Whether we hire professionals or take on a DIY project, installing something in our homes takes planning, care, and precise installation to ensure it’s installed correctly. While we all make mistakes, incorrectly installing some things in our homes can be disastrous, especially if it’s a preventative component to a home like the gutter system.
A home’s gutter system is a crucial component that collects water from the roof and drains it away from the home’s foundation protecting our homes from water damage. When it’s installed incorrectly, a gutter system can harm your home rather than protect it.
If you’re thinking of DIYing your gutter installation project or if you’re contemplating if hiring a professional is worth it, keep reading to learn about the dangers of an incorrect gutter installation to understand how dangerous it can be and why it’s best to leave it to the professionals.
Clogged Gutters & Damage to Your Home
Most homeowners are aware of the dangers of clogged gutters, but if you aren’t, we want to reiterate how dangerous they can be. Clogged gutters not only impede water flow, but this one issue can become a domino effect, causing other issues like wood rot, interior leaks, basement flooding, overflowing gutters, and ice dams, among many others.
When traditional half-round gutters are installed incorrectly and the seams aren’t properly installed, the result could be debris becoming trapped in the seams resulting in clogs. It’s imperative that if you do have gutters with seams installed that you hire a reputable gutter installation company that will offer to fix these issues at their expense. You may also want to switch to seamless gutters like K-Guard. No seams mean less of a chance for clogs, especially with the K-Guard System that has a curved hood to further block debris – more on that later.
Incorrect Pitch & Damage to Your Home
When a gutter system is installed, a gutter installation company installs them at a pitch to ensure water can collect from the roof and flow through the gutters and into the downspouts. In its basic definition, roof pitch (or slope) is the number of inches your roof rises for every foot of depth. For example, a 4/12 pitch represents a rise of 4 inches for every foot inward toward its peak, also known as its ridge. Gutter installation companies take this number and install your gutter system based on that number to get the best results.
Every home’s roof has some sort of pitch or slope whether your home has a flat/low-slope, gable, hip, or metal roof installed. No matter your home’s type of roof pitch, it needs a quality gutter system installed correctly to ensure the roof is kept dry and water drains property. Unfortunately, sometimes errors do occur during an installation project where the pitch isn’t calculated correctly or the gutter system isn’t installed using the correct pitch. As a result, water will not flow through the gutters and downspouts correctly.
A home that has a gutter system installed with too much of a pitch can cause the water to move too quickly and overflow as a result of the water not being able to reach the downspouts promptly. Likewise, if the gutter system was installed with too little of a pitch then the water may come to a standstill and not flow into the downspouts or drain away from the home. If these issues go undetected then the result could be extensive water damage to your roof and home’s interior and exterior.
Roof Damage
Our roofs are an investment, possibly one of the more expensive things to replace on a home. According to Forbes, the average cost to install a new roof is between $8,000 and $11,000. Of course, this number varies depending on how large your home is or based on the type of roofing material you choose to install.
Our homes need a quality roof to keep us dry and protected from the elements. Did you know that your roof and gutter system work hand-in-hand to protect your home from drainage issues or that your gutter system plays an important role in keeping your roof dry? If your gutter system wasn’t installed correctly then it could result in roof damage like leaks, moisture damage to the shingles and underlying materials, roof algae, etc.
How to Avoid an Incorrect Gutter Installation
It’s important to have a gutter installation company with years of experience and plenty of happy customers install your gutter system. DIY projects can be cost-effective, however, if done incorrectly could result in a disaster. Hiring a company that has customer complaints and a poor reputation could also result in incorrect gutter installation and who knows what else.
K-Guard is a reputable gutter installation company in Colorado with thousands of happy customers and a 5-star rating on websites like Yelp, HomeAdvisor, and Google, as well as our Facebook page. Our installation professionals are the best in the business, paying extremely close attention to each detail and installing your K-Guard System correctly and flawlessly.
Our gutter product is so effective that we back it with a lifetime gutter warranty that guarantees no clogs as well as no chips, peels, or cracks in the paint. Our gutter system will also never pull away from the home, something traditional gutter systems often do when there is too much debris in the gutters or from severe weather.
To install the K-Guard Leaf Free Gutter System, contact our team of professionals today. K-Guard is the premiere gutter company in Colorado, providing a leaf-free gutter solution for homeowners for many years. We proudly install the K-Guard Gutter System across the state of Colorado including, but not limited to, the following locations:
- Denver
- Colorado Springs
- Littleton
- Centennial
- Aurora
- Boulder
- Castle Rock
- Broomfield
- Fort Collins
- & so much more!
Schedule your free estimate today!
