Patterson Gutter Replacement & Gutter Guard Installation

Standing water, moss and what grows in a gutter

A gutter that drains properly is dry between rains, and very little grows in a dry trough. A gutter that has lost pitch holds water permanently, and that changes it into a different environment altogether. Organic debris that would otherwise wash through instead sits and breaks down into a layer of sediment. Moss establishes in that layer, and on the north side of a house where it stays shaded it can build up surprisingly thick. Seedlings follow, and a small tree growing out of a gutter is common enough to be a running joke among contractors, though what it actually indicates is a run that has not drained in years. The weight is the real issue. Saturated sediment is heavy, it pulls the run further out of pitch, and the process accelerates. Clearing it out helps and does not fix it, because the pitch that caused the accumulation is still wrong. This is why a system that fills up again unusually fast after being cleaned should be checked with a level rather than simply cleaned more often. The cause is geometry, not debris.