MATERIAL & HARDWARE

The quality of material and hardware is one thing that will set one gutter system apart from another. A gutter system can last a year, a few years or a lifetime. This is also one place companies will make sacrifices give the lowest price. At A-1, we don't want to sacrifice quality for price. We feel that inferior material will fail. A cheaper gutter that failed is not a savings at all. If you are comparing prices, make sure to compare material first. We proud to use only the highest quality available. See for yourself below. If there is any additional information you need, let us know and we will be glad to provide it to you.

All our aluminum gutters are made from heavy .032" aluminum.

This is the thickest seamless aluminum gutter available and the only thickness we will put our name on. We use the aluminum gutters over steel for it's life span. Any steel gutter will rot in time causing you to replace them. Aluminum will not rot and if maintained will last forever. All our colored finishes are baked on, which will prevent peeling, cracking and fading. If this finish is washed annually, it will look new for more than 20 years. We favor the K" style gutter over the half round for it's style and technology. The "crown" face of the front has a deeper reason behind it's design than just it's good looks. The front face is designed to deflect any fast moving water that hits the face downward into the gutter. Other designs can let water "ski jump" out of the gutter.

Our Down Spouts are either 2"x3" or 3"x4" depending on the preferred size. These down spouts are also made from aluminum with the same baked on finish as the gutters. The down spouts can be the same color as the gutter or changed to better match the house. Round and square down spouts may also be available upon request only and are special order. Round and square down spouts are not available in all colors and are subject to additional pricing.

Hidden Hangers  This is one of the most overlooked item that determines the quality and strength of a gutter. There are hundreds of ways to hang a gutter. We test any new hanger that comes our way and use only the strongest. Here are our favorites in the hidden hanger category:

1) Photo one is our standard hanger for the 5" gutter system. This hanger comes in three thicknesses with the    most  popular being .044 installed every 24" to 36" apart. The next seize is .050 and the thickest being .065 which is what we use as our default hanger. We install this hanger every 16" to 20" apart to give an incredibly strong gutter as you can see from our photos of the crew hanging out.

2) If you are the overkill type, and not impressed by the standard, you'll love our "Bull System". This hanger is slightly wider than our standard and installed at an incredible 12" apart. You want to talk about strong? We have the strongest. If the Bull System is for you, make sure you ask for this upgrade.

3) Our standard 6" hanger, installed the same as in #1

4) Again, our over kill hanger. This baby is huge at an impressive full 2" wide. Our 6" Bull System is also installed 12" apart. This hanger made even me speechless.

If you hear of a hanger that you want to compare to ours, let me know and I will give you a run down of the pros and cons. An example is the "Screw Hanger", my reasons for not using this hanger, which looks strong, are: 1) the thickness of this hanger is only .048" which is alot lighter than our .065", and 2) There is only one screw per hanger, as the screw is a nice screw, if it fails you have no support for the hanger. Our hangers allow us to double screw all.

Screws are another important but overlooked item. The most popular screw I see used to install gutters are regular sheet rock screws. This is a very weak screw that will break under a small amount of pressure. The moisture in your fascia board will quickly rot the screw away. I also see only one of these screws per hanger. If this screw breaks, there is nothing now holding the gutter up.
In our installations, we use a much stronger screw. We us a #10 S1 1/2" and #10 x 2" zinc plated screw with a 1/4" hex head. The zinc works very well under heavy loads and is compatable with aluminum. The zinc also will not allow the moisture from the wood fascia to rot the screw. We take this a step farther by double screwing every hanger. If by some chance, one screw fails, there is still another screw so the hanger is always secured. The photo above is our screw of choice to hang our gutters.

Down Spout Hangers We prefer two types of hangers for our down spouts. If we are installing on a corner, we will normally use a clip which mount to the corner, then the down spout sets into to clip to get secured. If we are hanging the down spout to the house body, we will usually use a cleat which mounts to the down spout and then secured to the house. Photo 1 is the clip and photo 2 is a cleat.

We do not use a down spout straps (a strap wraps around the front of the down spout and is secured to the wall on both sides) because I do not like to looks of them and they do not secure the down spout from sliding down the wall and detaching from the gutter.

Corners We use three types of 90deg. corners.

1) Photo #1 is our most popular and strongest corner, called a box corner. This is the corner we use by default and is used in 98% of installations. The finish comes in the same colors as the gutter.

2) Photo #2 is a strip corner and is our second choice as it is not as strong. We will use this corner is it is the customer's choice. We still guarantee this corner at 100%. The finish comes in white and can be sprayed to match the gutter color. Spray can be scuffed off and can fade.

3) Photo #3 is a corners corner. This corner is made by cutting the gutter at the angles and screwed together. There will be a seam off to one side. This is the least popular as the seam is on one side and looks unbalanced. Also there is not as much to secure to so it will not be as strong. We still guarantee 100%.

We use two types of 90deg. corners. The first is a strip corner as in Photo #2. The second is a corners corner as in Photo #3.

All custom corners are cornerless corners.

Questions?? Call us at 1-877-375-4888 or e-mail dave@a1gutters.me