Gutter guards in Barnstable, MA

Three ways to guard a Barnstable gutter, and the price of each

Start with the gutter you have. Walk around the house after a heavy rain and look at the runs. If they hold a straight line, water leaves through the downspouts, and the seams are dry, the gutter is worth keeping. Put a guard on top and you are done. If a run sags between hangers, drips at the corners or has pulled away from the fascia, a guard will not save it. Buy the gutter and the guard together.

For a gutter worth keeping, there is Gutter Clean Pro. It sits on the gutter you already own and keeps leaves and twigs out of the trough. It is $18 a foot over 5-inch gutter and $20 over 6-inch. If we think your gutters are near the end of their life, we will tell you on the call, before you pay for a guard that outlives them.

For a new gutter, T-Rex is where we start when a Barnstable house needs a new gutter. The guard and the hanger are one aluminum piece that runs the full length of a new seamless gutter, so the gutter is held all along its length. There are no spikes every couple of feet to work loose when a limb comes down or a wet load of leaves sits in the trough. T-Rex is $25 a foot in 5-inch and $29 in 6-inch.

DoublePro is T-Rex with a second, finer perforated layer under the top one. It is the choice where the roof catches pine needles, oak catkins and the grit that washes off old shingles. DoublePro carries a lifetime clog-free warranty, pine needles included. It is $30 a foot in 5-inch and $34 in 6-inch.

Two lines sit outside the gutter rate. Downspouts are $14 a foot for the standard size and $16 for the larger one, and taking down an old gutter is $1 a foot. Your quote lists them separately, and the pricing page shows the same numbers every caller hears.

Barnstable's villages, its trees and the 2021 storm

Barnstable is a big town made of villages. It runs from Cape Cod Bay on the north to Nantucket Sound on the south, with Sandwich and Mashpee to the west and Yarmouth to the east. Its villages are Barnstable village, Centerville, Cotuit, Hyannis, Marstons Mills, Osterville and West Barnstable. Hyannis is the largest, holds the town hall, and is the business center of the whole Cape. Most people live on the south side, many near the beaches of Centerville and Hyannis harbors. The north side runs out to the Sandy Neck dunes along Barnstable Harbor.

Most of the housing is houses. Census estimates count 27,656 housing units in town, and about 81% of them, 22,366, are detached single-family. The median one was built in 1978. The 1970s and 1980s are the two biggest building decades, with about 6,500 units each, so a large share of Barnstable houses are now more than 35 years old. Whether the gutter on yours is the first one is the first thing we ask. There is an older layer too: 2,780 units date from 1939 or earlier.

The middle of town is pine and oak country, thickest around Wequaquet Lake. Oaks drop leaves and catkins. Pines drop needles all year, and needles slip through coarse screens. That mix is why we often point Barnstable callers toward DoublePro's finer second layer when the tree line comes right up to the roof.

Those trees also come down. After the nor'easter of October 27, 2021, Patch reported that nearly 640 trees had fallen in Barnstable. The storm blocked more than 120 roads and broke 140 utility poles, and the next morning more than 21,000 Barnstable accounts were still without power, according to the state's emergency management agency. A limb on a spiked gutter can fold a whole run. A gutter carried on a continuous hanger takes the hit along its length.

Most guards cope fine with a drizzle. Trouble starts in a downpour. The nearest long-record NOAA station is at Barnstable Municipal Airport in Hyannis. Its 1991-2020 normals show 44.70 inches of precipitation a year, about 11 days with an inch of rain or more, about 30 days with half an inch or more, and about 108 nights at or below freezing. Those are the airport's numbers, not a reading from your street, but they set the test: a guard has to take a hard inch of rain without spilling over the front.

If your house is north of Route 6, it sits inside the Old King's Highway Regional Historic District. The district dates from 1973, runs north of the Mid Cape Highway from Sandwich to Orleans, and is described as the largest historic district in the nation. In Brewster, farther along the district, the town committee reviews any change to the exterior of a building. We could not read Barnstable's own committee pages, so we will not guess at its rules. Ask the town before work starts, and we will build the plan around the answer.

What do gutter guards cost for a Barnstable house?

It is a per-foot price, installed. Gutter Clean Pro over your existing gutters is $18 a foot in 5-inch and $20 in 6-inch. A new gutter with T-Rex is $25 and $29. With DoublePro it is $30 and $34. Downspouts and removal of the old gutter are their own lines.

The total depends on how many feet of eave the house has, how many stories, and how many downspouts. We measure the roofline remotely and give you the number on the same call. Nobody comes to the door to sell. The certified installer arrives with the plan you already approved in writing.

Will a guard stand up to a Cape nor'easter?

A guard cannot stop a tree. What the system can do is hold the gutter firmly enough that a heavy load of wet leaves, snow or a small limb does not pull it off the house. That comes down to how the gutter hangs. T-Rex and DoublePro are the hanger, running the full length of the run, so there is no row of spikes to loosen.

Wind-driven rain is the other half. When the rain comes in sideways off the water, a roof valley can send a lot of water to one short stretch of gutter. On the call we ask where your gutters spill now, because that is where the downspouts may need to be added or upsized. The overflow page explains what we look at.

Are gutter guards worth it under Barnstable's pines?

Under pines, yes, more often than not. Needles fall in every season, so an open gutter under a pine is never clean for long, and a coarse screen lets needles through. A guard with a fine layer keeps them on top, where the wind and rain move them along.

A guard is not worth it on a house with no trees near the roof, or on a gutter that is about to fail. If either is true, we will say so on the call. The page on whether guards are worth it lays out the trade.

Call to install: every step

Three ways to start

• Call (617) 401-9301. It is answered any hour, and a missed call gets called back.
• Send the short form on the home page with your street address, and your number lands in your inbox.
• Text or chat through the chat window on this site.

1. 01

   Understand what you actually need

   About fifteen minutes on the phone: the length of the roofline, the number of stories and the trees around the house. The roofline is measured remotely, so nobody comes to the house to sell. You get your price the same day, from the published per-foot rates.

   • Gutters still in good shape: Gutter Clean Pro goes over the gutters you already have, from $18/ft.
   • Gutters that need replacing: new gutters with the guard built in. T-Rex (continuous hanger) from $25/ft, or DoublePro (two filtration layers) from $30/ft.
   • Fascia that cannot be drilled: Hover Pro, quoted for your house.
   • Complex rooflines, third stories and copper are quoted separately, and we say so on the call, never after arrival.
2. 02

   Your plan, in writing

   You get a written quote and your StormRail plan: photos of your house, the system, the gutter size and your color choices. The certified installer works from that same plan, so you and the installer are never on different pages.

3. 03

   A deposit capped at one third

   Massachusetts law caps a home-improvement deposit at one third of the contract. We hold to that in every state we work in. Your quote names the exact figure before you pay anything.

4. 04

   Material ordered and confirmed

   Your Alu-Rex system is ordered through the Alu-Rex distributor and confirmed before an install date is set, so the date you get is one the material can meet.

5. 05

   Scheduled with a certified installer in your county

   A certified Alu-Rex installer working in your area takes the job, and you get the date without chasing anyone. In season we're typically booking four to six weeks out. We'd rather tell you that now than promise you Tuesday and send whoever happened to be free. Emergency work — a collapsed run, active water in the basement — gets triaged ahead of the queue.

6. 06

   Installed

   The installer fits the system on the plan you already approved. Any balance is due as your quote states.

7. 07

   After the install

   We check in after the job is done. Each system carries its own written Alu-Rex warranty:

   • Gutter Clean Pro: manufacturing lifetime limited, clog performance lifetime limited, including coniferous areas
   • T-Rex: manufacturing lifetime limited, clog performance 25-year prorated limited
   • DoublePro: manufacturing lifetime limited, clog performance lifetime limited, including coniferous areas

Questions homeowners ask

Around Barnstable

• Every town we cover in Barnstable County: Gutter guards in Barnstable County, MA
• Next door: gutter guards in Sandwich, gutter guards in Mashpee