Apartment and condominium communities, homeowner associations, Perimeter Center office and medical owners, retail centers and public facilities inside the Sandy Springs city limits. Rare Earth Ltd works from Atlanta and covers Sandy Springs as a service area.
The buyer on this page is an organization carrying a maintenance budget, never a household. In Sandy Springs that means apartment and condominium communities along the Roswell Road spine and the river corridor, homeowner and condominium associations plus the third party firms that administer them, Perimeter Center office towers and medical office buildings, neighborhood retail centers, houses of worship, private schools, and City and State facilities. Portfolio work pays on three counts: a single crew mobilization reaches a dozen roofs instead of one, the interval repeats against a line item the operating budget already carries, and the person approving the invoice wants a written record more than a reassuring conversation.
Households are not served on this line at all. Pressure washing is the sole exterior service Rare Earth Ltd sells to an individual homeowner, so anyone wanting a trough cleared on a house off Mount Vernon Road should book a residential outfit. Saying so at the top of the page costs both sides less than saying it on a call.
Rare Earth Ltd operates under the name Thrare Contracting. The credentials a Sandy Springs or Fulton procurement officer can confirm without contacting the company: DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, small disadvantaged business status, E-Verify participation, and a SAM registration under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 with CAGE 9JAV8. Three designations are deliberately missing from that list. There is no HUBZone designation, no 8(a) admission and no SOC 2 attestation here, and no bid or proposal from this company will imply otherwise.
The City's own, and the distinction decides which document a vendor scope has to satisfy. Sandy Springs incorporated in 2005, after 94 percent of residents voted in favor that June, ending an arrangement under which the area depended on Fulton County government for local services (City of Sandy Springs, City History, read 2026-09-02). The City now runs its own regulated storm sewer system. It renewed coverage under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Phase II Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System permit on December 6, 2017, as the Georgia Water Quality Control Act and the federal Clean Water Act require (City of Sandy Springs, Stormwater Management Plan (SWMP-MS4), read 2026-09-02).
Fulton County describes the split in its own words. The County program exists "to manage the surface water resources of unincorporated Fulton County," and "For all other areas of the County, stormwater management is the responsibility of the individual cities." The County goes one step further and directs anyone reporting a discharge inside a city to contact that city rather than the County (Fulton County, Stormwater Services (Fulton Industrial District), read 2026-09-02). A County stormwater document is therefore the wrong authority for a building on Hammond Drive or Glenridge Drive, however tidy it looks filed in a vendor's safety binder.
The Sandy Springs Development Code states its reach at Sec. 1.1.7.A, Territorial Application: "This Development Code applies to all land, uses, buildings and structures within the corporate boundaries of the City." (Sandy Springs Development Code, Article 1, read on Municode 2026-09-02.) Division 9.8 of that code, Illicit Discharge and Connection, is the part an exterior cleaning contractor has to work inside.
Sec. 9.8.3.A carries the prohibition itself: "No person shall throw, drain, or otherwise discharge, cause, or allow others under his control to throw, drain, or otherwise discharge into the City separate storm sewer system any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants other than stormwater." The clause worth a manager's attention is "allow others under his control." The sentence reaches the property, not only the crew the property hired.
The exemption list beneath it is short, and reading it is worth five minutes before assuming cover exists. It exempts water line flushing by a government agency, other potable sources, landscape irrigation and lawn watering, diverted stream flows, rising groundwater, uncontaminated pumped groundwater, groundwater infiltration to storm drains, foundation and footing drains, crawl space pumps, air conditioning condensation, springs, natural riparian habitat and wetland flows, and "any other water source not containing pollutants," along with firefighting flows and anything the Director specifies in writing. Rinse coming off a gutter face carries silt, decayed organic matter and whatever was applied to the fascia. It is not a water source free of pollutants, and an apartment community does not hold an individual NPDES permit for washing a building.
Three duties inside Division 9.8 attach to the property rather than to the contractor, and most managers have never been walked through them. Sec. 9.8.6.B requires the responsible person to notify the enforcement agency in person, by phone or by facsimile no later than 24 hours after a known or suspected release, with written confirmation mailed to the Department inside three business days. Where the material comes from a commercial or industrial establishment, that owner or operator also keeps an on site written record of the discharge and of the actions taken against recurrence, retained for at least three years. Sec. 9.8.2.D converts unpaid abatement costs into a special assessment and a lien on the property. Sec. 9.8.2.E permits a penalty of up to $1,000.00 for each day a violation stays unremedied after the notice of violation is received (Sandy Springs Development Code, Article 9, Division 9.8, read on Municode 2026-09-02).
None of that changes the field instruction. Bag the solids, contain the rinse, keep both out of the catch basin. What the city line changes is who issues the notice of violation, what an unpaid cost attaches itself to, and whose 24 hour clock starts running.
Background reading: why a federal rule sets the floor while a city sets the enforcement.
Sandy Springs regulates the hours, and its rule is drafted broadly enough to catch a gutter crew without ever naming one. The City's published noise ordinance notice, the one properties are told to post on site, fixes permitted hours of construction activity at 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, with no work allowed on Sundays or on the listed legal holidays: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day as observed by the city (City of Sandy Springs, Noise Ordinance site notice, read 2026-09-02).
The scope note printed on that same notice is what decides whether a gutter visit falls inside the rule. It covers "any outdoor or indoor loud noise that is produced by construction activities of any type," then reaches further to include "the operation of any mechanized or manual equipment associated with commercial landscaping, lawn maintenance, tree pruning/removal and earth grading." A backpack blower clearing a roof plane and a pressure feed flushing a leader both sit comfortably inside that description.
The City's Code Enforcement Division publishes the same window and names the only way around it: "Construction and commercial landscaping activities are permitted only during the following hours," Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays and holidays none, and "Anyone seeking to work outside of these permitted hours must first obtain a variance from the Community Development Department" (City of Sandy Springs, Common Violations, read 2026-09-02).
Two scheduling consequences follow, and both belong in the proposal rather than in a surprise on the morning of the visit. A Perimeter Center office or medical building that wants roof work finished before tenants arrive cannot simply agree a 6:00 a.m. start with its vendor. That start needs a variance obtained in advance from the City by the property, not improvised by the contractor at the gate. And a Saturday visit at an occupied community has a nine hour window rather than a full working day, which caps how many buildings can be honestly closed out and photographed before the crew has to stop. A schedule built on a full Saturday is a schedule that slips.
Sandy Springs carries a long river frontage, and the Development Code treats the ground near it as its own regulatory zone. Under Sec. 9.3.3.A.1 a Tree Removal Permit is required when a Protected Tree, Setback Tree, Boundary Tree or Landmark Tree is removed, when a tree in a required stream buffer is removed, and for "Any tree located within 2,000 feet of the banks of the Chattahoochee River." The same trigger fires where 25 percent or more of a critical root zone is disturbed by the owner, the owner's agent or its employees (Sandy Springs Development Code, Article 9, Division 9.3, read on Municode 2026-09-02).
Those categories are defined by trunk diameter at breast height, and the thresholds sit low enough that a mature apartment or office landscape is full of them. A Protected Tree is 18 inches DBH or larger and in fair or better condition. A Setback Tree is 18 inches or larger standing in a required setback. A Landmark Tree is a hardwood at 27 inches or more, a pine at 30 inches or more, or a dogwood or redbud at 10 inches or more in fair or better condition. A Boundary Tree is a tree 10 inches or larger on an adjacent parcel whose canopy or critical root zone extends onto the permitting property. Sec. 9.3.2.A separately requires every site in the City to hold a minimum tree canopy cover set by land use and measured as a percentage of the whole lot or subdivision.
Set that Boundary Tree definition beside a site plan and a scheduling rule falls out of it. The canopy filling a Sandy Springs commercial gutter is frequently rooted on somebody else's parcel, because the code itself contemplates a 10 inch tree next door whose crown reaches across the line. The property collecting the litter is not the property that could authorize cutting the tree, and a permit would be needed regardless. In Sandy Springs, debris volume is a cleaning problem by operation of law rather than a pruning problem.
Two exceptions exist and neither rescues a gutter. Sec. 9.3.3.B waives the permit for normal tree maintenance, meaning deadwood and limbs that endanger life or property, provided the tree is not limbed, topped or pruned into decline, and for removal of a hazardous tree, which the code defines as dead or structurally defective where failure could cause personal injury or property damage, with immediate notice to the City Arborist and documentation afterward. Neither exception covers removing a healthy oak because its litter keeps closing a downspout inlet.
The river constrains the ground work too. Division 9.2 protects state waters through a 50 foot vegetative buffer and a 75 foot impervious surface setback on Sandy Springs property containing a state waters buffer, and the code is explicit that these requirements sit on top of, and do not replace, the buffer and setback rules imposed under state law (Sandy Springs Development Code, Article 9, Division 9.2, read on Municode 2026-09-02). For a riverside or creekside community that answers the practical question of where rinse water may be released. It goes onto vegetated ground doing the filtration the code already assumes, not into the buffer as a convenient disposal area and not into a structure discharging toward it.
Most Sandy Springs commercial and multifamily sites route roof water into an on site stormwater facility before anything leaves the parcel, and the code puts the upkeep of that facility on the owner in unusually plain language. Sec. 9.6.14.A.1 provides that the absence of an inspection and maintenance agreement "will not relieve the owner or responsible party from performing proper maintenance and inspection of the stormwater management facility," and that on failure "the City may correct the violation at the owner's expense." Sec. 9.6.14.A.5 requires an annual inspection performed and attested by a professional engineer and reported to the City, listing any deficiency in operation or maintenance together with the remedy proposed and a timetable, plus a follow up inspection where the deficiencies are substantial.
Sec. 9.6.15 sets out what happens after that. Following 30 days of written notice, or 24 hours where the condition is an immediate danger to public health or safety, the Department may perform the work itself, assess the owner for the cost of repair as a lien on the property, and place that lien on the ad valorem tax bill to be collected in the ordinary manner for taxes (Sandy Springs Development Code, Article 9, Division 9.6, read on Municode 2026-09-02).
Gutter maintenance sits upstream of every one of those steps. Leaf litter, seed material and shingle granules that escape a trough do not disappear. They arrive in the structure a professional engineer has to sign off on once a year. A community cleaning its gutters on a real interval is managing the sediment load reaching the one asset on the site that carries a tax lien behind it.
The design rainfall is a metro figure rather than a city one. NOAA puts the twelve 1991 to 2020 monthly precipitation normals for Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at a summed 50.43 inches, against the separately published annual normal of 49.71 inches for the same station (NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Monthly Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00013874, read 2026-08-31). A square foot of roof sheds 0.623 gallons for every inch that lands on it, so a normal year pushes roughly 31.4 gallons across each square foot of roof plane.
Apply that to real Sandy Springs building stock and the figure stops being abstract. A Perimeter office building with a 25,000 square foot footprint sends about 785,000 gallons a year through its scuppers, roof drains and internal leaders. A garden apartment community of fourteen buildings at 6,500 square feet of roof apiece sends roughly 2.9 million gallons through gutters whose annual cleaning costs a small fraction of replacing one of those roofs.
Volume alone is not where the failure happens. Cross section and timing are. Georgia's adopted plumbing code is the 2024 International Plumbing Code with Georgia amendments, which the Department of Community Affairs made a mandatory state minimum code effective January 1, 2026 (Georgia Department of Community Affairs, New Codes January 2026, read 2026-09-02). A trough and leader sized under that code are sized as an open cross section against a design storm. Packed pine straw, sweetgum balls and granule sludge occupy part of that section, and a summer thunderstorm does not scale itself down to whatever is left. A partly restricted run handles an ordinary week and gives way in the forty minutes that count.
The scope follows the water to the point where it leaves the parcel, which is a good deal further than the trough visible from the parking deck.
Itemized: everything a commercial gutter cleaning covers.
Step detail: working an occupied property building by building.
Five inputs, named openly so a manager holding two proposals can see which one quietly left an input out: linear feet of gutter, story count, the method used to reach each roof plane, the debris load observed on the walk, and how many visits a year the property is buying. Repair is not cleaning and is priced apart from it.
Boundary: what the cleaning price includes and what it excludes.
Two environments share one city and they do not share a calendar. Perimeter Center is mid rise and high rise office, medical office and structured parking, where the drainage that matters is scuppers, roof drains and internal leaders on low slope membrane. A restricted outlet up there does not overflow a walkway, it ponds water on the membrane, and ponded water finds a seam long before anyone on the floor below sees a ceiling stain. Those roofs get cleared on an interval driven as much by the membrane warranty as by the season.
West of Roswell Road and down toward the river the stock turns over to garden apartments, townhome and condominium associations, and older low rise office parks under closed canopy. Here the trough is a hung gutter on fascia, the load is leaf and seed litter, and the characteristic failure is a saturated run pulling its own fasteners. Where a gutter hangs on spikes driven through the face into the fascia board, wet debris loads the run, the spike works back out of the wood, and the gutter tips away from the wall. Water then tracks down the cladding behind the gutter, where nothing shows until paint fails or a soffit softens. Loose spikes and pulled hangers are photographed during the walk and written to the punch list, because rehanging a run is repair and is quoted as repair.
Shade and humidity change the material rather than the volume. Debris sitting wet in a shaded trough compacts into a mat instead of staying loose, which is why hand removal into bags beats blowing a run out, and why a leader inlet can be sealed by material that never looked like a blockage from the ground. It is also why the condition report matters more than the contract: two buildings on one Sandy Springs property can honestly need different intervals, and only the photographs prove which.
Citations in full: the OSHA rules governing work at height on a gutter.
The Sandy Springs question is less which rule exists than how a specific building gets reached. Perimeter Center properties are tall enough that roof access, anchor points and lift positioning inside an active parking deck decide the method before anyone opens a rule book, and the deck's own load rating may cap what is allowed to stand on it. A four story walk up off Hammond Drive with mature planting tight to the foundation is a different problem again, and a wooded rear elevation with no level ground is a third. Ask a bidder to state the access method building by building on your property rather than to confirm in the abstract that it owns harnesses.
Coverage map: the rest of the metro service area.
No. This service is sold only to apartment and condominium communities, homeowner and condominium associations and their management firms, commercial and medical office owners, retail centers, and government and institutional facilities. Pressure washing is the one exterior service Rare Earth Ltd offers an individual homeowner.
The City of Sandy Springs Development Code. Sec. 1.1.7.A states that the Development Code "applies to all land, uses, buildings and structures within the corporate boundaries of the City," and the City holds its own NPDES Phase II MS4 permit coverage, renewed December 6, 2017. Fulton County states that its own stormwater program covers unincorporated Fulton County and that "For all other areas of the County, stormwater management is the responsibility of the individual cities," so a County document is the wrong citation for a Sandy Springs address.
Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and no permitted hours on Sundays or listed legal holidays. The City applies those hours to construction activity and to equipment associated with commercial landscaping, lawn maintenance and tree work. Anything outside that window requires a variance obtained in advance from the Community Development Department.
Rarely without a permit. A Tree Removal Permit is required for any Protected, Setback, Boundary or Landmark Tree, for any tree in a required stream buffer, and for any tree within 2,000 feet of the banks of the Chattahoochee River. The permit exceptions cover normal maintenance and genuinely hazardous trees, not a healthy tree that drops litter, so debris load in Sandy Springs is managed on a cleaning schedule.
It stays on the property and is released across vegetated ground so soil does the filtering. Sec. 9.8.3.A prohibits discharging pollutants or waters containing pollutants into the City separate storm sewer system, and its exemption list does not cover a contractor rinsing a building. The phrase "allow others under his control" puts the property inside the sentence next to its vendor.
Sec. 9.8.6.B requires notice to the enforcement agency within 24 hours, written confirmation to the Department within three business days, and, from a commercial establishment, an on site written record of the discharge and the corrective steps retained at least three years. Sec. 9.8.2.D makes unpaid abatement costs a lien on the property, and Sec. 9.8.2.E allows up to $1,000.00 per day while a violation remains unremedied.
Two visits a year is the starting cycle, timed to the autumn hardwood drop and to spring seed and pollen. Sites under closed canopy, sites near the river corridor, and sites whose litter comes from a neighboring parcel usually run three or four. Because the tree ordinance limits removal, the interval is the lever a Sandy Springs property actually controls.
A condition report for each building with before and after photographs, downspout flow test results per building, a note on any buried leader that failed to clear, and a punch list of findings outside the cleaning scope such as pulled hangers, loose spikes, damaged fascia or a failed buried connection. That report is what moves a property between visit tiers at renewal.
No. Work runs building by building, so the only area out of service at any moment is the coned drop zone beside the building being cleaned. That zone is worked, cleared and released before the crew repositions, which leaves the parking count intact across the visit.
On five inputs: linear feet of gutter, number of stories, the roof access method, the debris load found on the walk, and visits per year. Gutter repair, fascia and soffit carpentry, roof repair, buried drain line excavation and tree work sit outside the cleaning price and are quoted separately.
Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, meets the small disadvantaged business definition, runs E-Verify, and is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8. It holds no HUBZone designation, no 8(a) admission and no SOC 2 attestation, and does not represent otherwise.
Send the building count and either the linear footage of gutter or a site plan, and say whether the property needs work outside the City's permitted hours. Rare Earth Ltd operates out of Atlanta and serves Sandy Springs and North Fulton County.