Gutters

A gutter is a drainage system, not a trim detail

Most of what gets called a roof leak in this market is a water-management problem at the edge of the roof. The gutter, the fascia it hangs on, the soffit behind it and the drip edge above it are one assembly, and they fail as one.

The work

• 01Gutter replacementSeamless K-style and half-round, sized to the roof area and the rain this coast gets rather than to whatever was there before.
• 02Gutter guardsWhat the four types actually do under live oaks and pines, and what none of them do.
• 03Gutter repairRe-hanging, re-pitching, seam and outlet repairs, and when a repair is the wrong answer.
• 04Soffit and fasciaThe board the gutter hangs on and the vented panel that feeds the attic. Both fail from the same water.

The four ways a gutter fails in this climate

It is undersized for the rain

A 5-inch K-style gutter handles a modest simple roof in modest rain. A large plane, a steep pitch or a valley discharging into one length overwhelms it in a Gulf Coast downpour, and the water goes over the front lip. That is not a leak, it is a capacity failure, and no amount of sealant fixes it.

It is hung on rotten wood

Fascia rots from water curling back behind the gutter, and humidity and wood-destroying insects finish the job. Once the board is soft nothing holds: spikes back out, hidden hangers pull through, and the gutter sags and holds standing water where it dips.

It is pitched wrong or not at all

A gutter needs to fall toward the outlet, roughly a sixteenth of an inch for every foot of run. A dead-level gutter holds water, standing water breeds mosquitoes, and the weight of a full trough is what pulls a run away from the fascia.

The outlet is the bottleneck

Downspouts, not gutters, are usually the constriction. One outlet at the far end of a long run backs water up the whole length before it ever drains.

Where the water goes, and why that is the local question

This metro is built on clay that shrinks when it dries and swells when it wets. A slab foundation sitting on that soil is stable while the moisture around it is even, and it is not while one corner of the house is being soaked by a downspout every time it rains and baked dry in between. That is why the most useful thing a gutter system does here is not catching water — it is carrying it far enough from the slab that the soil under the foundation stays roughly as wet as the soil ten feet away.

• Extensions, splash blocks or buried lines that finish well clear of the slab, not at the corner of it.
• Grade that falls away from the house where the downspout discharges, so the water keeps moving.
• Buried drain lines that actually flow. Many do not, and nobody finds out until the gutters are blamed for the overflow that a blocked underground line is causing.
• Even treatment all the way round. Soaking one elevation and not the others is worse for a slab than soaking none of them.

Sizing, in the terms that are actually true

Gutter capacity is a function of the roof area draining into it, the pitch of that roof, and the rainfall intensity the area has to cope with. Pitch matters because a steep roof throws water into the gutter faster than a shallow one, so the same square footage needs more capacity. Rainfall intensity is the part most sizing conversations skip, and on this coast it is the part that decides the answer.

What wind does to a gutter

This metro records damaging wind more often than anything else, and tropical systems add a category of their own. Gutters take it in two ways. The first is direct uplift on the front lip, which is why hanger spacing matters: hangers every two feet hold a run that hangers every three feet will not, and the difference only shows up in a gust. The second is the gutter apron. Without a metal apron or drip edge lapping into the trough, wind-driven rain runs behind the gutter and soaks the fascia, and a soft fascia gives up the fasteners.

Both are edge details, which is the same lesson the storm record teaches about the roof itself.

The tree problem

The older neighborhoods here — the Heights, Bellaire, Meyerland, West University, Memorial — sit under live oaks that shed leaves and tassels in spring rather than in fall, and much of Montgomery County and The Woodlands sits under pines that shed needles year-round. Neither behaves like the deciduous canopy gutter guards are marketed against. Live oak leaves are small and stiff, oak tassels and pine needles thread straight through a screen and mat on a micro-mesh, and a guard that stops leaves does not stop shingle grit.