Hello I’m Erik Setterholm, Owner of Southern Minnesota Seamless gutters located right here in New Ulm. Lets first talk about the importance of have a rain gutter system installed on your home. Not only do they complete the look and add curb appeal to your home, but they are also a critical piece to avoiding basement water issues and foundation damage. Without a properly installed gutter system, water will seep in over time and damage your foundation, or in a large rain event, it will happen quickly creating a lot of damage in short period of time. It’s not only the foundation that gets damaged, think about the floors, the interior walls and any personal belongings, not to mention the potential for mold. It’s an expensive problem to incur. Either way rain gutters are a fraction of the cost and also piece of mind when its raining.

It’s not just the basements that receive damage from no gutters or poor installation. I’ve seen issues to sliding glass door that no longer slide, rotten wood, windows and even mold behind the siding. In most of these cases a rain gutter would have kept these things dry and saved money in the process.

Now let’s talk about winters wrath on yohome without rain gutters. Winter is different because the water doesn’t come all at once and then its over. Take a winter like last year for example. We had snow and ice on our roofs from November until the end of March. That’s 5 months of freezing and thawing almost every day! When a rain gutter is installed, most of us will not even notice the snow melting off of the shingles because the water will end up in your gutters and is whisked away through the downspout. Without rain gutters the snow will still melt, it will drip and now you have the risk of dangerous ice on the cement below to navigate around all winter.

Another issue that I encounter regularly is around the foundation in the winter. The dirt around our homes is not frozen solid in the winter because the heat from our homes keeps it warm. When you don’t have a gutter, the snow/ice melts, the water drips, and it runs back to the foundation finding easy entry through the unfrozen ground and seeps into the basement. All of this is typically avoided with a properly installed gutter system.

Let’s switch gears to leaf protection. The two most common types of leaf protection are a screen type cover and a hard aluminum hood cover. This is a hot topic in the gutter world mostly because some gutter companies claim they have the clear-cut answer to clean rain gutters that work flawlessly. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy because every home has a different situation based on the type of trees in their yard and their proximity to the house. Most trees are extremely messy after they bud but then are not a problem until they lose their leaves. Some trees have big huge leaves and some have really fine ones. Some trees are simply messy all year long. Regardless of your situation if you have trees around your house, you will probably need some type of leaf protection system to avoid plugged rain gutters. It’s fairly common that I get a phone call where the homeowner says that their rain gutters are leaking and many times it’s a plugged rain gutter. Plugged gutters can cause a variety of damage to your house and if left plugged, it will eventually ruin your gutter system. So, the moral of the story is we usually like to look at the situation before we give a recommendation on what type of leaf protection is best.

To conclude we think rain gutters are a good and cost-efficient way to protect the investment you have made in your home and avoid unnecessary cost to you.