Cleaning your own gutters: when it's fine, and when it isn't
Single-storey gutters, a solid ladder, dry level ground and someone footing the base — that job is defensible. Two-storey gutters are not: the fall height turns a small slip into an emergency-department visit. Professional gutter cleaning starts at $180, with most single-storey homes landing between $220 and $430 and two storeys adding around 50%. If your gutters are high, book it out.
The fall is the whole problem
Gutter cleaning is not a hard job. Scoop, bag, flush, move along. What makes it dangerous is where you do it — at the top of a ladder, leaning sideways, hands full of wet leaves. Every part of the task works against ladder safety. You reach, because moving the ladder is tedious. You watch the gutter, not your feet. And the ground under a gutter line is rarely flat — garden beds, paths, sloping lawn. None of it matters until the one moment it does.
The height decides the consequence. A slip off a single-storey ladder is a bad afternoon — a sprain, a bruise, wounded pride. A slip from a two-storey gutter line is a different order of event. We won't dress that up with statistics; you don't need a number to know that falling from six metres onto a paved path ends badly. That asymmetry — same small mistake, very different outcome — is the whole argument of this article.
The single-storey job you can defend
If your gutters are one storey up, cleaning them yourself is defensible. Do it properly. Firm, level ground under both feet of the ladder. Someone footing the base, ideally. Three points of contact on the way up and down. And the rule that saves most people: never reach. If the leaves are past a comfortable arm's length, climb down and move the ladder. Yes, that means moving it every metre or two. That is the job.
Be honest about your own variables too. Wet tiles, a borrowed ladder, the wrong shoes, a phone in one hand — each one shortens your odds. Pick a dry day, empty your pockets, take your time. And know what you're actually checking at the top: the downpipe openings matter more than the mid-run leaves. A gutter half-full of debris still drains. A blocked downpipe doesn't. Clear the openings, run water through, and watch where it comes out.
Two storeys, and what a professional carries
Two-storey gutters are not a DIY job. Not with your ladder, not with a mate footing it, not on a still day. The working height is too high, the ladder angles get worse as you work along the run, and there is no version of never-reach that survives forty metres of gutter line at that height. This is the point where hiring someone stops being a convenience and becomes the sensible engineering decision.
What a professional carries changes the job. Standoff brackets hold the ladder off the gutter itself, so it bears on the roof structure instead of crushing the thing being cleaned. Every downpipe gets flushed and confirmed running — a visual scoop-out proves nothing about the pipe below it. And you get photos, before and after, so you can see the result without climbing anything. That last part matters more than it sounds. The whole point is that nobody in your household goes up there.
From $180, and your feet stay on the ground
Schmick's gutter cleaning starts at $180. Most single-storey homes land between $220 and $430 depending on gutter length, and two storeys adds around 50% — the access is genuinely harder, so the price says so. Every visit includes the downpipe flush and the photos. If you're having other exterior work done anyway, bundling services onto one visit saves 5-15%, which usually covers the gutters on its own.
So here is the honest split. Single storey, good ladder, dry day, patience — clean them yourself, carefully. Two storeys — don't. Run your address through the instant quote and you'll have a firm, bookable price in about 60 seconds; it holds unless the place is materially different from what you told us. Weigh that number against an afternoon on a ladder you'd rather not be on. For most people it isn't a close call.