Seamless aluminum gutters on Cape Cod are a system, not a strip of metal. The run is formed on site from a coil so there are no joints to open up, the size is picked from the roof area and pitch feeding it, the hangers are spaced for wind rather than for a calm inland suburb, and the downspouts are counted and placed so the run empties before it overflows. Get those four decisions right and an aluminum gutter will outlast the shingles above it. Get them wrong and the gutter sags, pulls off the fascia in the first nor’easter, or dumps water at the foundation anyway.
Coast Carpentry Home Improvement installs seamless aluminum gutters on Cape Cod homes from Falmouth to Yarmouth, usually alongside a roof we are replacing but often as a job on its own. We are based at 14 Parker Rd, Unit A in Osterville, our crews bring more than 25 years of experience to exterior work on Cape houses, and the workmanship on every gutter run we hang carries our lifetime warranty. This post is the spec we size and hang to, written for a homeowner who wants to know what should be on the quote before the ladder goes up.
Key takeaways
- Seamless means the gutter is run on site from a coil in one piece per wall. The only joints are at the corners, the end caps and the outlets, which is where every leak on a sectional gutter starts.
- Most Cape roofs are fine with 5 inch K style gutter. A 6 inch gutter earns its place on a steep roof, a long roof plane that drains to one edge, or a cedar or metal roof that sheds water fast.
- In Cape wind, hidden hangers screwed into the rafter tails on 16 to 24 inch centers hold. Spike and ferrule gutters work loose with freeze and thaw and are what we take down most.
- Galvanized steel brackets and screws rust in salt air within a few seasons and streak the gutter. On the Cape, hangers are aluminum and screws are stainless or coated.
- A gutter run needs a downspout about every 30 to 40 feet, pitched a quarter inch per 10 feet toward it, and every downspout needs somewhere to send the water that is not the foundation.
What does seamless aluminum gutter actually mean?
The gutter machine rides in the truck. We measure the fascia, set the coil, and run out a length of K style gutter to the exact foot for that wall, whether it is 14 feet or 48. The profile is the same shape you see on most Cape houses, a flat back against the fascia and an ogee front that looks like a small crown moulding from the ground. The aluminum comes with a baked enamel finish in white, brown, clay, bronze or black, so it is painted once and never needs painting again.
Seamless is the answer to a specific Cape problem. Sectional gutter joints are sealed with a caulk that has to survive summer heat, winter ice, and salt. It does not survive long. Every spring we see sectional runs in Hyannis and Falmouth dripping at the same spot on every connector while the gutter itself is fine. Taking joints out of the straight runs removes the places that fail. The corners and outlets that remain are riveted and sealed from the inside, where the sealant is out of the sun.
Gauge matters too. Residential aluminum gutter comes in .027 and .032 inch thickness. We run .032 on anything 6 inch, on the north and east faces that carry snow load, and on long runs. The thinner coil is fine on a short sheltered run, but the heavier material holds its shape when a ladder leans on it or ice sits in it for three weeks in February.
Does a Cape Cod roof need 5 inch or 6 inch gutters?
The size question is a flow question. A 5 inch K style gutter carries roughly 1.2 gallons per foot and a 6 inch carries close to 2, so the bigger profile moves about 40 percent more water for a small bump in material. The downspout is the real bottleneck. A 3 by 4 inch downspout passes nearly twice the water of a 2 by 3, and on a 6 inch run it is not optional.
What decides it on a Cape house is how fast water arrives at the edge. A steep roof delivers rain to the gutter faster than a low one. A big unbroken plane, which is common on a full Cape or a gambrel with a wide back roof, concentrates everything along one eave. A nor’easter adds wind that drives rain down the roof in sheets rather than letting it drip. When two of those stack up, a 5 inch gutter overflows at the back lip in the worst ten minutes of the storm, which is exactly when you need it most.
| Profile | Where we use it on the Cape | Downspout | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 inch K style | Most Capes, ranches and gambrels with roof planes under about 1,000 square feet per eave and pitches up to 8 in 12 | 2 by 3 inch, one per 30 to 40 feet of run | Overflows on a steep or very wide plane in driving rain; fine for the usual Cape roof |
| 6 inch K style | Steep roofs, long single planes, cedar and standing seam roofs, additions where two roofs drain to one eave | 3 by 4 inch, same spacing, often one more than you would guess | Looks heavy on a small cottage with a short fascia; the .032 gauge is required |
One more sizing point. A 6 inch gutter needs about an inch more fascia height to hang properly. Older Capes in Barnstable and Sandwich often have a narrow 1 by 4 fascia, so the 6 inch call sometimes comes with a fascia build out or a replacement in cedar before the gutter goes on. We would rather tell you that on the estimate than discover it with the coil on the truck.
How are the gutters hung so a nor’easter does not pull them off?
The gutter does not fail in the middle of a straight run. It fails where it is attached. On an inland house a hanger every 36 inches is common and nobody notices. On a south facing eave in Mashpee or Yarmouth with Nantucket Sound wind coming straight at it, the gutter is a sail, and in winter it is a sail full of ice. Hangers go on 24 inch centers as a baseline, 16 to 18 on the exposed sides and on any run that will carry snow.
What the hanger screws into matters as much as the spacing. A screw into fascia board alone holds in dry wood and lets go in rotted wood. We locate the rafter tails behind the fascia and drive into them wherever we can, which also tells us the truth about the fascia. If the screw goes in soft, that section of fascia is coming off and being replaced before any gutter is hung on it. On the Cape that is often cedar, and we treat it as trim carpentry rather than a gutter afterthought.
Behind the gutter, a gutter apron or drip edge has to lap into the gutter so water running down the roof deck goes into the trough and not behind it. On a reroof we install it as part of the roof. On a gutter only job we check that it exists, because on a lot of older Cape houses it does not, and the stained fascia tells you so.
Why do steel gutter brackets rust on the Cape?
Drive down a street in Hyannis Port or Falmouth Heights and look at the gutters. The orange streaks below the gutter line are not the gutter. They are steel spikes and brackets bleeding rust down the front of an aluminum trough that is otherwise fine. Mixing the metals also sets up galvanic corrosion where they touch, so the aluminum around a steel fastener pits and the hole enlarges, which is how a gutter that looks solid pulls loose in a storm.
Our rule is simple. Everything that touches the gutter is aluminum or stainless. Hangers are aluminum. Screws through the hanger into the house are stainless or a coated fastener rated for coastal exposure. End caps, outlets and miters are aluminum, riveted with aluminum rivets. The painted finish on the gutter is the same baked enamel that stands up on the siding trim of coastal houses for decades, and a rinse with the hose once or twice a summer keeps the salt film from building up on the Sound and bay sides.
How many downspouts does a gutter run need, and where do they go?
A long Cape eave is the usual trouble. A 50 foot back roof on a gambrel with one downspout at one end means the far end of the gutter is holding water during a storm, and holding water is how a gutter sags and how ice forms in it. We put a downspout at both ends, set the high point in the middle, and the run drains in both directions. The pitch is small enough that you cannot see it from the yard, and it is still enough to empty the trough.
Placement is partly where the roof wants it and partly where the yard can take it. A downspout that lands on a walkway makes ice in January. One that empties next to a bulkhead door fills the basement. Cape soil is sand, which is a gift here. A buried line running to a dry well or to daylight on a slope lets the water soak in a few feet from the house, and it disappears. Where that is not practical, a splash block and a 3 to 4 foot extension at least gets it past the backfill.
What happens to a gutter under a cedar or standing seam roof?
We install both roofs, and both change the gutter spec. On a standing seam metal roof on Cape Cod, snow does not melt off gradually. It lets go all at once on a sunny afternoon, and a 20 foot slab of wet snow sliding into a gutter will take a 5 inch run and its hangers with it. Snow guards in rows above the eave break the slide, the gutter is hung with its front lip a touch below the roof plane so the slab can pass over it, and the hangers go on tighter centers.
A cedar shingle roof is a different animal. Cedar is rough, so it holds a little water and then releases a lot during a hard rain, and the eave can see a surge that a smooth asphalt roof does not deliver. That is one of the cases where we move to 6 inch. New cedar also bleeds tannin for its first year or two, which leaves brown streaks in a white gutter. A clay or bronze finish hides it, or we tell the owner to expect a rinse or two until the roof silvers.
Do gutter guards work under pitch pines and oaks?
Half the Cape sits under pitch pine and scrub oak, from the mid Cape through Mashpee and the pine belt south of Route 6 in Sandwich. Oak leaves are large and dry and a basic screen stops them. Pine needles are the problem. They are thin enough to lie across a screen and mat into a felt, and they ride water over the nose of a reverse curve cover and land in the gutter anyway. We have cleaned plenty of guarded gutters that were full of needles under the guard.
Our honest advice is that no guard ends gutter cleaning on a wooded Cape lot. The right guard cuts the job from twice a year to a quick check, keeps a gutter from filling solid while you are away for the winter, and keeps critters out. A micro mesh guard on a sloped frame sheds needles better than anything else, and it costs more than a basic screen. On a house in an open yard near the water with no trees over it, we usually tell the owner to skip the guard and spend the money on 6 inch gutter instead.
Do new gutters stop ice dams?
We get this question every January. The gutter is full of ice, there are icicles to the ground, and the owner wants to know if a new gutter will fix it. It will not. The fix for an ice dam is in the attic: air sealing, insulation and ventilation so the roof deck stays cold. We wrote up how that works and what the damage looks like in our post on ice dams on Cape Cod roofs.
What the gutter spec can do is stop the ice from making things worse. A spike and ferrule gutter loaded with ice pulls its spikes out of the fascia. A hidden hanger gutter on 16 inch centers holds. A gutter with no apron behind it lets meltwater run down the back of the trough and into the fascia and soffit. A gutter with the apron lapped in keeps that water in the trough until it thaws. Heat cable in the gutter is a band aid we will install when asked, but it is not a fix, and we say so.
When do you replace gutters instead of repairing them?
A lot of gutter repair on the Cape is really fascia repair. Once the hangers pull because the wood behind them is soft, re-hanging the old gutter into the same wood is a waste of a service call. We take the gutter down, replace the fascia in cedar or a matching trim, and then it is a judgment call whether the old aluminum is worth re-hanging. If it is sectional, it usually is not.
If you are trying to decide which side of that line your house is on, our earlier posts on the signs you really need new gutters and what to know before a gutter installation cover the inspection side. This post is the spec that should be on the quote once you have decided.
Get the gutter run sized before the next nor’easter
Coast Carpentry Home Improvement sizes, forms and hangs seamless aluminum gutters across Cape Cod, from Falmouth and Mashpee through Barnstable, Sandwich, Hyannis and Yarmouth, on their own or as part of a roof replacement. We look at the roof area and pitch, the fascia, the trees and where the water can go, and we put the gutter size, hanger spacing and downspout count on the estimate so you can see the system you are buying. Request a free estimate or read more about our gutter installation and repair services.
Frequently asked questions
How long do seamless aluminum gutters last on Cape Cod?
The aluminum itself does not rust, so the trough lasts as long as the hangers and the sealed corners do. A seamless run hung on aluminum hidden hangers with stainless screws, sized for the roof and kept clear of debris, is measured in decades on the Cape. The runs that fail early are sectional gutters with leaking joints, gutters hung on steel spikes that rusted, and gutters that were too small and sat full of water every storm.
Can seamless gutters be installed in winter on Cape Cod?
Yes, with limits. The aluminum can be formed and hung in cold weather, and we hang gutters through the winter when the roof is clear. Sealant at the corners and outlets needs a dry day above freezing to cure properly, so we schedule around that. Ice on the roof edge stops the work until it clears, both for the sealant and because the gutter apron has to go on under the shingles.
What color gutter should I pick for a Cape style house?
Match the trim, not the siding. On a white trimmed cedar shingle Cape, white gutter disappears against the fascia. On a house with dark trim or a dark roof, a bronze or black gutter reads as part of the roof edge. Brown and clay hide the tannin streaks a new cedar roof leaves. The baked enamel finish is the same on every color, so the choice is cosmetic, and we bring the color chart to the estimate.
Are copper or half round gutters worth it on a historic Cape house?
On a house in a historic district along Route 6A or in a village center, half round gutters in copper or in aluminum painted to match look right on the older trim profiles, and copper will outlast anything. The cost is well above an aluminum K style run, so most owners reserve it for the street facing eaves and run matching aluminum on the back. If a historic commission reviews the house, confirm what it expects before the gutters are ordered.
Do I need gutters on every side of the house?
Usually on every eave, not on the gable ends, since gables shed water along the rake rather than off the edge. The eaves that need gutters most are the ones over a door, a walkway, a bulkhead or a foundation wall that already shows water staining. On a Cape with a long overhang and sandy soil, a short sheltered eave over a bed of crushed stone can sometimes go without, and we will say so if that is the case.
We serve Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Coast Carpentry Home Improvement works across all 15 Cape Cod towns, from Bourne out to Provincetown. We do not take projects outside the Cape.
On the Cape and looking for an estimate? Call (508) 360-9658 or send us a message.
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Coast Carpentry Home Group provides roofing services on Cape Cod. Licensed, insured, and local, with 25+ years of experience. Call (508) 360-9658 for a free estimate.