Gutter guards in Norwalk, CT

Keep the gutters you have, or replace them: three systems for Norwalk houses

A lot of Norwalk gutters are worth keeping. If yours were replaced in the last ten or fifteen years, hang straight, drain to the downspouts and do not drip at the corners, the cheapest fix is a guard on top. That is Gutter Clean Pro: $18 a foot over 5-inch gutters and $20 a foot over 6-inch. It is the system we price first for a sound gutter, because there is no sense paying to tear down aluminum that still works.

When the gutters are past it, the guard should be part of the new gutter, not a lid on the old one. T-Rex is a continuous aluminum hanger with a perforated top. It runs the full length of a new seamless gutter, so the gutter is held all the way along instead of at a spike every couple of feet, and there is no seam between guard and gutter for leaves to slip into. It starts at $25 a foot in 5-inch and $29 in 6-inch.

DoublePro adds a second perforated aluminum layer underneath the first. That finer layer is for the debris a single screen lets through: pine needles, maple seeds, oak catkins and the sand that washes off old shingles. It runs $30 a foot in 5-inch and $34 in 6-inch, and DoublePro carries a lifetime clog-free warranty, pine needles included.

Two lines sit outside the gutter rate. Downspouts are priced by the foot, $14 in the standard size and $16 in the larger one, because on a three-story building there can be nearly as much downspout as gutter. Taking the old gutter down is $1 a foot when it has to go. The full list is on the pricing page, and every caller is quoted from the same list.

Norwalk's housing, its harbor and its rain

Norwalk has more variety under its roofs than most towns around it. Census estimates count 38,129 housing units, and only about 45% of them are single-family detached houses. The rest are attached houses and buildings with two units or more. The 1950s are the city's biggest building decade, with more than 6,400 units, and over 7,200 units date from 1939 or earlier. The median building is from 1967. A gutter on a building that old has usually been replaced at least once, and whoever replaced it may have kept the original 5-inch size and the original downspout positions, whether or not the roof above was changed.

Norwalk is on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. Its area is 36.3 square miles, and about 37% of that is water. The city is a set of neighborhoods as much as one place: Rowayton, South Norwalk, East Norwalk, Silvermine, Cranbury and West Norwalk among them. It shares borders with Darien, New Canaan, Wilton and Westport. Wherever you are in the city, the rate per foot is the same, and the questions we ask are the same: how long the roofline is, how many stories, and what falls on it.

The rain is what tests a gutter here. When Ida came through on September 1 and 2, 2021, Connecticut Public reported that Norwalk recorded more than 7 inches, with nearly as much in Stamford, Greenwich and the other shoreline towns. Storms like that are not new. In 1955 several hurricanes hit the city and flooded Norwalk Harbor. Most guards cope fine with a drizzle. Trouble starts in a downpour, when a short gutter below a roof valley has to take a whole slope of water in a few minutes, and a guard that sheds water over its front edge is worse than none.

For an ordinary year, the nearest long-record NOAA station is Bridgeport Sikorsky Memorial Airport, about 15 miles east along the shore. Its 1991-2020 normals are 44.09 inches of precipitation, 33.6 inches of snow, 10.3 days with an inch or more of rain and about 92 nights at or below freezing. Those are Bridgeport figures, not a Norwalk measurement, but the coast between the two cities shares the same weather.

Some of the oldest houses are in historic districts. South Norwalk's Washington Street Historic District came out of preservation efforts in the 1970s, and the Norwalk Green Historic District is on the National Register. We have not read a city rule on gutter work in either one, so if your house is in a district, ask the city before work starts and we will plan around the answer.

What do gutter guards cost on a Norwalk house?

Every rate is per foot, installed. Over the gutters you have, Gutter Clean Pro is $18 for 5-inch and $20 for 6-inch. With new seamless gutters, T-Rex is $25 and $29, and DoublePro is $30 and $34. Downspout and removal are separate lines on the quote, so you can see what each part of the total is.

The total is the rate times the length of your roofline, plus the downspouts. On a two-family or a three-story building, we ask how many sides need work and how tall the eaves are, because that changes the downspout footage more than the gutter. We measure the roofline remotely and give you the number on the call.

Can gutter guards go on a two-family or three-family house?

Yes. The systems do not care how many units are under the roof. What changes is height and access. A three-story eave needs more downspout per corner, and a building with a porch roof below the main roof may have two gutter lines on one side. Both get priced by the foot like anything else.

If you own the building but do not live in it, tell us on the call who will be home to open a gate or move a car. If you own one unit of a condo, check who owns the gutters before you book, because in many associations that is the board, not you.

Will a gutter guard stop my gutters overflowing in a storm?

It stops the overflow that comes from a clogged gutter, which is the most common kind. It does not make a gutter carry more water than its size allows. If your gutters spill over in a heavy rain even when they are clean, the cause is usually capacity: a valley dumping into a short run, a downspout that is too small or too far away, or a gutter with too little pitch.

That is why we ask where the water comes over and whether it happens in every rain or only in the hard ones. Sometimes the answer is a 6-inch gutter or one more downspout rather than a guard. The overflow page walks through the causes, and the heavy-rain question page covers what a guard can and cannot do in a downpour.

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 Norwalk

• Every town we cover in Fairfield County: Gutter guards in Fairfield County, CT
• Next door: gutter guards in Darien, gutter guards in New Canaan, gutter guards in Wilton, gutter guards in Westport