Gutter repair in St. Louis

Gutter repair, St. Louis, MO: the common jobs

Most St. Louis houses need one of five repairs, and the first is the freeze-thaw special.

Gutter leak repair. St. Louis sealant gets cooked in July and cracked by ice in January, and after ten or twelve years a mitered corner lets go, usually on the south or west side first. The fix is to scrape the joint to bare metal, dry it, and reseal it with a polyurethane or tripolymer sealant that stays flexible below freezing; if the miter itself is split, the corner gets replaced. It's normally $150–$250. The corner leak guide explains why a reseal holds or doesn't.

Sagging gutter repair. St. Louis County's 1960s–90s subdivisions were built with spike-and-ferrule hangers, and they back out of the fascia a fraction every winter as the wood swells and shrinks. The run drops in the middle, water pools, ice forms there, and the weight pulls the next spike. A contractor re-hangs it on hidden screw hangers every 24 inches — 18 on runs that carry a lot of roof or ice — and resets the pitch. Expect $150–$300 per run; sagging gutters, hangers and re-hangs goes deeper.

Downspout repair. St. Louis downspouts get crushed by mowers and cars, and the elbows pull apart when ice forms in them. The section is replaced and strapped, often upsized to 3x4 if the run carries enough roof, and the bottom should be routed away from the foundation. Usually $120–$220; leaks at outlets and elbows covers the details.

Storm-pulled sections. A line of thunderstorms comes through in May and the gutter that was already loose ends up on the lawn. Straight sections can be re-hung; kinked ones are replaced to match the profile and color. If it was hail or wind, photograph the damage yourself from the ground before anything is moved, and check your policy or ask your agent what it covers.

Fascia and soffit repair. St. Louis fascia rots behind gutters that overflowed for years, and hangers won't hold in soft wood. The rotten section is cut out, the rafter tails checked, primed lumber or PVC trim installed, and the gutter re-hung. It's priced per foot; the fascia and soffit guide has the detail.

Copper and half-round work — soldered seams, failed brackets, a section a previous owner patched with caulk — is on its own page: copper and half-round gutters.

Repair or replace?

Aluminum, under about 20 years old, problems in one or two places: repair. Sectional with a seam every ten feet, galvanized steel that's rusting through, or more than a third of the runs needing work: replace, because you'll spend a replacement's worth of money patching it over two seasons and still have old gutters. Copper is the exception — it's almost always worth repairing. A good estimate shows that math, and the whole decision is written out in repair vs. replacement in St. Louis.

What a good repair visit looks like

1. Every run checked from a ladder, not the driveway, with a screwdriver in the fascia at the corners.
2. A look at where each downspout ends. If it dumps at the foundation, extensions belong on the estimate, because that's the cheapest thing you can do for a St. Louis basement.
3. A written price before work starts, with no pressure to sign on the spot.
4. A hose run through the repaired section before the contractor leaves.

Affordable gutter repair mostly comes down to catching problems early: repairing a gutter at one corner in September costs far less than replacing the fascia under it in March. If you want to narrow it down first, how to find a gutter leak covers the hose test, and why gutters overflow in St. Louis rain explains the overflow that isn't a leak.

What a repair won't fix

A 5-inch gutter with a single 2x3 downspout on a 50-foot run will go over the edge in a Missouri thunderstorm no matter how well it's sealed. That's a capacity problem. The fix is a second downspout, a 3x4 upgrade, or a 6-inch run on that side, and a good contractor will tell you when you'd be paying to reseal something that was never sized for the roof. The installation guide explains sizing.

Common repair mistakes

• Caulk over dirt. Sealant smeared over old sealant and grit peels off by the next winter. The joint has to be scraped and cleaned to bare metal first.
• New spikes in old holes. Driving a longer spike back into a hole that has already let go holds for a season. Screw hangers into sound wood are the lasting fix.
• Re-hanging on soft fascia. If a screwdriver sinks into the board, the board comes first. A hanger is only as strong as the wood behind it.
• Fixing the corner and ignoring the outlet. A downspout that still dumps at the foundation means the basement keeps getting wet, even with a perfect gutter above it.
• Paying twice for one problem. A run that overflows because it has one small downspout won't be cured by a reseal. Ask what caused the failure, not just what failed.

Questions to ask before you approve a repair

1. What exactly failed, and why did it fail?
2. Is the fascia sound behind the repair, and how was that checked?
3. What sealant or hanger will be used, and how far apart are the hangers?
4. Will the downspout outlet be moved or extended as part of the price?
5. If the same spot fails again, what happens?

Clear answers to those five questions are worth more than a low number. A contractor who explains the cause is usually the one who fixes it once.

Where this guide applies

Rain gutter repair in St. Louis looks different by neighborhood. The city's South Side — Tower Grove, Shaw, Holly Hills, St. Louis Hills, Bevo — and the Central West End have older brick and half-round gutters; Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Clayton and University City mix old and mid-century; Florissant, Hazelwood and North County, and Ballwin, Manchester, Chesterfield and Wildwood, are mostly aluminum on 1960s–90s houses. Across the Missouri River the work is different from city gutter repair; St. Charles, MO and St. Peters subdivisions from the 1990s and 2000s more often need a second downspout than a reseal. Kirkwood has its own guide. Requests from this site go to an independent local contractor partner.