Gutter Guards on Canton, OH Tudors and Colonials of the Ridgewood Era

Canton's National Register neighborhood went up quickly. Ridgewood's lots were platted between 1918 and 1927, and most of its houses were finished before the Depression stopped construction. The same builders and the same fashions shaped streets well beyond the district, so Canton has a deep stock of 1920s Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival houses. They are handsome and solid, and they are hard on gutters. This is what a guard has to deal with on each.

What makes a Tudor roof hard on gutters?

A Tudor Revival house is all roof. The main gable is steep, a second gable usually crosses it at the front, and dormers and a chimney interrupt the slope. Some Ridgewood examples add a turret. Each place where two slopes meet is a valley, and a valley works like a funnel. Rain from two roof planes arrives at one point of the gutter, moving fast, carrying whatever was lying on the shingles.

So the gutter under a Tudor valley fails in a particular way. In a hard rain, water overshoots the front lip. In fall, that corner packs with leaves before the rest of the run has collected any. The downspout nearest the valley does most of the work on the house and is the first to block.

How does a colonial differ?

A Colonial Revival house is simpler: a rectangular box, two full stories, a side gable roof at a moderate pitch. It has two long gutter runs, front and back, and often nothing on the ends. The trouble comes from height and length. The runs are about 20 feet off the ground, so they do not get cleaned as often as they should. And they are long, so any sag in the middle holds water. Many colonials also have a one-story sunroom or porch on one end with a short gutter of its own that catches the drip from the main roof.

What were these houses built with at the roof edge?

Good materials, which is part of the challenge. Slate was common on the better houses, and Ridgewood is noted for it. The trim is wide, old-growth lumber. The original gutters on a house of this period were often half-round metal hung on straps, or troughs built into the cornice and lined with metal. Over a century many of those were replaced with the 5 inch aluminum gutter that is standard today, usually spiked to the fascia.

That history is why two neighboring houses can need different answers. One has a modern aluminum gutter on sound trim and is ready for guards. The next still has its built-in gutters, and a clip-on guard is not the right tool for those. The page on gutter guards for older homes in Canton explains how the owner sorts one from the other at the inspection.

Why does the mounting method matter so much here?

Many guards are designed to slide under the bottom row of roofing. On a 20-year-old asphalt roof that is a nuisance. On slate it is a mistake. Slates are hung on nails and crack when levered up. The guard fitted through this site is a fascia-mount design. It fastens to the trim board behind the gutter and to the gutter's front lip, and it stops short of the roofing. Nothing is lifted, and nothing is drilled into slate, brick or stone.

What should be fixed before guards go on?

• Loose spikes. Hidden hangers into the rafter tails take over from spikes that have backed out.
• Dripping corner seams. Old sealant dries and cracks. Seams are resealed while the gutter is clean and dry.
• Soft trim under valleys. Decades of overflow at the same corner can rot the board behind it. That has to be found first, because the guard fastens there.
• Blocked downspouts. Each one is flushed from the top. Tall downspouts on two-story walls hide clogs well.

The first, second and fourth are small fixes and are part of a guard install. Rotted trim is a repair in its own right and is quoted separately, in writing, before anything else is done.

Will it show from the street?

Hardly. The guard sits flat on top of the gutter, below the edge of the roof. The mesh itself cannot be seen from the ground. What can be seen is the front edge of the frame, a thin line along the gutter lip. On dark-trimmed Tudors, black is the usual pick. On white-trimmed colonials, white. Mill, the bare aluminum finish, suits unpainted metal gutters.

What does it cost on a house like this?

More than on a ranch, for plain reasons. There is more gutter, and nearly all of it is at two-story height or over a steep pitch, which is priced at the higher per-foot rate. Corners are included no matter how many valleys the roof has. The only way to get a real figure is a measurement, which is free. If your house dates from this era, read what gets checked on an older Canton house first, then look at the Ridgewood page for the neighborhood itself.