UBA hand-clears gutters across Sarasota and Manatee Counties as part of full exterior service, with hurricane-season scheduling and a written satisfaction guarantee.
Most homeowners assume gutters are a once-a-year chore. In Sarasota, that timeline does not hold. Florida puts more organic load on a gutter system in six months than most of the country sees in two years, and the consequences show up in places homeowners do not think to check.
The mature live oak canopy across Sarasota and Manatee is one of the things that makes our region beautiful. It is also relentless on gutters. Live oaks drop leaves twice a year, not in a single autumn cycle. Palms shed fronds and seed pods that lodge in downspout openings. Slash pines drop needles that mat together with the algae growth on tile roofs and form a dense plug. Add in oak catkins in spring and pine pollen layers in early summer, and a Sarasota gutter system collects organic matter in every single calendar month.
The same bacterial growth that streaks Florida tile roofs (Gloeocapsa magma) sloughs off the tile and ends up in your gutter trough. When that biological material mixes with leaves and water, it creates a slurry that resembles potting soil within months. We have pulled handfuls of black, soil-like sludge from gutters that the homeowner thought were lightly blocked. That sludge holds moisture against the gutter face and accelerates corrosion on aluminum systems.
A clogged gutter does not just spill water during normal afternoon thunderstorms. It overflows under sustained tropical rain at rates that overwhelm your soffit, fascia, and the top of your stucco walls. During a tropical storm or hurricane, that overflow can drive water back under the roof edge and into the underlayment. The National Weather Service Tampa Bay office tracks rainfall rates that regularly exceed 2 inches per hour during peak season. No gutter handles that flow when half the trough is packed with debris.
Stained soffits. Erosion lines beneath the eaves where mulch has been driven away by overflow. Water marks running down stucco. Tiger striping on the front face of the gutter itself (the dark vertical streaks caused by debris-water running over the lip). By the time these are visible, the gutter has been failing for months. Catching it earlier is cheaper, simpler, and protects the structural elements that nobody wants to repair.
Most exterior cleaning companies offer gutter cleaning as a high-pressure blow-out. We do not. Here is why our process looks the way it does, and what that means for the long-term condition of your gutter system.
Our crews start every gutter job by hand. We climb the ladder, scoop the bulk debris out by hand into a bucket, and remove it from the property. This is the part most lower-cost crews skip because it takes longer. The trade-off they hide is that high-pressure blowing pushes debris into the downspout, where it forms a plug deeper in the system that you cannot see and they do not check. We remove the material first, then flush the trough and downspout to verify flow. We confirm the downspout is clear at the discharge point. If it is not, we keep working until it is.
Once the gutter is cleared, we soft wash the exterior gutter face to remove the tiger striping and algae accumulation that makes a clean gutter look as bad as a clogged one. We also visually inspect the soffit and fascia along the run, document any visible water staining, separated seams, or loose hardware, and report what we find. This is not an upsell pretext. It is information the homeowner needs to make a maintenance decision. If we see something serious, we will tell you. If everything is in good shape, we will tell you that too.
We take before and after photos of every gutter run and downspout. When the job is complete, the crew lead walks the property with you (or sends you the documentation if you are not on-site) and shows you exactly what was cleared, what was flushed, and what condition the system is in. Most homeowners have never actually seen their gutters from the ladder. The walkthrough is often the first time someone explains what is actually up there.
Every bucket of debris leaves with us. We do not leave piles in the yard, we do not stuff debris into a tarp under a bush, and we do not blow material into the landscape beds. This sounds like a small detail until you have hired a crew that left a heap of black sludge next to your driveway and called it done.
Every UBA gutter cleaning starts with hand removal, not a leaf blower. Debris leaves with our crew. Downspouts are flushed and confirmed clear before we call the job done.
The "once-a-year" advice from generic maintenance guides does not match Florida's climate or canopy. Here is the cadence we recommend to our customers, based on what we see across thousands of jobs in Sarasota and Manatee.
Two visits is the baseline most properties need. The first is timed for late spring (May or early June) so the gutters are clear before hurricane season. The second is fall (October or November) after the heaviest oak leaf drop. Most of our long-term customers are on this twice-yearly cadence and the system stays ahead of the debris load.
If your home sits under mature live oaks or slash pines, two visits will not be enough. We have customers in Lakewood Ranch and central Sarasota with dense canopy who schedule quarterly gutter cleaning. The math works out: small jobs done regularly are cheaper and faster than one large job after an overflow event has already caused damage.
When a named storm enters the forecast cone for Sarasota or Manatee, we get same-week requests for gutter clearing. We accommodate these where possible. If you are on our customer list, you get priority on hurricane-week scheduling. If you are a new caller during an active storm watch, we will be honest about our availability. Some weeks we can fit the work in and some weeks we cannot. We will not pretend otherwise.
Gutter cleaning is a service we offer as a standalone job, but most of our customers book it as part of a full exterior visit. The economics, the timing, and the result are all better when it is bundled.
When we soft wash a Florida tile roof, the cleaning process flushes the loose algae, debris, and biological residue downward. Every bit of that material has to land somewhere. On a roof-only visit, most of it ends up in the gutters. On a combined roof and gutter visit, we clean the gutters last to handle whatever moved during the roof wash, which leaves the system completely cleared in a single appointment.
The same crew on a roof and gutter job can soft wash the house exterior, the soffit underside, and any pool cage or lanai screens on the property. The trailer is already on-site, the chemistry is already mixed, and the setup time is shared across the work. For homeowners on a maintenance cadence, the combined visit cuts the per-service cost and reduces the calendar disruption to one appointment instead of three.
The biggest advantage of bundling is the accountability. One UBA crew lead is responsible for the entire visit. If something is missed, if a soffit looks suspect, if a downspout is not draining correctly, the chain of communication is direct. There is no "the gutter guy said the roof guy would handle it" loop. We document the whole property, send a single completion report, and you have a single point of contact for any follow-up.
Gutter cleaning cost is driven by linear footage of gutter run, number of stories, presence of gutter guards or screens, accessibility (some homes are simple two-story walk-around jobs, some involve over-pool ladders or steep grade access), debris load (a home under heavy live oaks is a different job from a home with sparse landscaping), and whether downspouts are clogged at the discharge or just at the trough. We could post a "starting at" number, but it would be wrong for most homes we quote. Instead, we have a quick intake conversation: tell us the address, send a couple of photos if you can, and we give you a real number for your home before we book anything. That number is what you pay. No mid-job surprises.
These are the questions we field most often at the intake call. For service-specific questions about roof washing or HydroLock that come up during a gutter conversation, our roof and HydroLock pages cover those in more depth.
Twice a year is the baseline for most homes in Sarasota or Manatee County. Late spring before hurricane season and fall after the heaviest oak leaf drop. Homes under dense live oak or pine canopy typically need quarterly cleaning. Homes with sparse landscaping and minimal tree cover can sometimes stretch to once a year, though we still recommend a pre-hurricane-season inspection regardless of cadence.
Both. We schedule standalone gutter cleaning jobs and we bundle gutter cleaning with roof soft washing, house washing, or HydroLock applications. Most of our customers ultimately bundle because of the cost and scheduling efficiency, but standalone gutter cleaning is a service we run year-round.
Both. A gutter cleaning that does not verify downspout flow is half a job. We hand-clear the trough, flush the downspout with water, and confirm flow at the discharge point. If a downspout is plugged deeper in the system, we work the plug from the discharge end until water moves freely. We do not consider the job complete until every downspout on the property drains.
Most gutter guards in Sarasota do not perform as advertised against the Florida debris load. Live oak leaves and pine needles are small enough to slip past most micromesh and pile up on top of guard systems, which then need to be cleaned in their own right. We can still clean gutters with guards in place, though the job typically takes longer because the guards have to be lifted or removed in sections. We will tell you honestly whether your current guard system is helping or just adding labor.
Yes. Every gutter cleaning visit includes a visual inspection of the gutter face, soffit, fascia, and seam condition. We document anything we find and send it to you with the completion photos. We are not licensed gutter installers, so we will not quote repair work, but we will tell you what we see and recommend a path forward if anything serious turns up.
We try. When a tropical storm or hurricane enters the forecast cone for our service area, we get a surge of last-minute gutter clearing requests. Existing UBA customers get priority on those slots. New callers during an active storm watch will get the honest answer about whether we can fit the work in that week. We do not overbook. If we say we are coming, we are coming.
Yes. UBA is a licensed contractor in Florida and carries full liability and workers compensation insurance. Insurance certificates are available on request. For homeowners hiring exterior service crews, verifying licensing and insurance through the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation is always a good practice.
Call (941) 320‑6172 or use the form below. Tell us your address, an estimate of how many linear feet of gutter you have, what your tree canopy looks like, and the last time the gutters were cleared. A few photos from the ground (looking up at the eaves) help us scope the job accurately. We will get back to you within one business day with a specific quote and an available service window.