New-to-you House Quiz Question #1: When is a gutter required? Answer: when local weather patterns and your house demand it. You’ve just moved in, but you notice your home’s existing gutters are in bad shape. You’re financially tapped out. Could you and your home get by without gutters?
Kentucky is Not a Desert
Kentucky gets plenty of precipitation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says our state gets between 42 and 52 inches of rain annually. That is too much rain to go gutterless!
When more than three feet of rain falls every year, your home’s foundations must be protected from being destroyed, cracked, and infiltrated by penetrating water. The rain has to be channeled away, out into your yard, or you could face a leaky basement.
Without gutters, your sloped roof would drench your flower beds, saturate your foundations, and ruin your landscaping with all the runoff.
Gutters Are Not Luxuries
Gleaming, functioning, flawless gutters are not luxuries. Your home needs gutters as part of a complete roof system. Water from the roof is escorted to downspouts and off through French drains or gutter extensions to soak into the yard many feet away.
- Your walls stay dry.
- Your foundations remain solid.
- Your soil maintains the correct slope away from your home.
- Your plants are not drowned.
Here, Not There
Your home needs gutters at the bottom edge of any sloped roof. You do not need gutters along the sloped edges of the roofs. Wherever gravity pulls water down, you need to catch the rain or snow rolling off your roof and move it along to downspouts.
Since hundreds of gallons of rainwater can land on your Kentucky home’s roof in a typical storm, all the water must be safely moved some distance from your house.
Instruction Book?
Whether you have a custom-built home or moved into an existing house, you never got an instruction manual for it. You may not know how all the parts of your house work. That may leave you wondering about your home’s gutters.
You have a reliable, trustworthy ally on your side. Your local residential roofer is ready to help you with questions, concerns, and projects related to the many components of your roof, including long-lasting gutters.
For concerns about your Kentucky home’s gutters and all other aspects of residential roofs, contact us today at AIC Roofing & Construction in central Kentucky. We know roofs and gutters. We can help you!
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