Seamless Gutters and Their Popularity
You've likely heard the term "seamless gutter." Simply stated, seamless gutters are seamless because the installer purchases a large coil of strip metal, mounts that coil on the back of a gutter machine, takes the machine to your property, rolls the metal through the machine, and—voila!—out the other end comes a fully formed gutter in the desired length. No seams!
The advantages are obvious: quick production, no unsightly seams to join up, less labor and installation time. Simple. (But don't forget, those seamless gutters aren't entirely seamless. Whenever your gutter rounds a corner, there is a seam. When a length of gutter comes to an end and must be capped, there is a seam. And when a hole is cut in the trough for a downspout, there is a seam.)
Introduced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, seamless gutters came to dominate the market by the 1970s. One leading national gutter manufacturer recently estimated that 83 percent of the market has been captured by seamless gutters.
But what about the other 17 percent (which amounts to 1 out of every 6 gutter systems)? What is the alternative to seamless gutters? And could your home be one of that 17 percent?
