Two kinds of Cave Creek houses
Cave Creek has a split personality, and it shows in the roofs. South of town, Tatum Ranch (Cave Creek mailing address, technically inside Phoenix city limits) started building in 1989 and grew to more than 3,500 homes, most of them 1990s frame-and-stucco production houses with concrete tile roofs. Dove Valley Ranch, with its golf course that opened in 1998, is a similar era and build. These homes came without gutters, and the HOAs in both communities care what the exterior looks like, so color matching matters. North of the Carefree Highway and into the town proper, the housing is custom: territorial and ranch styles on one to five acre lots, some with metal roofs, some with flat roofs and parapets and scuppers, many with a barn or a horse setup. Those jobs are about long eave runs, odd rooflines and getting water to a spot on a big gravel lot where it will not cut a channel through the driveway.
Caliche, washes and where the water goes
Cave Creek is named after the wash that runs through it, and that wash is the reason Phoenix built the Cave Creek Dam in 1923 and the Cave Buttes Dam downstream in 1979. During the August 2014 storms, peak flow on Cave Creek through town passed 26,000 cubic feet per second. Your lot drains the same way on a smaller scale. Rain hits caliche and granite, refuses to soak in, and looks for the lowest line across the property. Without gutters, the low line often starts at the drip edge of your roof and runs straight down the stucco. On a sloped lot it can arrive from uphill at the same time. The point of a gutter system here is to collect the roof water before it lands, move it in a downspout to the downhill side of the house, and let it go where sheet flow was going to take it anyway, well clear of the slab and the septic field.
Monsoon rain in the foothills
The elevation matters for rainfall as much as for the view. Storm reports from the National Weather Service regularly show Cave Creek, Carefree and north Scottsdale receiving between one and two inches from a cell that gives downtown Phoenix a quarter inch. Monsoon season runs June 15 to September 30, and the heaviest storms tend to hit late afternoon, dropping most of their water in half an hour. One inch of rain on a 2,000 square foot roof is about 1,246 gallons, and a Cave Creek custom home is often bigger than that. Metal roofs shed even faster than tile. This is why we do not install 5-inch gutters in Cave Creek. Six-inch seamless gutters with 3x4 downspouts carry the burst without overflowing at the valleys, and the desert litter from palo verde, mesquite and ironwood has more room to move through instead of damming the outlet.
Seamless gutter installation in Cave Creek
For Cave Creek we bring the trailer to the property and roll-form 6-inch seamless aluminum gutters to the length of each eave on site, which is what makes 60 and 80 foot runs on a ranch house possible without a joint. Colors are dark gray, bronze, white and tan. Bronze is the usual choice on the desert-toned customs, and the Tatum Ranch and Dove Valley Ranch HOAs are used to seeing it. Our gutter installation page covers the sizing rules, tile-roof attachment and the factors that move the price. Estimates are free and most jobs finish in a day. Read about 6-inch seamless installation and what it costs.
Gutter repair in Cave Creek
The repair calls we see in Cave Creek are long runs that have sagged between hangers, corners leaking where a sectional gutter was pieced together, downspouts torn loose by wind or a horse trailer, and gutters packed solid with mesquite pods and granite grit. Repairs on a sound 6-inch system are quick. A sagging 5-inch sectional gutter that overflows every August is usually better replaced, and we will say so up front. Downspout and gutter repair, and the repair-or-replace test.
Neighborhoods we work in
- Tatum Ranch
- Dove Valley Ranch
- Rancho Mañana
- Spur Cross
- Black Mountain
- Cave Creek Regional Park area
Services in Cave Creek
Google reviews
From the Google reviews
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“Blueberry did a fantastic job on my place in North Phoenix, if you need rain gutters give them a call!”
Andrew S. · Google review
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“Grant from Blueberry came out and repaired my gutter. It was a small job and those other so called “local” companies didn’t even call back. From online form to complete in less than 2 hours!”
Tim D. · Google review
Questions from Cave Creek
Can you install gutters on the tile roofs in Tatum Ranch?
Yes. Tatum Ranch is almost entirely concrete tile from the 1990s, and it is one of our most common Cave Creek jobs. We fasten 6-inch seamless gutters to the fascia under the tile edge with hidden hangers, no tile lifted. Bronze or tan matches most of the community's stucco palette.
My Cave Creek lot is on a slope and the water comes from uphill. Do gutters help?
They handle the half of the problem that comes off your own roof, which is usually the half that lands against the house. We route downspouts to the downhill side and discharge past the slab. Water arriving from an uphill neighbor is a grading question, and we will tell you if that is what you actually have.
Do you work on metal roofs in Cave Creek?
We do. Metal roofs are common on custom homes and outbuildings north of the Carefree Highway, and they shed water faster than tile, so we size downspouts accordingly. Attachment depends on the eave detail, and we look at that on the estimate visit rather than guessing over the phone.
Will the gutters fill up with mesquite and palo verde debris?
Some will get in, which is one reason we use 6-inch gutters with 3x4 downspouts: there is more room for debris to pass through. On lots with mature trees over the roof, we will talk about guards. On open desert lots, an annual cleaning before monsoon season is usually enough.
