Are Gutters Worth It on a Phoenix House?

Are gutters worth it on a Phoenix house?

We sell gutters, so take the “yes” with that in mind and check it against the test below. The case for them in the Valley rests on how the rain arrives rather than how much of it there is. Between June 15 and September 30 a handful of monsoon storms deliver most of the year’s water, and a strong cell can drop an inch on the roof in under an hour. One inch on a 2,000 square foot roof is 1,246 gallons (0.623 gallons per square foot per inch), all of it landing in a strip a foot or two out from the wall.

Where that strip is bare, sloped gravel, the house shrugs it off. Where that strip is something you built, paid for, or walk through, the water is doing damage, and a gutter is the cheapest way to move it.

The honest test

Wait for the next storm, or run a hose along the eave for ten minutes, and then walk the perimeter of the house. At each eave, look at what is directly under the drip line and where the water goes once it lands.

The eave is worth guttering if the drip line lands on:

• A patio slab, cool deck or paver patio, especially one set level or pitched toward the house.
• A paver or flagstone walkway along the side of the house.
• A planter bed with a curb, or any bed that holds water against the stucco.
• A door threshold, a garage apron or a courtyard entry.
• The stem wall itself, with a trench forming in the decomposed granite and a stain band on the stucco above it.
• An inside corner where two roof planes meet in a valley and dump a single heavy stream.

The eave can probably stay bare if the drip line lands on:

• A concrete driveway or apron that clearly falls away from the house.
• Open decomposed granite that slopes to a side yard, with nothing planted in it and nothing built on it.

Most houses in Cave Creek or Scottsdale come out with two or three eaves in the first list and the rest in the second. That is the job: those eaves, with downspouts routed to where the water can leave.

What a gutter actually buys you

Control of where the water lands. That is the whole product. Everything else follows from it.

The bottom of the stucco stays clean. Stucco ends at a weep screed a few inches above grade, and the foot above that is the splash zone. Roof grit and haboob dust ride down with the first inch of rain and dry into a brown band, then a white mineral bloom, then lifted paint. A gutter moves the splash zone to the end of a downspout.

The hardscape stays level. Pavers and patio slabs settle at the edge nearest the house because the bedding sand under them is washed out a storm at a time. Take the sheet flow away and the base stays put. We go through the sequence in why your pavers are sinking near the house.

The doors stay dry. A downspout at the corner of the entry means you can open the front door in a storm without stepping under a waterfall, and the garage threshold stops collecting a puddle.

The perimeter soil stops cycling. The slow one. Soil at the edge of the house that gets soaked every storm and baked between storms swells and shrinks, and on clay it does so more than the soil under the middle of the slab. Keeping the roof water off the perimeter takes most of that cycle out.

The desert plants live. Agaves and cactus in the splash zone rot at the crown; anything else gets buried in silt. A gutter is often the difference between a bed that lasts and one you replant every other spring.

When gutters are not worth it

Three cases where we would say no, and what we would suggest instead.

1. A foam roof with scuppers that already drain away

Flat-roof homes with parapets drain through scuppers in the parapet wall. If those scuppers discharge onto ground that slopes away from the house, or into a downspout that already exists, adding a fascia gutter does nothing. The fix, if there is a problem, is at the scupper: a conductor head and a downspout that carries the discharge past the foundation, or an extension on the one that is there.

2. The drip line lands on a driveway that falls away

A garage-forward house often has its biggest eave over the driveway. If that concrete clearly slopes to the street and there is nothing between the eave and the curb that minds getting wet, a gutter there is spending money to move water that is already leaving. Put the budget on the back patio instead.

3. A reroof or patio cover is coming

A gutter hangs from the fascia below the roof edge. If the roof is about to be torn off and re-underlaid, or a patio cover is going on the back wall, the gutter should go on after that work is finished so the drip edge, bird stops and cover flashing are all done first. Doing the gutter first means taking it down and rehanging it, or worse, working around it. Wait, then do it once.

A partial run is a real answer

Nobody is obliged to gutter the whole house. A run over the back patio with a downspout to the side yard, and a short run over the front entry, is one of the most common jobs we do, and it addresses most of what people actually care about. If the rest of the house is over bare gravel that drains, we will say so.

Seamless gutter versus sectional

The question that usually follows is whether a seamless gutter is worth the extra cost over sectional. Our answer is yes, and here is the reason. Sectional gutters come in ten-foot lengths joined with slip connectors and sealant, and every joint is a place that opens up under summer heat, sags under a load of monsoon water, or drips onto the stucco. A seamless gutter run is formed on site from a single coil to the exact length of the eave, so the only seams are at corners and outlets. Our standard is 6-inch seamless aluminum in four colors, hung on most houses in a single day. The seamless gutter installation page has the details, and what seamless gutters cost in Phoenix covers the per-foot range and what moves it.

If you want the honest test run on your own house, we do free estimates and will tell you which eaves are worth it and which are not.