Does a double have one set of gutters or two?
One set, under one roof, carrying water from both units. The count is still double, though: two front porch gutters, two rear runs and two full downspout systems, which is the count the cost page prices. Gutter cleaning in Lakewood on a double covers all of it in one visit, since a half-cleaned system still overflows.
Say the owner downstairs keeps the porch gutter clear from a stepladder, as plenty of owners do. The porch looks done. The main gutter 28 feet up still holds a season of maple seed, and the next hard rain comes over its lip above both porches at once.
Water from the upstairs roof plane lands in a trough that drains past the downstairs windows, and a plugged downspout on the drive side backs water up for the whole house.
Who cleans the gutters on a rented double, the owner or the tenant?
The lease answers it, so read that first. When the lease says nothing about gutters, the owner ends up arranging the cleaning in practice. The main gutter on a two-and-a-half story double sits about 28 feet up, over a driveway shared with the next house, and that is no place for a tenant with a borrowed ladder.
Some leases do hand exterior upkeep to the tenant, usually in a single-family rental where it means mowing and raking. If a lease you signed or wrote puts the gutters on the tenant, the owner may want to ask their insurer about a tenant on a 32-foot extension ladder. Nothing here is legal advice.
The owner-down, tenant-up double is the common middle case. The owner lives in the house, sees the gutters from the drive, and books the visit for the whole building. What a homeowner ladder can and cannot safely reach on this house is worked through in cleaning the gutters on a Lakewood double yourself.
Which unit sees an overflowing gutter first?
Usually the upstairs one. The main gutter runs just above the upstairs windows, so a full gutter shows up there first as a sheet of water coming past the glass in a hard rain. Downstairs notices later, at the porch: water spilling off the porch gutter onto the steps, or a downspout on the drive that gurgles and backs up.
So the person who sees it is often not the person who books it. A tenant who sees water coming over helps the owner most with three facts:
- which side of the house (street, drive or back)
- which floor’s window it passed
- whether it happens in every rain or only the hard ones
The spot where the water leaves the gutter narrows down the cause, and reading where the water comes over sorts a cleaning from a repair.
Do the tenants need to be home for a gutter cleaning?
No. A gutter cleaning is exterior work, and the crew never needs to come inside either unit. What they need is room on the driveway for the ladder, an unlocked or open back yard gate to reach the rear runs and downspouts, and a clear porch under each porch gutter. Telling the tenants a day or two ahead is a courtesy that makes all of that happen.
The gate is the one that stalls a morning. A padlocked gate with the key on a tenant’s ring at work means the rear runs wait. So does a dog loose in the back yard, which is the tenant’s dog and the tenant’s call. One text from the owner the day before covers both.
If the lease says how much notice the tenants get before work on the property, follow it.
What has to move off the driveway on cleaning day?
The driveway on a double runs between two houses six to eight feet apart, and the ladder for the main gutter stands on it. Anything parked or stored there is under the work.
- Every car on the drive, from both units. One left at the back of the drive behind the ladder is stuck there until the crew comes down.
- The neighbor’s car too, when the drive is shared across the lot line with the house next door. That is the owner’s conversation to have.
- Trash and recycling carts along the side of the house, which sit exactly where the downspouts come down.
- Chairs, plants and anything hanging on both porches, the upper one included. Debris drops onto them when the porch gutters get scooped.
- Bikes and grills in the back, near the rear downspouts.
Cars parked on the street out front can usually stay.
Can two doubles on the same drive book one visit?
Yes, and on a shared drive it often makes sense. When two doubles share one driveway, the ladder for each house’s drive-side gutter stands on the same concrete. Booking both houses for the same day means the drive gets cleared once, and four households move their cars on one morning instead of two.
Each house is still its own job, cleaned and priced house by house, so two owners can book together without splitting a bill. A landlord who owns several doubles on the street gets the same house-by-house write-up the repair and commercial pages describe, one per address.
What does cleaning a double cost in Lakewood?
A two-and-a-half story double, both units and two downspout systems, runs $220 to $325, and porch roof or bay-window gutters add $20 to $40 each. That is one price for the whole house, quoted before anyone comes out. How the owner and the tenants share it, if they do, is between them and the lease.
The full table of what a double costs to clean also prices the first cleaning after a few years with nobody up there, as an add-on. A rental that changed hands recently can be that house.
What should an owner get back after the crew leaves?
What an owner at home would get. Anything loose or leaking found while the ladder was up comes back written down with its own price. Repairs are not part of the cleaning, so nothing gets fixed until the owner decides.