Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Seamless Gutters and Your Options

When it comes to the exterior of your home what do you think of first? Landscaping? Painting? Curb appeal. When dealing with curb appeal how do you approach making it pop or stand out and what is needed to maintain it? Well with gutters there are 2 ways you can go. The first route is to go to the local big box hardware store and buy "off the shelf" seamed gutters and accessories, install them yourself and hope that they do the job. The second and by-far the best option is to call All Pro Gutter Service and get a professionally installed gutter system that meets the specific needs of your homes roof and landscape.

 This is a picture of a 5" seamless gutter. It's installed underneath the drip edge flashing and series 3100 hidden hangers are used to support the gutter every 2'. The metallic silver towards the lower right corner is a miter cut. Each miter and endcap is sealed using a Geocel 2320 tri-polymer sealant that is specifically designed to be used with metals under extreme wet conditions.




Above is a picture of an exterior door jamb that has been exposed to the roof run-off water hitting on the patio and deflecting onto the wood. Once the wood absorbs the water and the sun and the wind can't dry it, the wood begins to decay. This is a costly repair versus getting All Pro Gutter Service to install a gutter system which prevents this from occurring.

Over to the right is a picture of an inside miter eith a splash guard. Many people think that the splash guard should be longer in each direction. That isn't true. The splash guard is intended to do just that. It prohibits the water that is raging down a roof valley to splash over the top of a gutter and damage the ground below. It isn't meant to increase the capacity of the gutter in any way. The strip miter is the banding that goes from the front lip of the gutter to the back top edge (it looks like a U). The strip miter is fastened to the 2 pieces of gutter with 6 aluminum pop rivets. All Pro Gutter Service uses aluminum pop rivets because they will not rust out, like the steel zip screws. Also because using 1 metal, Aluminum, there isn't electrolysis between the steel and aluminum.


 Here is an example of directing the water from the upper level gutter to the lower level gutter using a "shotgun" downspout. Having done this we managed to keep the downspouts off the homeowners back patio and run it out to the yard.

This picture shows the downspout tying directly into a ADS flex pipe. The pipe is buried so that you don't have a eye sore in your landscaping. We have moved this water to a swale that is about 50 feet away from this downspout. Needless to say the owners are very pleased with how this turned out and how it functions.

We have installed many other drainage systems using both ADS and PVC (sometimes SDR) to remove water from an area or entire yard to the street.

There is another option to just letting the water run out onto the street. You can install a rain catchment system. Either a simple 55 gal. rain barrel on 1,000+ gallons aquaduct systems below ground with a pump. Check out these sites if you are interested in these systems.


http://www.rainharvestingsystems.com/     http://www.senox.com/contractor-portal-page/60
http://www.allprogutterservice.com



Using All Pro Gutter Service to professionally install your gutters really adds to your homes value, moves roof run-off water to specific locations and gives you the homeowner peace of mind knowing that your investment is protected. Our attention to each and every detail lets you, the homeowner, be involved and know what exactly is being put on your home.