Downspout Installation ?

Question

I am having a re-roof done including new gutters and downspouts. The gutter guy came out yesterday and installed the gutters and downspouts.

Some of the downspouts are not perpendicular. If I measure the distance in from the end of the house to the downspout, I get 7 inches at the top of the downspout and about 6 in at the bottom of the downspout, so about an inch difference, from a distance this is noticeable to the eye. This is a single story Ranch style home, so the downspouts are about 7 feet long.

In other spots the distance is 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch.

Besides visually not being straight is there any disadvantage?

Screws into plastic anchors into the stucco hold the downspout straps in.

Am I being anal? Should I just reposition them myself, or call the roofing company?

LouB · Accepted Answer

You paid them.  Makes one wonder about the quality of the rest of the job.  They do not seem to care about the quality of their work.Lou

jloomis · Answer

These gutter guys promise the moon.........I have seen installations and now that it is in........too late.....The reason they did that was for ease of construction......Less bends......and also maybe less places for debris to hang up.If it is a cosmetic repair.........and the worry about debris is not an aspectI would ask them to hug it to the wall......They use glue for sealing gutters.......some of the gutters were standing water...The gutters are easily dinged or damaged......They are seamless, and look nice from a distance, and lots less problems than plastic.It is a toss up.good luckjloomis

Don Young · Answer

They may have installed them plumb and it's your walls which are off. I personally would have them follow the walls a bit closer but I think what you have is not unusual and I would not worry about it. A lot of houses are not very straight, level, square, or plumb and nobody ever notices.

Don Young

Dioclese · Answer

Minor angularity should not functionally affect the water flow of the downspout. Though, its not terribly difficult to maintain a downspout parallel with the average house. Where they chose to connect the downspout with the house can cause problems with parallelism, considering brackets available to them.

More importantly, the downspout should be pointed away from the house at its termination. A splashblock should be used to minimize soil erosion. All water should flow away from the house. Never settle near or at its foundation.

gudi · Answer

Since you checked it out after the roofer left, you could ask him  toredo the job to your satisfaction now, including a much smaller extrapayment.

Reno · Answer

There may be an advantage to having the downspout slightly out of vertical. I deliberately added some slope to one of my downspouts in my old house because it made a loud dripping moise anytime there was even the slightest rain. It was loud and it lasted for hours and it was right beside my bedroom window. A bit of slope helped the water run along the walls of the downspout rather than freefall. The noise stopped.

Perhaps your contractor used a small amount of slope for a similar reason. I think it may be good practice to not install downstops perfectly vertical because it avoids noisy dripping.

dpb · Answer

...More than likely the contractor wasn't that prescient but simply not careful in measuring.One can eliminate the problem noted and still have the visual symmetry of the downspouts being parallel to the corners by hanging a light chain or other item down the spout if there is a drip problem such as you have.--

Downspout Installation ?

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