A lot of the older houses in Lakewood still hang painted steel gutters, and from the sidewalk most of them look fine. That is the trouble with steel. It rusts from the inside of the trough outward, and by the time the front face blisters, the metal behind it has been going for a long time.
When do old steel gutters need replacing?
When rust has gone through the metal instead of sitting on the paint, and when it has gone through in more than one place on the same run. One pinhole by an outlet is a repair. Two or three holes along a run, or a seam split open, say the rest of that trough is the same age and in the same shape, and that is when gutter replacement in Lakewood costs less than chasing holes.
Age by itself does not settle it. Two steel runs hung the same year can be far apart in condition, depending on how long leaves sat in them and whether anyone kept the paint up. The read below goes by what the metal shows.
Are my gutters steel or aluminum?
Put a magnet on it. A magnet sticks to steel and does not stick to aluminum, which settles the question faster than color or age. Try it from a ladder at the lowest point of the run, on the end cap or right beside the downspout outlet, where the paint is usually thin enough for good contact. A strong magnet holds through paint anyway.
There are other tells, and none of them is as reliable as the magnet. Steel gutter came in sections, so an old run usually has a lap joint every ten feet or so. Sectional aluminum has those too, which is why the joints alone do not decide it. Dents and stiffness help a little. Aluminum gutter on an older house usually carries soft, rounded dings from branches and hail, and its front lip gives under a firm hand. Steel barely flexes, and it tends to keep its shape until rust weakens a spot.
Check the downspouts on their own. They get crushed and swapped on a different schedule from the gutters, so a steel gutter feeding an aluminum downspout, or the other way around, is common on a house that has been patched over the years.
Where does a steel gutter rust first?
Inside the trough, along the bottom, where leaves and shingle grit sit wet for weeks at a time. Next come the seams, the spot under each hanger where the strap or spike holds water against the metal, and the ring of metal around the outlet hole. The painted front face, the part you see from the street, is usually the last place it shows.
The zinc coating on galvanized steel is what kept these gutters from rusting in their first years. Our judgment is that the coating gives out first where water stays on it longest, which on a gutter means the bottom of the trough under a wet mat of leaves. And the inside of a gutter rarely gets repainted, since nobody sees it.
From the ground, three signs mean the inside has started:
- Orange or brown streaks on the fascia, the siding, or a porch post below one spot on the run. Rusty water is leaving through a hole and staining whatever it lands on.
- Paint lifting off the face of the gutter in patches, often near a hanger or a joint, where rust underneath is pushing it off.
- A drip from the middle of a run with no seam anywhere near it.
The worst run on the house is usually the one under the biggest tree, and on a double it is often the shaded driveway side, which stays damp longest after a rain. A drip right at a joint can be old sealant rather than rust, and where the water comes over the gutter sorts seam drips from the other causes.
How do you tell rust on the paint from rust through the metal?
Scrape it. Rust that sits on or under the paint flakes off with a wire brush and leaves hard grey metal underneath. Rust that has gone through leaves a soft spot that gives under a screwdriver tip, a pinhole you can see daylight through from inside the trough, or a seam that has opened. The first kind can be cleaned and painted. The second kind is a hole, or about to be.
Do it from a ladder at the downspout end, on a dry day with the trough cleaned out, because that end is the lowest point and the outlet is where water has sat the longest. Look down into the bottom of the trough. Reddish scale on old steel is normal. Scale that comes up in layers and leaves thin, pitted metal behind it is not. Press the screwdriver into the bottom near the outlet and again under the nearest hanger, gently. Sound steel does not move. Then look at the ring around the outlet hole, which is often the first part to go, and a downspout hanging loose from the gutter is usually the sign that it has.
This is a judgment call at the edges. Pitting that has not gone through yet will get there, but a run with pitting and no soft spots has more time than one where the screwdriver goes in.
Can a rusted steel gutter be patched?
Yes, for a while. A metal patch bedded in sealant, or roof cement over a pinhole, usually stops that drip. It does nothing for the rest of the trough. The same wet leaves sat along the whole run, so the next hole tends to open a foot or two from the patch, in metal that was just as thin when the first one went in.
Patching is honest work in a narrow case. One hole near an outlet, or one bad end cap, on a run that passes the screwdriver test everywhere else, is a gutter repair visit and worth doing. Once a run has been patched more than once or twice, the money is going toward finding holes one at a time in metal that is the same age from end to end.
Does painting steel gutters make them last longer?
On the outside, it mostly makes them look better. Paint is what protects old steel once the zinc is worn away, but painting the front face does nothing for the inside of the trough, which is where steel rusts first. A fresh coat on the outside of a gutter rusting from the inside hides the problem for a few years.
Painting the inside is possible. It means cleaning the trough down to dry metal, knocking off the scale, and coating the bottom, which is a lot of ladder work. On steel that is still hard and sound, that buys real time. On steel that already has soft spots, the paint goes over the holes.
What does replacing steel gutters with seamless aluminum cost in Lakewood?
Seamless 5-inch aluminum, installed with downspouts, runs $9 to $14 per foot in Lakewood. A colonial with about 150 feet of gutter lands around $1,400 to $2,100 with downspouts. Taking the old steel down and hauling it off is part of the job. On a two-and-a-half story double, the height is what moves the number most.
The 6-inch and half-round rows are in the full table of what new seamless gutters cost.
One thing the price cannot know ahead of time is the wood behind the steel. A gutter that has been leaking from its bottom for years has been wetting the fascia board the whole time, and that board gets looked at once the old run is down, before anything new is hung on it.
Can one rusted run be replaced and the rest kept?
Yes, when the other runs pass the same read: hard metal under the scale, no soft spots, no open seams. The rear run under a maple often rusts through well before the front one does. The new aluminum gets matched to the profile of the steel that stays, and where new meets old at a corner, the joint gets sealed.
Profile is the bigger question at that corner than color. A K-style steel run meets a new K-style run cleanly, and anything older or odder in shape makes matching the first thing on the quote. Splitting the work between the two sides of a double is its own question, and the seamless gutters page answers that one.