Gutter repair and replacement in Columbus

What Columbus does to gutters

Columbus gets about 40 inches of rain and 25 to 30 inches of snow in a normal year, and the winters are the part that matters. Water sits in a gutter that isn't pitched right, freezes overnight, thaws in the afternoon sun, and does it again forty or fifty times between December and March. Every cycle pries the sealant off a corner and works the hangers a little further out of the fascia. By April the gutter has dropped an inch in the middle and the corner that used to weep now runs.

Ice dams do the rest. Snow melts over a warm attic, runs down to the cold eave, and freezes into a ridge that fills the gutter solid. A gutter full of ice weighs about eight pounds a foot. Spike hangers driven into 30-year-old fascia were never going to hold that, which is why so many Columbus gutters are hanging by two spikes and hope by the end of February.

The ground is the other half of the story. Most of Franklin County sits on dense glacial clay that barely drains. When a downspout ends a foot from the house, the water has nowhere to go but down along the foundation wall and in through the block. Basement waterproofing companies charge $5,000 to $15,000 to fix that from the inside. A downspout extension or a buried drain line fixes most of it from the outside for a few hundred dollars, which is why every job we do ends with the water somewhere it can't hurt the house.

What we actually do

Gutter repair. Resealing corners and end caps, re-hanging sagging runs on hidden screw hangers, replacing crushed or separated downspouts, adding a downspout to a run that only has one, and replacing fascia that rotted behind years of overflow. Most repairs are $150–$600 and done in a morning. This is the gutter repair Columbus Ohio homeowners call about most, and it's all on the repair page.

Seamless gutter replacement and installation. This is the big job here. Dublin, Hilliard, Westerville, Gahanna, Grove City and Pickerington filled up with vinyl-sided two-story homes between 1990 and 2015, and the builder gutters on them are now 15 to 35 years old: thin sectional aluminum, seams every 10 feet, spike hangers, 2x3 downspouts. We take it all down and run new seamless 5- or 6-inch aluminum on site, with 3x4 downspouts and hidden hangers. A typical 180-foot two-story home is $1,900–$3,000. The replacement page covers what's included and the cost page has the tables.

Gutter guards. Silver maples, pin oaks, sycamores and cottonwoods drop different things at different times, and no single guard handles all of it. We install micro-mesh and screen and tell you which is worth it under your trees. See gutter guards.

Gutter cleaning. Every visit is also a ladder inspection. If we find a loose hanger or a soft fascia board, you hear about it before we leave, with a price. Gutter cleaning is priced flat by home size.

Downspout drain lines. Buried PVC from the downspout to a pop-up emitter or a spot that drains, for lots where a 4-foot extension isn't enough or lands on the driveway. This is the fix for the recurring wet corner in the basement. See downspout drain lines.

Where we work

Columbus proper, from German Village and Clintonville out to the outerbelt, plus Dublin, Upper Arlington, Worthington, Westerville, Gahanna, Hilliard, Grove City, Reynoldsburg, Powell and Pickerington. Area codes 614 and 380. Two suburbs have their own pages because the houses there have their own problems: Dublin for big 1990s two-stories, and Upper Arlington for old brick, slate and half-round gutters. Whether the search was gutter repair Hilliard Ohio or gutter repair Grove City Ohio, it's the same crews on the same schedule as Columbus, and the gutter installation Westerville homeowners book is mostly the same 1990s replacement job as Dublin at the same per-foot price.

Older homes: box gutters and brick

German Village, Clintonville, Old Worthington, Bexley and the Near East Side have brick homes from the 1890s through the 1930s, many with box gutters built into the roof edge and lined with metal. Those are not a tear-off-and-replace job. They're relined, resealed, or — where the wood underneath is gone — rebuilt. We do box gutter repair on Columbus's older streets and we'll tell you honestly when the lining has a few years left and when it doesn't. If you're in the German Village Commission's district, exterior changes visible from the street may need a certificate of appropriateness; a like-for-like repair generally doesn't, but we'll flag it.

What to do if you're reading this in a storm

If a gutter has pulled off and water is landing at the foundation, tell us when you call and we'll get it secured first and quoted second. If the basement is taking water at one corner, look at which downspout is closest to it — nine times out of ten that's the cause, and this post explains why and what the cheap fix is.