It’s Spring again–time to get out and see what Old Man Winter has been up to on the outside of your home. One place you’ll certainly want to check is your gutters. Winter winds, falling debris and the snow and ice of colder climates may have left their mark there.
Even from the ground, you should be able to tell if the weight of snow and ice has bent your gutters or if flying debris and tree limbs have dented them. You should also be able to learn just by looking at the wall of your home whether water has been overflowing your gutters and discoloring the wall or foundation or splashing into the dirt areas around your home. Barring that, you can risk your safety climbing a ladder to get a closer look. Or you can call a professional who will check your gutters for you.
In any case, if you do spot clogged, bent or loose gutters or water-stained walls, here’s what you might face in the future:
If your gutters are old, loose or clogged up, rainwater can flow back underneath the soffit (the underside of the overhang of a house) or into the flush fascia (trim on a house above the soffit but below the roofline that caps the roof rafters ends) behind them. Water trapped between the soffit and wood above it will rot the wood. Water can also rot fascia, expose interior parts of the house and work its way into ceilings and behind walls, doorways and windows.
If gutters are clogged, water will overflow them, splashing against the foundations and walls of your home. The resulting dampness can result in mildew and mold on the walls, erosion of a cement foundation and water damage in a cellar and possible damage to landscaping.
If you have a stucco or Drivit wall, a finish system that resembles stucco, rainwater overflowing a clogged gutter may eventually discolor that section of the wall. Gutter installers tell us you might have a costly problem. They say the precise color of a stucco or Drivit wall is determined by a number of factors when it is applied. It’s almost impossible to replace a small section of a wall with new material of the exact same color, they report, noting that, usually, the entire wall must be recoated to gain a consistent color–at considerable expense.
If water gets into the soffit or rots the fascia, they may have to be replaced, reportedly costing two or three times what it would have cost to simply replace the old gutters.
You might also want to investigate options to the conventional k-style five or six-inch gutters generally installed by contractors. For example, if you habitually have a problem with leaves and debris, you may wish to investigate installing gutters with a screen or a hooded leaf protection system that can deflect leaves and debris away from the house while drawing water down into the gutter.