Gutter repair and seamless gutters in Tampa

Tampa rain is a summer job with a hurricane on the end of it

Tampa gets 46 to 50 inches of rain a year, and most of it falls between June and September in afternoon storms that build over the Gulf and drop an inch or two in an hour. That is the flow rate that matters for a gutter, not the annual total. A 5-inch gutter with 2x3 downspouts, which is what most homes here were fitted with, is right at its limit on a single-story roof and past it on a two-story one. Then hurricane season adds wind, and wind finds every hanger that has already backed out of the fascia.

The ground is the other half of the story. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties are sand over limestone. There are no basements, homes sit on slabs or low stem walls, and water does not pool against the house so much as wash the sand out from under the edge of it. A downspout dumping at the corner of a slab for ten summers will leave a hollow you can put your arm in, and a cracked stucco corner above it.

Then there is the housing itself. Town 'n' Country, Temple Terrace, Carrollwood and most of the 1960s–80s neighborhoods across the bay are concrete-block homes, and a large share of them were built with no gutters at all. Their owners have lived with mud splashed up the block and a trench in the mulch for decades. Where gutters were added later, they are usually thin sectional aluminum on spike hangers, and near the water the steel screws and spikes have rusted while the aluminum is still fine.

What we do

Repair. Resealing corners and end caps, re-hanging runs that sag, replacing crushed or separated downspouts, adding a downspout where a long run only has one, and cutting out the rotted fascia behind a gutter that has overflowed for years. Most repairs are $150–$600 and done in a morning. The gutter repair page lists each job with a price. Storm damage goes to the front of the schedule; we photograph everything for your adjuster before we touch it.

Seamless installation and replacement. Aluminum run on site from a coil, 5-inch or 6-inch, with 3x4 downspouts sized to the roof area, and stainless fasteners on homes near the bay. Tear-off of the old system is included. See installation and replacement for what is included and pricing for the ranges.

First-time gutters on block homes. If the house never had them, the job is different: no tear-off, a check of whether the fascia can take hangers, and a plan for getting downspouts past the lanai or pool cage. That has its own page: first-time gutter installation.

Gutter guards. We install micro-mesh and screen guards and will tell you plainly which one survives live oak catkins, pine needles and palm debris, and which one does not. The gutter guards page goes tree by tree.

Gutter cleaning. Usually the first visit. Every foot cleared by hand, downspouts flushed, and a photo of anything we find. Gutter cleaning is priced by the house, not the hour.

Where we work

Tampa proper from Seminole Heights and Hyde Park out through Carrollwood, Town 'n' Country, Temple Terrace and Lutz; Brandon, Riverview and Plant City to the east; Wesley Chapel in Pasco; and across the bridges to St. Petersburg and Clearwater in Pinellas. Area codes 813 and 656 on the Tampa side, 727 across the bay. St. Petersburg and Clearwater have their own pages because the older housing and the salt air change the work: St. Petersburg and Clearwater.

The question people actually call with

It is usually one of three. Water is going over the front of the gutter in every afternoon storm even though it was cleaned in May: that is a capacity or pitch problem, and why gutters overflow in Tampa rain explains how to tell from the driveway. A section has come loose after a storm and is hanging over the driveway: call, and tell us it is storm damage. Or the house has no gutters, the foundation company or the pool contractor said to add them, and nobody knows what that costs on a block ranch. The answer for most of them is $1,500–$2,600, and it is on the cost page.