vinyl or aluminum gutters

[Tapper]

I live in an alternate universe.  

My street name is Edge Hill Road.  Across town there is an Edgehill Drive.  The numbering scheme is identical.  

I came home one day and found that I had all new aluminum gutters.  I was  pretty sure I had not ordered any new gutters.  I drove across town to Edgehill Drive and that house had new gutters too.  I rang the bell.

I asked, "Do you know anything about my new gutters?"

And the home owner replied, "The salesman showed up around noon time and asked where was his crew.  I said I had not seen them.  He then drove off.  When he came back he said that his crew had already pulled off all the gutters from the wrong house so he told them to put up new ones."

(I never heard back from the gutter company.  I did get all new aluminum gutters.  The old galvanized steel gutters did not leak.  I was going to paint them.  The steel was not prone to damage like the aluminum ones are.)

Haven't been through a winter with these gutters yet, so don't know whether snow and ice will damage them or not. I live in the woods so I don't know what other kind of damage they could get, failing a tree falling on the house. Anything can happen I suppose.

Doug

[Cooler]

Haven't been through a winter with these gutters yet, so don't know whether snow and ice will damage them or not. I live in the woods so I don't know what other kind of damage they could get, failing a tree falling on the house. Anything can happen I suppose.

Doug

In the 1970s I worked for a prime manufacture of gutters and downspouts.  We sold to large lumberyards all over the country.  We sold three grades, the grade difference being the thickness of the material, ranging from 24 gauge (0.020") to 22 gauge (0.026") to 20 gauge (0.032").  

Obviously, if you could afford it, you would buy the 20 gauge stuff.  (Downspout came in one grade only.)

The stuff the contractor put up was 24 gauge.  But since the gauge allows ± 0.002", it actually measures 0.019".  It's thicker than aluminum foil, but far from what you would want to put on your house.  The Home Depot did not call out the gauge, and I did not measure it.  I measured the old gutter when I cut it down.  Very flimsy.

I have a short piece left over from the Home Depot gutter, and I will measure it when I get home (or tomorrow since it is raining the remnants of Florence up here now).