Raingutters (Malone: house, price, design)

[turnerfamily]

I have noticed through my home search that many established and newer homes do not have rain gutters installed.In many cases the homes are white stone or lighter in color and due to no gutters are stained all around the base of the home.Is it not required by the builders and is it expensive,on the average, to have them installed?

[tgannaway89]

They are actually quite pricey, yes.

[TXtrkgrl]

You have to be careful with gutters, they will rot your facia boards.

I have TONS of oak trees around my house and we were constantly cleaning out the gutters. We finally just took them down.

Just plant some hedges or have a sidewalk around your house, that should help with rain splatter.

[Paka]

Originally Posted by Malone

You have to be careful with gutters, they will rot your facia boards.

I have TONS of oak trees around my house and we were constantly cleaning out the gutters. We finally just took them down.

Just plant some hedges or have a sidewalk around your house, that should help with rain splatter.

I could not agree more...everyone that I know with gutters (to include one of our homes here in SA) have HUGE issues with the water overflowing the gutters due to leaves/very heavy rain fall suddenly causing backup and rotting the facia boards. We even have the leaf guards on ours, but when it is the sudden heavy rain, they can only handle so much depending on the pitch of your house....If you don't have them, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

[turnerfamily]

I agree,they are a pain to keep clean no matter what kind of guard they design to keep stuff out.I'll just have to out-think the splatter problem I guess.Thanks for the feedback.

[martinez4]

We had our landscaper place medium sized river rock around the outside where there is no grass, decking or a patio.....instead of doing gutters. It has worked really well for us.

[neddy]

My dad ended up going with rain chains (Asian design thing) He really is into design and this seemed to solve some issues that he had in the past and it looks pretty cool

[Living Near Shamu]

I would like to consider gutters only in the place where the water falls directly on top of the a/c unit outside, and while this is not necessarily bad in the summer, these past 2 winters have been so cold that the unit freezes completely.

[ShaneSA]

I took the gutters off all my properties. All they did was hold water and leaves and rot the facia.
I have one building that is brick and I power wash it once a year to get the color back on the areas close to the ground. Power washing on foot is much easier than being up on a ladder to clean out clogged gutters and the cost of replacing facia boards.
The way it rains arond here, usually, is so fast and furious and then dry for months, gutters are not really much good and too much of a pain to deal with.

[txbuckeye]

I was curious about the lack of gutters, too, with our house search. Is there any foundation issues to consider if there are no gutters? Some of the homes we looked at actually had the grade going towards the house from where the water just ran off the roof.