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Most gutter trouble starts at a seam. Sectional gutters come in 10-foot pieces, and every place two pieces meet is held together by sealant. After a few hot summers and wet winters that sealant shrinks and splits, and the joint starts dripping. On a long ranch house in Santa Rosa, that can mean a dozen joints along the front alone, each one leaking a little onto the siding or the walkway. Seamless gutters skip all of that. We bring a forming machine to the house, feed it a coil of metal and roll out each gutter to the exact length of the roof edge it's going on. What's left are a few corner joints and the downspout outlets, the easiest spots on the house to seal and check.
This page goes over how to spot gutters that are finished, which metal to choose, what happens during the install and what it all costs here. If your old gutters are already sagging or rotting the boards behind them, read our gutter replacement page to see how we handle taking an old system down first. You'll get a written number before any work is scheduled, with no pressure to book.
When Your Old Gutters Have Had Enough
Some signs are obvious from the driveway. Gutters that tilt away from the roof, overflow in the middle of a run or drip from every joint during a storm aren't doing their job. Others take a closer look: rust lines on the underside of steel gutters, peeling paint and dark streaks on the fascia, washed-out soil or a muddy strip right under the roof edge, and spikes backing out of the boards. Stained siding under a corner usually means that joint failed years ago, and a gutter that's been re-sealed three times in five years is telling you something. If several of these show up on the same house, patching them one at a time tends to cost more over a few winters than a new seamless system would.
Picking the Metal: Aluminum, Steel or Copper
Aluminum is what most Sonoma County homes get, and for good reason. It doesn't rust, it's light enough that the hangers don't strain the fascia, and it comes in a long list of factory colors, so there's nothing to paint. Steel is heavier and stands up better to a falling branch or a ladder leaned against it, but once the coating gets scratched it can rust, which is why old steel gutters are often orange at the seams. Copper is the long-haul choice. It never needs paint, it weathers to brown and then green, and it suits older homes around the Sonoma Plaza and Healdsburg's historic blocks. It also costs several times more than aluminum. Whatever the metal, we pick the gutter width from the roof area that drains into each run, not from the size of the house.
Install Day, Step by Step
The old gutters come down first, and we check the fascia boards they were hiding. If any wood is soft or rotted, you'll see it before a new gutter goes on. Next comes a final measurement of each roof edge, and the forming machine gets set up in the driveway. Each gutter comes out as one piece, gets its end caps and downspout outlets, and goes up on hidden hangers screwed into the fascia about every two feet. We set the slope so water runs toward the downspouts, usually around a quarter inch of drop for every 10 feet of gutter. Downspouts go on last, with elbows and extensions so the water lands away from the house. Before we leave, we run a hose through the system to check the flow and haul the old gutters away.
What New Gutters Cost in Sonoma County
Price comes down to three things: the total footage of roof edge, the metal, and how hard the roof is to reach. Recent Santa Rosa pricing puts seamless aluminum somewhere between about $7 and $12 a foot, installed. On a typical home that works out to something like $700 for 100 feet up to about $2,400 for 200 feet, before guards or extra downspouts. Two-story homes, steep lots and copper all push the number up. Homes in Windsor and other newer subdivisions often have long, simple rooflines, which keeps the cost per foot down. Older houses with lots of corners, bump-outs and short runs take more time. Most people also replace the downspouts at the same visit, since old ones rarely line up with new outlets. We measure every edge before we give you a number, and the estimate costs nothing.
If the trees over your roof drop leaves all fall, ask about adding gutter guards while the new gutters are going up, since doing both in one visit costs less.
Common Questions
They can, but there are far fewer places for it to happen. A seamless run only has joints at the corners, the end caps and the downspout outlets, and those get sealed when the gutter goes up. Most leaks we see on seamless gutters come from a corner that was never sealed well, a run hung too flat so water sits in it, or a clog that sends water over the top. All three can be fixed without replacing the gutter.
They cost more than sectional gutters from a home store, and they're not a DIY job, since it takes a forming machine to make them. If a falling branch dents one run, that whole run gets replaced rather than a single 10-foot piece. Color choices are limited to the coil stock, though there are plenty to pick from. For most Sonoma County homes, the drop in leaks and upkeep over the years outweighs those tradeoffs.
The crew brings a gutter machine on a trailer or in the truck, loaded with a big coil of flat aluminum, steel or copper. We feed the coil in, and the machine bends it into the gutter shape as it rolls out, then we cut it to the exact length of that roof edge. A long run comes out in one piece in a few minutes. That's why the gutter matches your house to the inch instead of being pieced together from stock lengths.