Half Round Gutters - Aluminium Gutters

<sup>One factor driving the emergence of half-round gutters into the mid-range housing market is the introduction of half-round gutters in which a lip or “bead” is rolled inward. Historically the bead has been rolled outward so that the gutter trough can sit in a semicircular wrap-around hanger. Outward-rolling beads are therefore favored on historic residences and on new upscale homes that emulate a traditional look.

“But in the last five years,” says Milliman, “seamless gutters with reverse (inward-rolling) beads have come on the market. So installers can use hidden hangers to put up the gutter, like they do with K-style gutters. Also, the reverse bead means the coil only needs to be painted on one side, since the back side of the coil isn’t exposed.” By contrast, with an outside bead the backside of the coil is “rolled outward where people can see it, and so the metal would have to be colored on both sides,” he adds. Of course, traditional copper half-round gutters avoid the problem altogether since the metal is not painted on either side.

Along with the availability of aluminum half-round gutters with inside beads, another factor may soon drive increased sales of the product. As service manager Bill Davis of Jobsite Inc., a gutter machine manufacturer based in Grand Junction, Colo., points out, “Not many people start up a gutter company by buying a half-round gutter machine. Ours is priced at $39,000. But as more half-round gutters are sold, more gutter machines will be made and the price of the gutter machines may come down. So the price of half-round gutters will also come down and more homeowners will buy them.”</sup>

^{Green affirms that half-round gutter machines cost between $30,000 and $35,000, in large part because “the half-round gutter machines only serve about 10 percent of the gutter market; the other 90 percent of the market is K-style gutters.” Yet local market shares for half-round gutters can vary significantly by region. From its Utah base, Retro Design is involved with custom homes in upscale resort areas such as Sun Valley and Park City, where copper half-round gutters are favored.}

^{“One of the beauties of half-round gutters is that they match almost any style of architecture, from historic to modern,” Green continues. Even though half-rounds are only 10 percent of the national market, he adds, the gutters are an upscale product and so an array of decorative accessories is available.}

<sup>At RainTrade, for example, Mike Milliman notes the company does a brisk business in ornamental hangers, brackets, downspouts, end caps, outlets, conductor heads, and finials. Many designs have been around for more than a century. “After all,” he points out, “half-round gutters are the original gutter.”

Before 1950, Milliman explains, most gutters were half-rounds. When K-style gutters were introduced in the 1950s and 60s, he says, “they were a good fit for the ranch-style homes that were being built then. Also, people figured seamless half round gutters had fewer seams and fewer leaks. But now, in the last five to seven years, half-round gutters have made a comeback. Seamless half-round gutters is now available, and many custom homes prefer a traditional look for their gutters.”</sup>

 

<sup>Green suggests that 6 inches is the standard size for half-rounds gutters since “copper is expensive and you can make two gutters from a 12-inch coil without any waste. With 5-inch half-round gutters, you’d waste two inches of coil.” However, Milliman believes performance is a consideration behind the use of 6-inch half-round gutters. Since a 6-inch circle has less volume than a 6-inch square, he says, then a 6-inch half-round gutter drains less water than a 6-inch K-style gutter. “To compare half-rounds to K-style,” he says, “You have to go down one unit in size. That is, a 6-inch half-round gutter drains as much as only a 5-inch K-style gutter.”

Yet at RHEINZINK America, a distributor of zinc-based roofing and gutter products based in Cambridge, Mass., national applications training manager Kevin Wohlert adds another perspective. With K-style gutters, flowing water spreads out to the square edges of the trough. “But with a half-round gutters,” he explains, “you have a rounded trough and so the water flows to the bottom point of the trough.</sup>

^{That improves the flow, so that you might need less pitch” for gravity to move water through the gutter. Wohlert predicts the market for half-round gutters will continue to grow “as people spend more on their homes to get the look they want.” He also notes that installers can sell half-round gutters for comparable non-residential applications such as traditional church buildings. “Due to the higher cost and longer installation time of half-round gutters, I don’t think they’ll overtake K-style gutters. But I do think half-round gutters will keep on gaining market share.”}

^{An Installer’s Experience}