Gutter Slope for Dummies

Rain gutter

According to thousands of television courtroom dramas, witnesses should give only the most simple response to a question by opposing counsel, because overly eloquent answers may reveal too much information. At eHow.com, however, the site managers' insistence on a minimum word count can and does lead their stable of freelancers to get themselves in trouble by writing too much. Of course, some of them were in trouble to begin with! Take, for instance, Chasity Goddard, who had some problems spitting out the details of "Recommended Rain Gutter Slope"¹ for Hunker.com.

The simple answer, according to This Old House (a fairly reputable source, we've been told) is that the pitch on rain gutters should be ½" per ten feet. There are a few caveats, but that slope is the rule of thumb followed by gutter installers everywhere. We counted: "the pitch on rain gutters should be ½" per ten feet" comes in at eleven words. How did Chasity reach eHow's minimum word count (she actually exceeded it, coming in at about 400 words)? She does so with padding – some of it misleading.

Of course, Chasity started out with a pretty big problem: here's her statement of "the recommended slope":

"The recommended gutter slope is 1/8 inch for every 10 feet of gutter, or 1/4 inch for each foot. Any gutter should have a minimum of a 1/16-inch slope per foot of gutter."

We read that bull back to the Antisocial Network's house expert, who shook his head and said, "WTF?" In case you missed it, Goddard stated the recommended slope three times, all three of them different, and got two of those "answers" wrong: "1/8 inch for every 10 feet of gutter" is about a quarter of the recommended slope "1/4 inch for each foot" is five times the recommended slope! "minimum of a 1/16-inch slope per foot" is about right. So which of the three different quantities this dumbass cites should a reader select? Inquiring minds want to know... Chasity gets a few of her "facts" wrong in her rush to meet the word count. We liked bullshit such as

"The installer...cuts a hole into the bottom of the gutter and inserts an outlet to attach the downspout."

...which may be on point for seamless gutters, but is completely wrong for sectional versions (though we rather doubt that Goddard knows the difference). And then there's

"In cold temperatures, standing water freezes and may become too heavy for the fasteners to hold..."

We are almost certain that freezing a given volume of water won't change its weight. Chasity may have been trying to describe an ice dam, but she did a "dammed" poor job of it. We could go on, but you get the point. Besides, we've already shown that Chasity Goddard is highly deserving of the honor the Antisocial Network hereby bestows upon her: the Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/info_8760709_recommended-rain-gutter-slope.html

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DDIY - GUTTERS