Glossary
The thirty words on a gutter quote
Gutter has a small vocabulary and it is worth ten minutes, because most of the difference between two quotes lives in these words rather than in the total at the bottom.
The parts
- Trough
- The horizontal channel itself, the part people mean when they say gutter. Everything else on a gutter system exists to hold it up, feed it, or empty it.
- K-style
- The common gutter profile in the United States: flat back, flat bottom, and a moulded front face that resembles crown moulding. Close to rectangular in section, which is why it carries more water than a semicircle of the same nominal width.
- Half-round
- A true semicircular trough, usually hung on external brackets. The older profile, and the correct-looking one on early-twentieth-century houses. Holds less water than K-style at the same nominal size.
- Fascia
- The board running along the roof edge that the gutter hangs from. In Central Florida it is the component that most often decides whether a gutter job is simple or not, because decades of runoff soften it.
- Soffit
- The underside of the roof overhang, between the fascia and the wall. Usually vented. Water getting behind a gutter reaches the fascia first and the soffit second.
- Drip edge
- Metal flashing at the roof edge that projects past the fascia so runoff releases into the trough instead of curling back underneath. Where it is missing, water tracks behind the gutter by surface tension.
- Gutter apron
- A wider L-shaped flashing that extends from under the shingles into the trough. Used where drip edge alone is not carrying the water clear, common as a retrofit fix.
- Outlet
- The hole cut in the bottom of the trough where water leaves for the downspout. Where it sits matters more than most people expect: an outlet placed away from where a valley dumps is a common cause of overflow.
- Downspout
- The vertical pipe carrying water from the outlet to ground. Sized in nominal inches, most often 2x3 or 3x4. Frequently the actual bottleneck in a system that overflows.
- Elbow
- The angled fitting that turns a downspout, either to bring it back to the wall from the trough or to direct discharge at ground level. Crimped joints here separate if they are not fastened.
How it is held up
- Hidden hanger
- A bracket that clips inside the trough and takes a screw through the back into the fascia. The current standard, because the load goes into a screw in sound wood rather than into a nail through the face.
- Spike and ferrule
- The older method: a long nail driven through the front of the gutter, through a tube spacer, into the fascia. Works until the fascia softens, at which point the spikes back out and the run sags.
- Bracket
- External support, used with half-round profiles, mounted on the fascia or the roof deck. Part of the visible detail rather than hidden inside the trough.
- Sub-fascia
- The structural framing member behind the visible fascia board. Hanger screws that reach it hold considerably better than screws in the fascia alone.
- Slope
- The fall built into a run so water travels to the outlet. Small, typically a fraction of an inch per ten feet, and invisible from the ground. Too little and water stands; too much and it looks wrong on a long elevation.
- Mitre
- A corner joint where two runs meet, either inside or outside. Every mitre is a seam, and mitres are where seamless gutter leaks when it eventually leaks.
- End cap
- The closure at the open end of a run. Sealed rather than crimped alone, and a common small leak point on aging systems.
Material and specification
- Seamless
- Gutter formed from a continuous coil at the property, so a run has no joints between its corners. Contrasted with sectional gutter, sold in fixed lengths and lapped together on site.
- Sectional
- Gutter supplied in fixed lengths, commonly ten feet, joined with lapped and sealed connectors. Every lap is a maintained seal with a finite life, which is the main argument against it.
- Coil
- The roll of pre-finished aluminum stock fed through the roll former. Colour and gauge are chosen at this stage. Colour lots vary slightly between batches, which is why partial replacements do not always match exactly.
- Gauge
- The thickness of the aluminum. .027 and .032 are the common residential options; heavier gauge holds its shape better under ladder contact and heavy wet debris.
- Roll former
- The machine, usually truck-mounted, that shapes flat coil into gutter profile and cuts it to length at the property. The reason seamless gutter is made on site rather than delivered.
- Patina
- The oxide layer that develops on copper, moving from bright through brown to green over years. Faster in a humid climate. Fresh copper sheds a small amount of runoff staining onto pale concrete before it establishes.
- Galvanic corrosion
- Corrosion that occurs when dissimilar metals are in contact with moisture between them. Copper against aluminum will corrode the aluminum, which is why a copper system needs isolating details where it meets other metal.
Water, weather and drainage
- Rainfall intensity
- How fast rain falls, measured in inches per hour, as distinct from how much falls in total. Intensity, not annual total, is what gutter is sized against, and it is why Central Florida sizing differs from the national default.
- NOAA Atlas 14
- The National Weather Service precipitation frequency atlas. It gives, for a specific location, the rainfall depth expected for a given duration and return period. Orlando one-hour, ten-year: 2.91 inches.
- Return period
- The average interval between storms of a given size, so a ten-year storm is one with a ten percent chance of being equalled or exceeded in any year. It is a probability, not a schedule.
- Roof drainage area
- The plan area of roof feeding a particular run, which is what sets how much water the run has to carry. Two houses of the same footprint can have very different per-run drainage areas depending on roof geometry.
- Valley
- The internal angle where two roof planes meet. Valleys concentrate a large area of runoff into one narrow path, which is why the point where a valley meets a gutter is a common overflow location.
- Pop-up emitter
- A ground-level fitting on the end of a buried downspout line that lifts under water pressure to discharge and closes again afterwards. The tidy way to move roof runoff well clear of a slab.
- Reasonable use rule
- The Florida common-law standard for surface water, adopted by the state Supreme Court in Westland Skating Center v. Gus Machado Buick in 1989. A property owner may alter drainage but can be liable where the alteration unreasonably harms a neighbour.
Where these come up
Most of them appear on the sizing guide and the cost guide, which is where knowing the vocabulary pays off. The FAQ maps symptoms onto the terms if you are starting from something going wrong.
Get a price on your gutters
Ring (407) 917-8297, or send the roofline details through the form. Pricing on any gutter job across Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties.