Residential gutter cleaning in Marietta, GA

Cobb County's seat covers a lot of ground, and the debris changes from one ZIP to the next. Around Marietta Square and the older streets of 30060 and 30064, the houses are mostly mid-century ranches and brick two-stories, and the trees around them are the original ones: white oaks, water oaks, and tulip poplars that have had decades to spread over the roofline. Poplar leaves are large and fold flat against the gutter bottom, so they hold water and rot in place rather than drying and blowing out. Out east in 30062 and 30068, the subdivisions along Johnson Ferry Road, Roswell Road, and Lower Roswell Road were cut into pine and hardwood forest, and the lots were left wooded on purpose. Indian Hills, built around its 27-hole golf course on rolling, wooded lots, is a good example: tall loblolly pines dropping needles most of the year, with oaks and hickories adding a heavy fall load on top. Down toward Paper Mill Road and the Sope Creek trails of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, the canopy is thicker still and the lots stay shaded and damp. On the west side, the streets that back up to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park get the same hardwood leaf drop plus wind-blown twigs from the park. Pine straw is the one constant across all of it. It mats, it slides into the downspout, and it does not break down.

The most common call we get from Marietta is not about the gutter at all. It is about a downspout that has gone quiet while the gutter above it pours over the edge. Pine needles are the usual cause. They wash down the drop outlet a few at a time, catch in the first elbow, and build a plug that water cannot push through. Every cleaning we do includes the first two downspouts. We check each one from the top with a hose, and if the flow is slow we break the plug loose with a snake or, when that fails, pull the elbow apart and clear it by hand. Homes with more than two downspouts pay $25 for each additional one we have to unclog, which on a typical East Cobb two-story with four or five drops still comes to less than a second trip. While we are at the bottom we look at where the water actually goes. A lot of Marietta downspouts dump straight onto a splash block that has shifted, or into an underground drain line that has been crushed or silted up. If the underground line is blocked, we tell you so you can decide whether to have it dug out or simply run a surface extension away from the house.

Marietta has two clear cleaning windows and one that depends on your trees. The first is late March into April, once the pine pollen has stopped coating everything yellow and before the spring thunderstorms start testing the system. The second is late November into early December, after the oaks and poplars have finished and the sweet gums have dropped most of their balls. Homes under heavy pine, which describes much of East Cobb and the Sope Creek side, benefit from a mid-summer visit as well, because needles do not wait for autumn. If a storm has just come through and your gutters are spilling over, we offer after-storm service from $249 that prioritizes getting water away from the house the same day where we can. For homeowners who would rather not think about it, the bi-annual plan covers the spring and fall cleanings at a discount and puts you on the schedule ahead of the rush. Either way, call before the leaves are a foot deep. A gutter cleaned twice a year is a quick job; one that has gone two years is a heavy-debris job at a higher price.