A separate Clear Roofing & Exteriors roof project; it is not a Glen Mills home.
Gutter installation in Glen Mills, PA: sizing, downspouts and guards
Gutter installation in Glen Mills, PA comes down to a few decisions made before anything goes up: how big the trough is, how many downspouts the roof needs and where they empty, what the gutter is made of, and whether a guard goes on with it. Here is how each one gets decided.
Clear Roofing & Exteriors handles seamless gutter installation across Glen Mills and Concord Township from our West Chester office. The crews that hang the gutters are the same ones that roof, which helps because most gutter problems start at the roof edge.
Glen Mills is a mailing name, not a town hall
Glen Mills is an unincorporated community in Concord Township, Delaware County, and the 19342 ZIP code also takes in parts of neighboring townships. Most of Delaware County has a humid subtropical climate, with hot-summer humid continental conditions in some higher northern areas. In practice a gutter here has to handle summer thunderstorms that dump a lot of water at once, and winter storms that bring snow and ice. Our page on roofing in Glen Mills covers the area and its permit office.
Seamless, and how heavy the metal is
Seamless gutter is formed on site in one continuous piece per side, so the only joints are at the corners and the downspout outlets. Sectional gutter comes in pre-cut lengths, and every seam between them is a place to leak within a few years. Seamless aluminum is what we install on nearly every job.
Standard aluminum gutter runs around 0.027 inch thick. On long runs, or on a house with a lot of tree cover, we step up to 0.032-inch stock, which takes a leaned ladder or a dropped limb without denting. Galvanized and galvalume steel are stronger still where falling branches are a real threat, though steel eventually rusts. Copper, often in the rounded half-round profile, suits historic and period homes and never needs paint.
5-inch or 6-inch gutters?
Many homes do fine with 5-inch K-style gutter. The size gets decided by measuring the roof area and pitch, not by habit. A 6-inch K-style trough carries considerably more water and pairs with larger 3x4 downspouts, so it is the right call for a steep roof or a valley that dumps a lot of water into one section of gutter. Undersizing is one of the most common mistakes we correct on replacement jobs, and an undersized run backs up behind the trough and rots the fascia over a few seasons.
Downspouts and where the water ends up
A gutter only moves water as far as the downspout takes it. Part of sizing the system is counting how many downspouts the roof needs so the gutter never bottlenecks in a downpour. The other part is where each one empties. Downspouts get routed to carry water well away from the foundation, with extensions or a tie-in to existing underground drains where that makes sense.
Signs the current setup is not doing that job:
- Water spills over the front or back of the gutter in a hard rain.
- Mud is splashed up the foundation next to a downspout outlet.
- A basement wall stays damp after rain.
- Old sectional gutter drips at the seams, or steel has rusted through along the bottom.
Before the crew leaves, they run a hose through the new system and watch it drain.
The roof edge the gutter hangs from
The gutter apron has to lap under the roof's drip edge, so runoff drops into the trough instead of wicking behind it. Each run hangs on hidden internal hangers screwed into solid framing, with pitch set toward the downspouts. If the fascia behind the old gutter has rotted, it gets replaced first, because new gutter will not stay up on wood that will not hold a screw. Our post on rotted fascia behind gutters shows how to check it.
Trees and gutter guards
On a lot with heavy oak and maple cover, a micro-mesh guard is the one that keeps up. A lighter tree line can get by with a simple screen or a reverse-curve cover. The guard and the trough should be chosen together, since a cover that fights the gutter profile causes its own overflow. Even a guarded gutter wants a look every year or two. The gutter guard guide compares the three types.
Hail, wind and the insurance claim
Summer storms do reach this corner of Delaware County. NOAA's Storm Events Database records 0.88-inch hail at neighboring Chadds Ford on August 28, 2020. Wind and hail that damage a roof will often flatten a downspout or peel a run of gutter off the fascia in the same storm, and that gutter damage is often part of a legitimate claim rather than an out-of-pocket repair. After a storm, we inspect the roof and gutters together and push to get both written into the claim scope.
His crews replaced the roof shingles on our house and garden barn, two walls of vinyl siding, and the gutters and downspouts that were damaged during the severe May 4th hail storm.
Before you schedule
If your development has a homeowners association, ask whether gutter color or profile needs sign-off before anything is ordered. When you get quotes, look for one that is itemized: linear footage, number of downspouts, guards, and any carpentry on the fascia or soffit. Nobody can price a roofline over the phone, which is why we put a tape on every run before quoting.
The company did very good job for installing new roofing and gutters for my house.
To have the gutters on a Glen Mills home measured, call (484) 983-3476 between 8 AM and 8 PM, any day, or use the contact page. See the gutter installation page for how the work is done.
