Two-Family Home — West Side

A shared-downspout duplex on Buffalo’s West Side hadn’t been cleaned in over two years by the time we got the call — both units’ gutters were overflowing onto the shared driveway, and the tenant on the ground floor had started noticing water intrusion near a basement window.

The Problem

Two years of leaf litter and roofing grit had packed solid in both runs, and the shared downspout connecting the two units’ systems was fully blocked at the base — meaning water from both roofs had nowhere to drain except back out over the gutter edge. Overflow was pooling directly against the foundation on the driveway side, exactly where the basement window sat.

What We Did

We cleared both units’ gutter runs by hand, then flushed the shared downspout from the top down to break up the compacted blockage at the base rather than just clearing the visible gutter trough. Since this was a two-family property, we also flagged it as a good candidate for a standing recurring schedule rather than a one-time fix — a shared downspout system backs up twice as fast as a single-family home’s, since it’s carrying runoff from two roofs.

The Result

Both units drained freely again the same day, and the driveway pooling stopped immediately. The landlord moved the property onto a recurring twice-yearly plan afterward, so the shared downspout gets checked before it can back up again. For other multi-unit or rental owners managing this same shared-system risk, our rental and commercial gutter cleaning page covers how we structure recurring service across multiple units or properties.

See more completed jobs in our case studies, or call (716) 415-7160 to get a shared or multi-unit property on a schedule before it becomes a driveway-flooding problem.