Cleaning Gutters Without Falling Off a Ladder

A ladder set too steep tips backwards. A ladder set too shallow slides out at the base. Both happen faster than you can correct, which is why the setup is the job and the gutter is the easy part.

Ladder footing, angle and three points of contact

Foot it on something solid and level. Not soil that has been rained on, not a paving slab that rocks, not a board balanced on a step. If the ground slopes, the ladder does not go there.

Angle it roughly one out for every four up. The quick check: stand with your toes at the feet of the ladder and put your arms straight out — your palms should reach the rung at shoulder height. Too steep and it comes back on you the moment you lean.

Extend it past the gutter line so there is ladder above where you are working, and tie it off or have it held. Three points of contact means two feet and a hand, or two hands and a foot, on the ladder at all times. That is the rule that stops you doing the thing everybody wants to do, which is reach sideways with a scoop in one hand and a bucket in the other.

Move the ladder rather than stretching. If your belt buckle passes the stiles, you have gone too far. Moving it twenty times is boring, and boring is the whole aim.

Do not use a ladder you have not inspected: bent stiles, loose rungs, missing feet, a wobble at the hinge. If you are borrowing one, look at it in daylight before you take it. Borrowing tools without burning the favor covers the asking; the inspection is on you.

Never at height alone: who holds the ladder

Somebody stands at the base, foot on the bottom rung, for the whole time you are up there. Not nearby, not inside, not on their phone in the kitchen.

Two reasons, and the second is the one people forget. A held ladder does not slide. And a person at the bottom is who calls an ambulance if it goes wrong, which is the difference between a bad afternoon and lying in a back garden nobody can see into.

If nobody will hold it, do not go up. The customer can do it, a friend can do it, but somebody does. Build it into the offer so it is not an awkward request on the day: I clear gutters on single-storey houses and I need someone on the ground for the hour, and that can be you.

It also means this is not a job to take on a day when you are alone, ill or in a hurry.

What the job actually is: clearing, flushing, checking the downpipe

Three passes, in order.

Clear by hand. Gloves on, scoop the wet compacted leaf and grit into a bucket hooked on the ladder or a bag tied to it — never dropped onto whatever is below and never balanced on a rung. Work from the far end towards the downpipe, so you are not pushing debris into the outlet you are about to unblock.

Flush with a hose from the far end and watch where the water goes. That is the test. Water sitting still in a run means the fall is wrong or there is a blockage you missed. Water coming out of a joint means the joint has gone.

Then the downpipe. Check it runs, and check where it ends, because a gutter emptying into a blocked drain or straight down a wall has not been fixed by being cleaned.

Bag the debris and take it with you unless the customer has said where it goes. Wet leaf is far heavier than it looks by the time it is in a bag. This work also clusters at the same times of year as the rest of the outdoor round, and spring and fall yard cleanups covers how that season stacks up.

Damage you should report instead of fix

You are being paid to clear, not to repair. Say what you find, in writing, with a photo, and let the owner decide what happens next.

Report: sagging or pulled-away sections, rusted or split guttering, brackets coming out of the fascia, wet or soft timber behind the gutter, staining down the wall, anything hanging loose, and any wasp or bird activity in the roofline.

Do not screw, seal, bend or re-hang anything. A gutter you have adjusted is a gutter whose next leak belongs to you, and fascia repair is a trade job for reasons that become obvious the first time a board turns out to be rotten all the way along.

Wasps stop the job outright. Come down, tell the owner, and let them arrange a pest controller before anybody goes back up.

Single-storey only, and why the rule protects the work

Set the rule before anyone asks, and say it out loud in the offer. Single-storey only: bungalows, extensions, garages, conservatories, porches.

The rule protects three things. It keeps you on a ladder length you can carry and set up with one spotter. It gives you a clean, unarguable answer to a customer who wants a bit more done while you are up there, which is far easier than deciding in the moment with somebody watching. And it keeps you inside the sort of work a person with no equipment and no van can honestly take on.

Anything above single storey, anything needing a roof edge, anything requiring a tower or scaffold, anything on a steep or fragile roof: not yours. Say it is a job for somebody with the right access equipment, and leave it there.

Insurance and permission rules for working at height on another person's property vary by where you are, and there may be a gate you have not met yet. What to check before you take money for local work covers who can actually tell you — an insurer, a local authority, a trade body — instead of guessing. Setting a number for capped, single-storey height work is its own question, and pricing local service work has it.

Ladders you do not put up

Refuse anything two stories or higher, full stop, however good the offer sounds.

Refuse where the ground will not take a ladder: sloping, soft, gravel over nothing, a flowerbed, a fragile conservatory roof, decking that flexes. Refuse where the only setup point is over a basement drop or a flight of stairs.

Refuse in wind, ice, rain that has just stopped, or fading light. Wet moss on a gutter edge is slick, and the ladder is metal.

Refuse anywhere near an overhead cable coming into the house. Refuse if there is a nest. Refuse if the customer wants you to step off the ladder onto the roof, whatever they say about how they do it themselves.

Refuse if you are on your own that day.

If saying no to a paying customer is the part you find hard, turning down a local job is worth reading before you need it rather than after. Do not let somebody talk you up one more rung than you planned.