Which One Do You Actually Need?
Three services, and the useful thing is knowing which question you are actually asking before
you call.
If water is coming over the front edge, run a hose into the top of a downspout for half a
minute. If it backs up, that is cleaning. Twice a year covers
most homes here, and the autumn visit is the one that matters - it wants to happen after the
canopy is down but before the first hard freeze locks the debris into the trough. That window is
a couple of weeks earlier inland in Plymouth than it is on the lakeshore.
If a section is bent, sagging or pulling away, that is repair,
and on this stretch of shoreline there are two quite different causes. Sudden damage - a bent
front lip with a crease along the run - is a lake-effect snow slab letting go off a steep roof.
Gradual damage - lost pitch, standing water, weeping seams - is freeze-thaw working the fixings
loose over years. They cost different amounts to fix and a photo usually tells us which you
have.
And guards are the service we qualify most. On steep
lakeshore roofs anything standing proud of the roof plane gives a sliding slab something to
catch, so we fit low-profile mesh and avoid reverse-curve styles. Inland the opposite worry
applies: fine mesh can ice over, so a slightly more open product works better. And on Manitowoc's
original steel gutters there is a hardware question - aluminium fixings in a galvanised trough
accelerate corrosion - which is on that page.
If none of those describes it, tell us what the water is doing and we will say which applies,
or that none of them does.
