When the drive runs past the house to a detached garage behind it, the garage roof ends a few feet from something, the fence or the neighbor’s yard on one side and the drive on the other. Rain off that roof has to land somewhere close.
Do you need gutters on a detached garage?
Not always. It depends on where each eave drips. An eave over open lawn on your own side, where the water has room to spread, is fine left bare. An eave that drips onto the apron in front of the door, a walk, the base of the garage wall or across the lot line wants a gutter, and hanging one is new gutter installation in Lakewood, the same job as on the house.
A garage that has gone decades without a gutter leaves a record on the ground below the eave: a line of bare dirt, or gravel washed clean, right where the roof has been landing its water.
A gutter does add one more run to keep clear. Under a backyard maple it fills on the same schedule as the house, and it goes on the same gutter cleaning visit.
Where does the garage roof’s water go without a gutter?
Straight down, along the whole length of each eave. A garage roof is small, but all the rain that falls on it leaves at the edge in one line, and on a narrow lot that line tends to land on something hard or something shared. Where it lands decides what it does:
- On the apron in front of the door, where you walk and drive. In winter it freezes there, and a ridge of ice builds under the eave at the spot where the door comes down. The door’s bottom seal can freeze to it.
- Against the bottom of the garage wall, where splash off the ground keeps the lower siding and the wood sill wet.
- Along the edge of the slab, washing out the soil beside the concrete.
- Into the strip between the garage and the fence. On a narrow lot that strip may be a foot or two of ground, and what it can’t soak up runs on into the next yard.
- Across a shared drive, where it sheets toward the other house and freezes on concrete both households use.
Which side of the garage needs the gutter?
The eave that drips onto something. On a gable-roof garage only the two eave sides shed water, and the gable ends stay dry. Start with the eave over the door, then whichever one drips toward the lot line. A run on one eave only is a normal job.
Which side that is depends on how the roof sits. When the ridge runs across the front, parallel with the door, one eave drips straight across the door opening onto the apron, and that is the first gutter. When the door is in the gable end, the eaves run down the sides of the garage, so one of them usually drips toward the fence or the next lot and the other toward your own yard or the drive. A hip roof slopes on all four sides and drips on all four.
Where can a garage downspout drain on a small lot?
Onto ground or pavement on your own side that carries the water away. That can be the drive where it falls toward the street, a splash block set under the elbow, or an extension aimed at open ground in your own yard. It never goes onto the neighbor’s yard, even when that is the shortest way out.
A run along the fence gets its downspout at the end where an elbow can turn the water back onto your side. A run over the door drains to the corner away from where you walk. An extension to carry the water past a bed or a flat patch of yard runs $40 to $120 each.
Some old garages have a clay pipe coming out of the ground at one corner, left from a downspout that was there once or a line run toward the house’s drain. Nobody should assume it still works. It gets a flow check before anything is tied into it, the same check laid out for a downspout that runs into a pipe in the ground.
Can a gutter hang on an old garage with no fascia board?
Yes, once there is solid wood under it. Many old garages end the roof in bare rafter ends or a thin trim strip, with no fascia board at all. Hangers need wood that holds a screw, so a board goes on across the rafter ends first, or the hangers go into the rafter ends themselves. Ends gone soft from years under the drip get fixed before any run goes up, as gutter repair does with soft wood on the house.
What does a new gutter on a garage cost and involve?
A short seamless run for each eave that needs one, formed on the truck to that eave’s length, hung on hidden hangers screwed into solid wood, with one downspout per run as a rule and the color matched to the house trim. Installed 5-inch seamless with downspouts runs $9 to $14 per ft around Lakewood, and 5-inch is the normal size on a garage.
That is the same row the house is priced from, on the table of what seamless runs cost per foot. A garage can be quoted by itself or along with the house. When the house is getting new gutters anyway, the garage run comes off the same coil in the same color, and the order the work goes in is laid out under how a seamless gutter installation goes.
What moves the quote is the wood at the roof edge and how many eaves get a run. Both get looked at on the visit.