Gutter Repair in Massachusetts

Local know-how

Nor'easters, triple-deckers and Cape salt air across Massachusetts

Massachusetts packs a lot of different gutter weather into a small state. Boston and the coast get about 45 inches of rain and melted snow a year and around 45 inches of snow, while the hills of Worcester County and the Berkshires get far more snow and colder nights. Nor'easters are the storms that matter most: they arrive with wind off the ocean, drive rain sideways under shingles and drip edges, and in winter can bury the interior under two feet of snow in a day. The Blizzard of 1978 still sets the standard people measure storms by, and the winter of 2015, when Boston logged more than 100 inches, showed how much weight a roof edge can be asked to carry.

The housing is old. Massachusetts has more homes built before 1940 than most states, from First Period saltboxes and Federal houses in Salem, Newburyport and Concord to the Victorian streetcar suburbs of Somerville, Cambridge and Dorchester and the three-story wood triple-deckers of Worcester, Fall River, New Bedford and Lowell. Many of those houses were built with wooden gutters fixed to the eave or with gutters set into the roof itself, and a lot of them have been patched by several generations of owners.

Debris follows the forest. Oaks, red maples, sugar maples and white pines cover most of the state outside the cities, and they fill gutters from September through November. On Cape Cod and the islands, pitch pines and scrub oaks drop needles and small leaves, while salt spray attacks metal.

Because so much of the housing is old and much of the state is wooded, a gutter visit in Massachusetts often turns up more than a clog: rotted trim, a failing wooden trough, or a downspout still piped into an old clay line.

Wooden gutters on New England houses

Fir and cedar gutters milled from a single timber are still found on colonial and Greek Revival homes from the North Shore to the Pioneer Valley. They look right on these houses and can last half a century or more when they are kept clean and oiled every few years. They fail at the joints and outlets first, where water sits. A rotted end section can be replaced with a new length of matching profile, and most shops that work on historic homes can source it.

Replacing wood with aluminum on a house in a local historic district may need approval, so check with the town's historical commission before signing a contract.

Triple-deckers in the mill cities

The triple-decker was built in huge numbers between about 1880 and 1930 in Worcester, Boston's neighborhoods, Fall River, New Bedford, Lowell, Lawrence and Brockton. Each house carries three stacked porches and a gutter set thirty feet or more above the ground. Cleaning and repair on these homes usually means staging or a lift, and the long downspouts need straps every few feet so the wind off a nor'easter cannot pull them free.

Ice dams and the Mass Save program

Ice dams are the most common winter roof complaint in the state. Heat escaping from a poorly insulated attic melts the snow, and the water freezes again at the cold overhang. The ice backs up under the shingles and leaks into walls and ceilings. Mass Save, the state's energy efficiency program run through the utilities, has long offered home energy assessments and incentives for insulation and air sealing, which is the lasting cure. Heat cable is a stopgap for the worst eaves.

Cape Cod, the islands and salt air

On Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, cedar shingle houses with white trim often wear copper or aluminum gutters, and salt air ruins steel fasteners in a few seasons. Stainless screws and aluminum or copper hangers last much longer. Many Cape houses are second homes that sit empty in autumn, so owners book a cleaning after the oaks and pitch pines finish and before the winter storms. Nantucket's historic district commission reviews exterior changes across the island, gutters included.

The Berkshires and the hill towns

In Pittsfield, Lenox, Great Barrington and the hill towns of western Massachusetts, snow loads are heavy and winters are long. Gutters need hidden hangers at close spacing, snow guards on metal roofs, and downspouts that drain away from walks so they do not freeze into a sheet of ice. Many older farmhouses here have no gutters at all on some sides, and drip trenches filled with stone do the job instead.

Boston, Cambridge and the inner suburbs

In Boston's brownstone and row house neighborhoods, many roofs are flat and drain through internal conductors or scuppers to the street or alley. Detached houses in Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Brookline and Quincy usually have hung gutters on tight lots, where a ladder has to be set in a driveway a few feet from the neighbors. The Boston Water and Sewer Commission and several suburbs have worked to separate roof drains from combined sewers, and new downspout connections to the sewer are often restricted.

Pioneer Valley and the Connecticut River

Springfield, Holyoke, Northampton and Amherst sit in the Connecticut River valley, where summer storms are heavy and the autumn leaf drop from maples and oaks is large. Holyoke's brick mill-worker blocks and Springfield's Victorian streets in Forest Park and McKnight have many original built-in or wooden gutters. Low-lying lots near the river and its tributaries want their downspouts run out past the basement corners.

Wetlands rules and where roof water goes

Massachusetts has some of the strictest wetlands protection in the country. Under the state Wetlands Protection Act, work near a wetland, stream, pond or coastal bank can need a filing with the local conservation commission, and that can include new drainage that sends roof water toward a resource area. For ordinary gutter replacement this rarely applies, but a new buried downspout line or dry well near water is worth a quick call to the commission first.