Many tools and appliances for your house need to be the right size to serve their purpose correctly. Gutters and your home’s exterior water removal system is amongst possible issues that can gradually lead to other issues with your yard, erosion, and home. We will discuss how to know if you have undersized gutters and what to do in the event you do. Our business is named Storm Master and our goal is to help your home prepare for storms.

How To Tell

Overflow

The first sign of undersized gutters is water overflow. If your gutters have water pouring over the sides, even after being cleaned out, they might not have enough room to carry all the water flowing off your roof. This isn’t bad one or two times especially during irregular, torrential rainfall, but it can be unwelcome to your lawn and home foundation if it keeps happening.

Do you see water coming out of the downspout and pouring over the sides, or the stains of organic material falling from the gutter? These are signs that you might need bigger gutters to handle the precipitation in your area or the angle of your roof, which is pouring the water into the gutter.

Your gutters might also overflow because they are not tilted correctly. They need to be tilted at just the right angle to keep water flowing down quickly without exceeding their own capacity.

What To Do

Changing the angle of your gutters can help, likely with some professional help just to get it right. Obviously you shouldn’t change the angle of your roof because that is much more difficult and is a terrible value. Let’s talk about your gutters instead.

Consider purchasing larger and wider gutters for the purpose of allowing more water flow. Today’s gutters are made of different materials to allow them to have a wider channel while still offering serious curb appeal. More modern materials include vinyl, aluminum, zinc, steel, or copper, all of which can be shaped to be wide enough to outperform your old undersized gutters, and look good.

Modern box rain gutters can be bent to a custom shape on the spot and offer wide, deep paths for rain to flow through and to your downspout. When sized well, these can keep water off the sides of the foundation of your house and delivered to the right spots. A lack of water pouring over the side also makes the exteriors last longer and less likely to stain.

Seamless half round gutters are also available from Storm Master. These offer an attractive, single shape design that are custom made for your home – we come to your house and make all the proper measurements then bend and cut the gutters are your place to ensure the right size. They look terrific and offer the additional advantage of being much less likely to leak than gutters that are pieced together. Having an undersized gutter that also leaks out the bottom is a recipe for a wet house and lawn, and you don’t want that!

In addition to looking good on the outside, seamless half round gutters in the right size provide the pathway your water needs to flow off your roof and through your gutter system to the right spot in your downspout.

How big do I need?

Let us first say that you should have us at Storm Master help decide how big of gutters you need. We have ready access to the data regarding how much precipitation you receive in the area, your roofs downslope, and other factors that will decide how big of gutters are needed.

We will go on your roof and measure the angles that carry water down, then consider the square footage of your roof. All of these factors determine how much rain and snow your roof will collect to send down.

The next factor is what kind of gutters you want Seamless half round gutters are not as deep as K-Style gutters and need to be made wider than 6 inches to compensate. Gutters do come in 7 to 8 inch sizes though the larger sizes are generally on commercial buildings with a huge roof. These might not look quite right on your home, but based on your current home, we will see what you actually need for proper rain movement.

Actually determining how wide you need without adding excessively large gutters and excess expenses is our expertise at Storm Master , so we don’t recommend you climb on your roof and measure the angle yourself. Let us help!

What else?

Have us at Storm Master come out and take a look. Your gutter size might not be the issue. You could have clogged gutters which are fixable with other products and methods that keep big junk out of the gutter. The problem could as simple as an improper install that sends the water downstream too fast or too slow, and results in a dam. Storm Master would love to help regardless of the issue. Ensuring your home has a nice looking, safe, effective water removal system has been more mission for a long time and we enjoy see the gutters we’ve installed in our own neighborhoods.

Conclusion

Storm Master is ready and willing to help with your gutter needs. No one enjoys seeing water pouring over the side of their gutter, but action probably does need to be taken to prevent causing issues with landscaping or additional erosion to the dirt around your foundation. Our mission to help you figure out the next step to determine if issues are overflowing due to size issues or problems inside your gutter.