Rain Gutters Do What?

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Gutters, also known as Eavestroughs, play a vital role in protecting your home. 

The role they play is to take all the water that hits your roof away from the foundation of the building. 

They do this by catching rain water off the roof in the gutter, and sending it down the trough towards an outlet. The outlet is connected to a downspout, which takes the water from the roof to ground level, and sends it away from your house. 

If you do not have gutters, all the water from the roof would be allowed to fall straight down off the roof, which is often only a foot or two away from the foundation of your home. This water can then work its way back towards your home's foundation, over time this causes damage to the foundation, and can wear away at the grading of your home, which might allow even more water to flow towards the foundation. 

Water near your foundation causes the ground to expand and contract more than dry ground, this expansion and contraction puts extra pressure on your foundation and can lead to problems and costly repairs in the foundation of your home. 

So the main purpose of gutters is to stop that from happening, and save your home from damage and save you money in the long run. 

Rain Gutters can get damaged over time, and begin to leak in a few places, corners specifically.

If your gutters are leaking, they are allowing water in specific sections of the house to fall right toward the foundation. 

Since the main purpose of the gutter is to get the water away from the building, a short or non-existent downspout is potentially worse than no gutters, as one section of the house will be extremely vulnerable. If the downspout is too short, water can flow right back towards the house, or soak in through the ground. If there is no downspout, the water will be dropped right beside your foundation and likely pool there, both of these can very inconvenient and damaging. 

Downspout extensions should take the water at least 6 feet away from the building, and more is even better. 

If your gutters are full of leaves, asphalt gravel, and other debris, this can clog the gutter and force water to overflow the side of the gutter, again falling right next to your foundation. 

Many of these small malfunctions in eavestroughs can be easily ignored, because they might not be that inconvenient, and it is difficult to see the damage being done. 

However, having them fixed can be just as easy, save you money in the long run, are not very expensive to have fixed in the short term, and can help you have greater enjoyment of your home, and hopefully more peace of mind. 

You can do them yourself, or you can contact Legacy. We would be more then happy to help you protect your greatest investment, you home.