The housing stock north of the 101
North Phoenix grew in rings. Moon Valley, around the country club off 7th Street, went up in the 1960s and 1970s with low-pitched ranch rooflines and a lot of brick and block. The next ring, along Happy Valley Road and around Deem Hills and Stetson Hills, is 1990s and 2000s frame-and-stucco production housing with concrete tile roofs. The newest ring, Norterra, Fireside at Norterra, Sonoran Foothills, Dynamite Mountain Ranch and Tramonto, backs up against the Phoenix Sonoran Desert Preserve and was mostly built from the late 1990s into the 2010s. Desert Ridge, over by Tatum Boulevard and the 101, filled in over the same stretch. Almost none of these houses came with gutters. Builders in this era treated them as an option, and most buyers skipped it. So the typical North Phoenix call is a first-time installation on a tile roof that has been shedding water straight onto the ground for twenty years.
Why the water has nowhere to go
The soil up here is the problem. Much of the North Valley sits on caliche, a calcium carbonate hardpan that behaves more like weak concrete than dirt, and the fill under the newer subdivisions is compacted clay. Neither absorbs water at any useful rate. When rain comes off a tile roof, it hits the ground and sheets sideways, toward the patio, the side yard, the neighbor's block wall, or back against the stem wall of the house. The natural drainage is a network of washes, Skunk Creek and Cave Creek Wash being the big ones, and the Cave Buttes Dam north of the 101 exists because Cave Creek Wash used to flood the city. Your lot is a small version of that system. Gutters and downspouts give the roof water a defined path to a place that can take it, usually a gravel bed or a spot in the yard that drains away from the slab.
How the monsoon behaves in North Phoenix
Monsoon season runs June 15 to September 30. The storms build over the higher ground to the north and east and drift down over the North Valley, so the neighborhoods between the 101 and the Carefree Highway regularly see the heaviest cells in the metro. It is common for Cave Creek and north Scottsdale to log well over an inch from a storm that leaves Sky Harbor with a quarter inch. One inch of rain on a 2,000 square foot roof is about 1,246 gallons. On a house with no gutters, that water arrives at the ground in twenty or thirty minutes, most of it off two or three roof valleys. That is why we spec 6-inch seamless gutters with oversized downspouts on every North Phoenix job. A 5-inch gutter sized for a gentle rain in another state overflows at the valleys in exactly the storms you bought gutters for.
Seamless gutter installation in North Phoenix
Every North Phoenix job starts with the same product: 6-inch seamless aluminum, roll-formed on the trailer in your driveway to the exact length of each run, in dark gray, bronze, white or tan. We hang it on the fascia on tile roofs and use roof-mounted straps where there is no fascia to hit. Most houses are done in a day. Our gutter installation page walks through the sizing, the tile-roof attachment and the price factors in more detail, and the estimate is free. Read about 6-inch seamless installation and what it costs.
Gutter repair in North Phoenix
The repair calls we get in North Phoenix are mostly older 5-inch systems installed by a previous owner: sagging runs where the spikes pulled out of sun-baked fascia, corners that leak at the seam, downspouts crushed by a car or a trash can, and end caps that let go. Some of it is a straightforward fix. Some of it is a gutter that was undersized from day one, and we will tell you which is which before you spend money on it. Downspout and gutter repair, and the repair-or-replace test.
Neighborhoods we work in
- Norterra
- Sonoran Foothills
- Tramonto
- Desert Ridge
- Moon Valley
- Deem Hills
- Stetson Hills
- Dynamite Mountain Ranch
Services in North Phoenix
Google reviews
From the Google reviews
-
“Blueberry did a fantastic job on my place in North Phoenix, if you need rain gutters give them a call!”
Andrew S. · Google review
-
“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 North Phoenix
Do you install gutters on the tile roofs in Norterra and Sonoran Foothills?
Yes, and that is most of our work up there. Those subdivisions were built with concrete tile roofs and no gutters. We attach 6-inch seamless gutters to the fascia beneath the tile edge, or use roof straps where the eave detail leaves no fascia, without lifting or cutting tile.
Does Moon Valley need the same gutter setup as the newer North Phoenix subdivisions?
Usually a lighter version. Moon Valley homes are 1960s and 1970s ranches with low-pitched roofs, so the water comes off slower and spreads across more eave. We still recommend 6-inch gutters, but downspout placement matters more than capacity there, since the block construction and mature yards give water fewer escape routes.
Will gutters keep water off my patio in Desert Ridge?
Yes, if the downspouts are placed correctly. Most Desert Ridge patios flood because a roof valley dumps straight onto the slab. We put a downspout at every valley and run the discharge past the patio edge into gravel or a drain, so the water never crosses the hardscape in the first place.
How far north do you cover under North Phoenix?
Everything inside Phoenix city limits north of the Loop 101, up to the Carefree Highway. Tramonto, Stoneledge and the Sonoran Foothills area are all normal territory. Anthem, Desert Hills and New River sit just past the city line, and the crew is the same.
