Compton Heights Gutter Company: Box Gutters, Copper and Tall Eaves

How a box gutter fails

The lining is everything. Over decades the metal liner rusts through at low points, cracks at its seams, or gets patched with tar that splits in the first hard freeze. Water then gets past the liner and into the wood framing below it.

Since the trough sits inside the house's outline, that water doesn't fall outside. It soaks the cornice, rots the rafter tails, and runs down inside the brick wall. Peeling paint on the crown molding, plaster damage near the top-floor ceiling, or a dark line on the brick below the eave are the usual signs.

Relining before rebuilding

If the wood frame of the box is still solid, the trough can usually be relined. That means pulling the failed lining, repairing any soft spots in the framing, and installing a new liner that laps up under the roofing. Metal liners and membrane liners are both used, and each has trade-offs on cost, lifespan and how they handle the joints. We'll walk through both on your house, not in the abstract.

Where the framing has rotted along a long stretch, the box gets rebuilt first. That's carpentry before it's gutter work. It's also where an honest estimate matters, because nobody knows exactly how far the rot goes until the old lining is up.

The hung-gutter shortcut

One common fix on old box-gutter houses is to flatten or cap the box and hang a regular aluminum gutter off the front of the cornice. It's cheaper. It also works, in a plain sense: water goes into the new gutter.

But it changes how the front of the house looks, it covers molding that was meant to be seen, and if the old box isn't properly closed off it can still collect water behind the new gutter. We'll price it if you want it. We'll also tell you plainly what you're giving up.

Copper and half-round on the porches

Copper gets darker and greener with age, and a repair piece will look bright for a few years before it catches up. Copper seams are soldered, not caulked, and a leaking joint gets cleaned and resoldered. Our copper gutters page has more on that metal.

Half-round hangs from brackets that clamp around the outside of the trough. On these older porches the brackets are often spaced too far apart for the weight of wet oak leaves, so the gutter droops between them. More brackets and a reset slope usually cure it. See half-round gutters for the profile itself.

Three stories, slate underfoot

The height changes how the job is run. A third-floor eave on a Compton Heights house is far above a normal ladder's comfortable reach, and slate or clay tile can crack if it's walked on carelessly. We set ladders and roof protection to reach the gutter line without stepping on tile that can't take it.

When we're up there anyway, we look at the roof edge above the gutter. John Beal Roofing is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred roofer, but slate and tile are often the best roof you could have on these houses, and we won't push a shingle roof onto one that has decades left.

Big trees and old drain tile

The neighborhood's mature oaks drop tassels in May and acorns in September. Box gutters collect both and hold them, since the trough is wide and flat. Two cleanings a year is a reasonable floor on most of these lots.

Many downspouts here run into clay drain tile in the ground, some of it as old as the house. Roots get into the joints and the lines quietly stop carrying water. Our page on a downspout not draining explains how we test them before anyone digs.

A note on historic district rules

Compton Heights is a city historic district. Changes to the visible exterior, which can include swapping a box gutter for a hung one, may need review by the city's Cultural Resources Office. Check before you commit to a design. Like-for-like repairs are usually simpler, but the city decides that, not us.