How high are the gutters on the downhill side of a walkout house?
About 28 to 32 feet above the ground at the eave. Each level adds nine or ten feet, and the grade keeps dropping as you step away from the wall, so a ladder set on that slope has to be longer than the height suggests. Reaching a 30-foot eave takes a 40-foot extension ladder. It weighs 70 pounds or more and takes two people to raise.
Around Lake Lanier this is an ordinary house. The street side shows two stories and a front porch. The lake side shows a basement door, a deck above it and a roofline three levels up, usually with the tallest trees on the lot leaning over it.
How do gutters that high get cleaned?
One of three ways, depending on the roof.
- From the roof, where the pitch is walkable and the shingles are dry. The worker ties off and cleans from above, which is fastest and keeps ladders off the slope.
- From an extension ladder with a standoff that rests on the roof, not on the gutter, and a second person footing it. The ladder moves every eight feet or so, and on a slope each move means leveling the feet again.
- From the deck, for the stretch above it, with the deck boards protected.
Vacuum poles worked from the ground do well up to about two stories. At three, the pole gets long and hard to control, and a matted gutter needs hands.
Why does the tall side cost more than the rest of the house?
Time and people. A run on the lake side can take three times as long as the same length on the street side, with two people on it. Leveling a ladder on a wooded slope is slow, wet ground makes it slower, and a deck or a screened porch under the eave takes away the easy positions.
A fair quote names the tall side on its own line. If yours does not, ask whether that side is included. It is the side most often skipped. The usual range is under what three-level gutter cleaning costs.
Do gutter guards make sense on the lake side?
More than anywhere else on the house. The case for a guard is strongest where a cleaning is slowest and costliest, and on a walkout that is one particular stretch of gutter. Fine mesh on the tall side alone, with open gutters everywhere you can reach, is a sensible split. Most lake lots carry pines and hardwoods together, so the guard needs to be the kind described under gutter guard installation.
Where should the downspouts on that side drain?
Away from the bank. A downspout that drops 30 feet delivers water with some force, and on a slope it will cut a channel through the pine straw and into the clay within a season. The fix is a buried line that carries the water to a flat spot or a rock apron on your side of the Corps of Engineers boundary. Anything that crosses onto Corps property along the shoreline needs their permission first.