in the basement during heavy rain events. The Lower Mainland gets those events. We've talked to homeowners who've had this happen and couldn't figure out why, until we pointed out the gutters hadn't been cleaned in years.
The Fraser Valley's combination of deciduous trees and heavy fall rain creates a particularly bad situation. Leaves come down right as the rain picks up. If your gutters are full when the November rains start, they're going to be full and overwhelmed within a week. The time to clean them is late October, before the problem starts, not after.
