Gutter guards in Wilton, CT

Fine debris, big leaves, sound gutters: matching a system to a Wilton house

What falls on the roof decides the guard. Big, flat leaves sit on top of almost any perforated cover and blow off when they dry. Small debris is the problem: seed pods, catkins, needles, the bits of bark and twig a storm strips off, and the grit that washes off an aging shingle roof. That fine material slips through a single screen and settles in the trough, and in a year or two the gutter under the guard is as full as it ever was. DoublePro is built for that. It puts a second, finer perforated aluminum layer below the first, so the small stuff stays on top. DoublePro carries a lifetime clog-free warranty, pine needles included. With a new seamless gutter it is $30 a foot in 5-inch and $34 in 6-inch.

If your lot drops mostly broad leaves, T-Rex may be all you need. It is a continuous aluminum hanger with a perforated top, so the gutter is carried along its full length rather than at a bracket every couple of feet, and the guard is part of the hanger. It costs $25 a foot in 5-inch and $29 in 6-inch, gutter included.

If the gutters you have are in good shape, there is no need to replace them. Gutter Clean Pro goes over gutters that are straight, pitched to their outlets and tight at the seams, at $18 a foot for 5-inch and $20 for 6-inch. If yours are not, we will say so on the call.

Downspouts are priced by the foot on their own line, $14 to $16, and taking down old gutter is $1 a foot when needed. On a long colonial with a garage wing, downspouts can add up, so they stay visible on the quote. The pricing page has every rate.

Wilton's houses, open land and storms

Wilton's housing came mostly in one long wave. Census estimates put about 84% of the town's 6,408 housing units as single-family detached, with the median built in 1970. The 1960s were the biggest decade, with more than 1,500 units, and more than half of all Wilton housing went up between 1960 and 1989. A house from that wave is now forty to sixty years old. It has probably had two roofs, and the gutters may date from either one, often still 5-inch and often still hung on spikes.

It is a big town for its size. Wilton covers 27.4 square miles and is a residential community with open lands, shaped by the reservation of almost 1,000 acres of open space for recreation. Its neighborhoods include Georgetown, Cannondale, Wilton Center, South Wilton, Gilbert Corners and North Wilton. It borders Norwalk to the south, New Canaan to the southwest, Westport to the southeast, Ridgefield to the northwest, Weston and Redding to the northeast, and the hamlet of Vista in Lewisboro, New York, to the west.

Storms show how much timber stands here. On the morning after Tropical Storm Isaias in August 2020, Eversource reported 72% of Wilton without power. The storm brought down trees, wires and utility poles and closed or blocked 84 roads. When limbs come down on a roof, a gutter held by spikes tends to tear away in sections, which is one more reason we like a gutter carried along its whole length.

Most guards cope fine with a drizzle. Trouble starts in a downpour. The nearest long-record NOAA station is Bridgeport Sikorsky Memorial Airport, about 16 miles away on the shore. Its 1991-2020 normals show 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 Wilton readings, and Wilton is inland, so its winters may well run colder and snowier than the coast. That is more freeze and thaw at the eaves, not less.

Wilton keeps a good deal of its history. The Cannondale Historic District in north-central Wilton is on the National Register, as are the Georgetown and Wilton Center districts, and Weir Farm National Historic Site is in town. A National Register listing on its own is not a local rule, and we have not read a Wilton rule on gutter work. If your house is in one of those districts, ask the town before work starts.

How much do gutter guards cost for a Wilton home?

Every rate is per foot, installed. DoublePro with a new gutter is $30 for 5-inch and $34 for 6-inch. T-Rex is $25 and $29. Gutter Clean Pro over gutters you keep is $18 and $20. Downspouts and removal are separate lines, so you see what each part costs.

Your total is the rate times your roofline, plus downspouts. If your house has an attached garage, a porch roof or a wing, tell us on the call so those runs are counted. We measure the roof remotely and give the number then, with no visit to sell anything.

Do I need a two-layer guard, or will a screen do?

It depends on what is overhead. If you mostly get big leaves, a single perforated layer keeps them out and they blow off the top. If you get seed pods, catkins, needles or a lot of shingle grit, a single layer lets that through and the gutter fills from below. That is the case for DoublePro.

An easy test: next time you clean the gutters, look at what is in the bottom. If it is a fine black sludge rather than whole leaves, the small stuff is your problem. The pine needle question page and the T-Rex versus DoublePro page go further.

Do gutter guards cause ice dams?

A guard does not cause an ice dam. Ice dams form when heat escaping through the roof melts snow, and the meltwater refreezes at the colder eave. That is an attic insulation and ventilation problem. What a guard can do is keep the gutter clear, so meltwater that reaches it has somewhere to go rather than freezing on top of a packed trough.

With an inland winter and a lot of freeze-thaw nights, ice at the eaves is a fair thing to ask about before choosing a guard. The ice dam question page explains what we can and cannot fix.

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 Wilton

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