Gutter problems · Omaha, NE
What your gutters are actually doing
Find what you are seeing, and get a straight answer on what is causing it, whether it is worth fixing, and what it takes to put right. No sales pitch attached.
Overflowing and leaking
- Gutter Dripping When It Is Not Raining A gutter that drips hours after the rain stopped is holding water. That is a different fault from one that leaks during a storm.
- Gutter Leaking at a Corner Corners leak on seamless gutters too. The mitre is the one joint that cannot be formed away, and it takes the most abuse on the run.
- Gutter Leaking at a Seam Every joint in a gutter is a future leak. How many joints you have depends on whether the run was formed on site or bought in lengths.
- Gutters Overflowing But Not Clogged You cleaned them, you checked them, and they still spill. That rules out debris and leaves three real causes.
- Gutters Overflowing in Heavy Rain Water sheeting over the front lip during a downpour usually means one of three things, and only one of them is debris.
- Water Running Behind the Gutter Water getting between the gutter and the house is the most damaging gutter fault there is, because everything it wrecks is hidden.
Sagging and coming loose
- Gutter Hangers, Straps and Spikes Everything holding your gutter up is a handful of fasteners in a wooden board. How they were fitted decides how long the run lasts.
- Gutter Pulling Away From the House A gutter separating from the roofline is usually a fascia problem wearing a gutter costume. What is behind it matters more than the gap you can see.
- Sagging Gutter: What Is Actually Failing A dip in the middle of a run is a load problem. Working out what put the load there decides whether it is a fix or a replacement.
Downspouts and drainage
- Basement Water Coming From Your Gutters Before you price waterproofing, check where your roof water lands. A surprising share of wet basements start at the roof edge.
- Burying Downspouts Underground The tidiest way to move roof water away from a house, and the one with a failure mode you cannot see coming.
- Clogged Downspout The trough can look perfectly clean from a ladder while the downspout below it is packed solid. That is the blockage most people miss.
- Downspout Extensions: What They Fix The cheapest meaningful improvement you can make to a drainage setup, and the one most likely to be sitting detached in your garage.
- Underground Downspout Drain Is Clogged When a downspout feeds a buried pipe and that pipe blocks, the water has to go somewhere. Usually that somewhere is against your foundation.
- Where Your Downspouts Should Drain Catching the water is half the job. Putting it down somewhere sensible is the half that decides whether your foundation stays dry.
Winter
- Ice and Icicles in Your Gutters Icicles look like a winter postcard. What they actually tell you is that your gutter is holding water it should have drained in October.
- Ice Dams and Your Gutters Ice dams are an attic problem that shows up at the gutter line. Anyone selling you a gutter product to stop them is selling you the wrong thing.
Cleaning and timing
- How Often Gutters Actually Need Cleaning Twice a year is the standard answer. It is also wrong for a lot of houses, in both directions.
- How Often to Clean Guarded Gutters Guards do not end cleaning. They change it from a chore you do two or three times a year into one you do about once.
- What a Gutter Cleaning Actually Includes The difference between a real cleaning and a quick scoop is whether anyone checked that water runs all the way through.
Parts and materials
- Aluminum vs Steel Gutters The two common choices behave differently in a Nebraska winter, and the cheaper one is not always the cheaper one.
- Do Gutter Guards Go Under Your Shingles? Some do, some fasten to the gutter instead. On an older roof that difference decides whether installing a guard risks your shingles and your roof warranty.
- Does Your House Actually Need Gutters? Not every house does, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. But the reason most people think they can skip them is wrong.
- Drip Edge vs Gutter Apron Two pieces of bent metal that look similar, do related jobs, and are constantly confused. The difference decides whether water gets behind your gutter.
- Half Round vs K-Style Gutters One is the shape on nearly every house in the metro. The other is what you fit when the architecture asks for it and the budget allows.
- Rotted Fascia Behind the Gutter The board your gutter hangs on is usually the first casualty of a gutter fault, and the damage is well advanced before anything looks wrong.
Not sure which one you have?
Describe what you are seeing and we will tell you straight whether it is a quick fix or a bigger job. Free estimate, $250 minimum on any job. Serving Omaha and the surrounding metro.