Landscaping & Gutter Cleaning
This is the least glamorous service we offer and the one with the best return on money spent. Nearly every expensive exterior repair we get called for — rotted siding, cracked stucco, a failing retaining wall, water in a crawl space — traces back to water that was not directed away from the building.
Gutters and grading are how you direct it. Both are maintenance, both are cheap, and both are invisible right up until they are not.
What a clogged gutter actually costs
A gutter full of leaves stops being a gutter and becomes a trough. Water goes over the edge in a sheet, and it lands exactly where you least want it: against the foundation, down the face of the wall, behind the siding.
What follows, roughly in order:
- Fascia and trim rot — the board the gutter is fastened to stays wet all winter
- Staining and paint failure down the wall below the overflow point
- Saturated soil at the foundation, which on Bay Area clay means swelling and movement
- Water in crawl spaces and under slabs
- Gutters pulling loose under the weight — wet debris is far heavier than people expect
The repair costs multiples of the cleaning. Every year.
Timing: before the rain, not during it
The Bay Area has a genuinely seasonal climate, which makes this easy to schedule. Gutters should be clear before the first serious storms, after the trees have dropped.
Early fall is the useful window. Waiting until the rain starts means both that the damage has already begun and that everyone else is calling at the same time.
If you have significant tree cover, once a year is not enough — a second clearing partway through the wet season is the difference between a working system and one that backs up in January.
What the service includes
- Clearing gutters and downspouts of leaves, needles and debris
- Checking that downspouts actually discharge away from the foundation, not against it
- Flushing to confirm water runs the whole length rather than pooling in a sagging section
- Flagging what we find — loose fasteners, separated joints, rusted sections, soft fascia — so a small fix stays small
- Clearing roof valleys and flat areas where debris collects
Yard and outdoor upkeep
Alongside the gutters, the outdoor work that keeps a property in shape:
- General yard maintenance and cleanup
- Trimming back growth touching the house — vegetation against a wall holds moisture there and keeps it from drying
- Clearing overgrowth away from fences, walls and pathways
- Debris and green waste removal
- Post-storm cleanup
The one worth singling out is vegetation touching the building. Plants against siding or stucco keep that surface permanently damp and feed the exact failure mode both materials are vulnerable to. Pulling growth back off the wall is one of the cheapest preventive things you can do to a house.
One visit or an ongoing arrangement
Book it as a single visit when you need it, or as a recurring arrangement so it happens on schedule without you having to remember it. Rental and commercial property owners tend to prefer the second — it is the kind of maintenance that only gets noticed when it has been skipped.
What it looks like while we are there
Ladder work around the roofline, and bagged debris hauled away rather than left in a pile. It is a short visit for most houses — often a few hours — and it does not require anyone to be home as long as we have access to the perimeter and to a water source for flushing.
Across the Bay Area
We clean gutters and maintain yards in San Rafael, Tiburon, Mill Valley and across Marin, in San Francisco, and out through Berkeley, Orinda, Walnut Creek and Vallejo.
If you are not sure whether yours need doing, look at the ground under the gutter line after a rain: a trench or a splash pattern in the soil means water is coming over the edge rather than through the downspout. Call before the season starts — it is the cheapest call on this list.