Gutters

[Mustang]

It seems that lately we have been inundated by advertisements for Gutters, with Leaf Guard making the biggest pitch.  They must be a very high-profit item.

Which brings me to ask the question - Why do we need gutters at all???

There must be a simple answer,  In the old days when everyone had cisterns they were used as a conduit to transfer water from your roof into your cistern, but few of us still have cisterns..

Do you realize that none of the homes in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan nor in Canada have gutters.   They extend the roof about three feet over the end of the roof, and water falls harmlessly away from your foundations.  Folks in the know tell me that it is a myth that no gutters would endanger your foundations.

Ice is an issue in the UP and Canada, and sheets of ice sliding off of your roof would certainly damage gutters, so perhaps that is a primary reason they don't have them, BUT if the Yoopers and the Canuks can do without them, I suspect that we can too.

Set me straight.

[Irish Cat]

Gutters are necessary in Kentucky due to the high concentration of clay soils.  Clay soil is more susceptible to expansion and contractor due to moisture. This causes differential settlement in foundations, etc.  

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I spent my first couple of years in construction on the residential side. Gutter installation is usually one of the last things to happen on a house. Gutters - and more importantly, downspouts - create a manageable situation for the water coming down and running off the roofs. Rather than the streams of water coming down in a flow from the roof's dripline and hitting the ground from a drop of 12-32 feet (think of a 2-story house with a full walkout basement, where the gutter boards are a full three stories up from the ground), with gutters, the water is directed into a metal downspout, hits an elbow at the bottom of the downspout, and comes out in a flow that is directed parallel to the ground rather than coming down perpendicular and slicing right into the dirt. With a splash block and established grass around the downspout outlet, the water creates virtually no erosion, whereas falling water from a roof edge will cut its way right down through the grass and carry off silt from the soil as it makes its way elsewhere.

When I was building houses, our construction schedule for a house from groundbreaking to close was 58 business days (11-1/2 weeks). Usually I was landscaping about 3 days before closing, and having the gutters and downspouts hung the day before landscaping. The first thing my landscapers had to do every time was run a Bobcat around the house and fill in the "drip trench" that had been cut into the ground around the perimeter of the house by the water streaming down off the roof line. In the fall when it was worst case scenario between the most rain and coolest temperatures mixed with lower amounts of sunshine to dry the ground, that was probably 2 hours worth of work and 4 or 5 scoops of topsoil with the Bobcat. So in otherwords, the runoff from the roof in 11 weeks time had carried 4 to 5 Bobcat scoops worth of water and redeposited it elsewhere. We had to have silt fencing in place around the house specifically to prevent that silt-laden water from making its way into the storm sewers (which flow directly out to the river system), but if the silt fencing hadn't been there, that definitely would have been a bad situation created just from the construction of that one single house.

Silt runoff is one of the two biggest negative impacts on the fresh water fisheries in the United States, with the other of the two biggest impacts being agricultural runoff. Construction accounts for something like 40% of the silt deposits added to the river system in North America. Gutters are part of the system in place to help prevent that kind of runoff.

[Jumper_Dad]

I hit pause and read the fine print on a Leaf Guard commercial. The $99 down and $99 a month payments are based on 132 months financing. You only qualify for the $99 deal if your installation cost over $8,000. That means your new LeafGuard gutters are going to cost over $13,000 paid over 11 years.

[Mustang]

Point well taken on the fact that here in Northern Kentucky our homes are two and three story mini-mansions.  Up north there are many older, smaller homes, and as stated perhaps the soil has a different composition.

Jumper Dad's revelation that Leaf Guard is selling an $8.000 product for $13,000,  makes it understandable why they are the kings of late-night cable TV advertisements.  

As I drove home from the MAC (Mustang Athletic Complex) earlier today, I will bet that about half of those homes in Horizon Hill Subdivision (an older subdivision) would not need gutters.  Are they required by code???

 

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

4 hours ago, Mustang said:

Point well taken on the fact that here in Northern Kentucky our homes are two and three story mini-mansions.  Up north there are many older, smaller homes, and as stated perhaps the soil has a different composition.

Jumper Dad's revelation that Leaf Guard is selling an $8.000 product for $13,000,  makes it understandable why they are the kings of late-night cable TV advertisements.  

As I drove home from the MAC (Mustang Athletic Complex) earlier today, I will bet that about half of those homes in Horizon Hill Subdivision (an older subdivision) would not need gutters.  Are they required by code???

More often than not, no, gutters aren't a building code requirement. But there are laws on the books about storm runoff and SWPP (storm water pollution prevention). I don't know that those laws really ever get enforced anywhere other than on major construction development sites, though.

[rjs4470]

I had my gutters replaced about 6 years ago. All I know is that in the 4 or 5 months my gutters were in bad shape, the runoff of my roof almost destroyed my landscaping in front of my house. The dripping and running water during even a light rainstorm was incredibly annoying. I probably overpaid for my gutters (I used Gutter Magician), but I will say it has been one of the best home maintenance investments I've made in 23 years of owning my home.