Nobody calls a contractor about their gutters. They call about the water in the basement, the rotted fascia board, or the foundation crack — all of which usually started as a gutter that stopped draining three years ago. In South-Central Kansas, where a single storm can drop two inches in an hour, gutters are not cosmetic.
What a failing gutter actually costs you
- Rotted fascia and soffit — often several thousand dollars of carpentry
- Water in the crawl space or basement after every heavy rain
- Foundation settling and cracking from saturated soil at the footing
- Siding staining and premature paint failure
- Ice dams at the eaves in winter, forcing water back under the shingles
A realistic seasonal schedule
Twice a year is the honest minimum for most Kansas homes, and three times if you have mature trees. Clean once in late spring after the seed pods and blossoms drop, and once in late fall after the leaves are down. If you have cottonwoods or elms, add a mid-summer check.
What to look for while you are up there
- Standing water sitting in the gutter — that means the pitch is wrong
- Separated or leaking seams and end caps
- Spikes backing out, or hangers pulling away from the fascia
- Downspouts that discharge within three feet of the foundation
- Rust streaks and soft spots on the fascia board behind the gutter
When cleaning stops being enough
A lot of the gutters we look at in Wichita, Derby, and Augusta are simply undersized. A five-inch gutter on a large, steep roof cannot move the volume a Kansas thunderstorm delivers, so it overflows at the back edge and soaks the fascia every single time — no amount of cleaning will fix that. The answer is a six-inch seamless system with correctly sized downspouts.
Are gutter guards worth it?
Good ones are, in the right situation. They dramatically reduce leaf load under trees, but they are not maintenance-free and cheap mesh screens often make things worse by trapping debris on top. We will tell you honestly whether guards make sense for your roof or whether your money is better spent on properly sized gutters.
We form seamless aluminum gutters on site to the exact length of each run and water-test the finished system before we leave. Free estimates across the Wichita area.