How to Find a Gutter Leak Before You Call Anyone
Water shows up where it wants, not where it started. A wet patch on the porch ceiling, a drip that lands on the AC unit, a stripe of green algae down the brick under one corner. Before you call for a repair, it's worth twenty minutes with a garden hose on a dry afternoon, because "there's a leak somewhere on the back" and "the left rear corner drips from the miter" are very different phone calls, and the second one gets a price over the phone.
What you need
A hose that reaches the roofline, a stepladder for a single-story house (stay off the roof), somebody to watch from the ground, and a dry day. Nashville gives you plenty of those in late September; this is a bad test to run during a rain because everything is wet and you can't tell which water is which.
Step 1: watch the downspouts first
Before you look for a leak, run the hose into the far end of one gutter for a full minute and watch the bottom of the downspout. If water comes out steadily, the run drains. If it trickles or nothing comes, the drop or the elbow is clogged, and what looked like a leak is probably overflow from a backed-up gutter. Flush it from the top, or a cleaning will. Do this for every downspout. A surprising share of "leaks" end here.
Step 2: fill the gutter and watch the corners
Now put the hose in the middle of a run and let the gutter fill to an inch or so of depth. Have your helper walk the run from below and watch each corner and end cap. A steady drip from the underside of a miter is a failed corner seal. A drip from the end of a run is an end cap. Both are $150–$250 to clean and reseal, and both are the most common gutter leak in Nashville, especially on the south and west sides where the sun bakes the sealant.
Step 3: watch the middle of the run
If the corners are dry but water appears from the bottom of the gutter somewhere along its length, it's one of three things. On sectional gutters, a seam between two ten-foot pieces. On old galvanized steel, rust-through. On aluminum that's been sitting with standing water for years, a pinhole from corrosion where debris sat. The first is a reseal. The other two mean that gutter is near the end, and repair vs. replacement covers what to do about it.
Step 4: look behind the gutter
This is the one people miss. With the gutter full, look at the fascia board directly behind and below the gutter. If it's wet, water is getting between the back of the gutter and the fascia. Either the gutter has pulled away from the fascia at the top and water is spilling over the back edge, or the roof has no drip edge and water is running down the fascia before it reaches the gutter at all. The first is a hanger problem: a re-hang. The second is a roofing detail, and no amount of gutter work will fix it.
Step 5: overflow, not a leak
If water pours over the front edge when the gutter is full but no corner or seam drips, that's capacity or pitch, not a leak. Water spilling in the middle of the run means the gutter has a belly and is holding water there. Water spilling at the far end from the downspout means the run can't drain fast enough. Why gutters overflow in Nashville rain goes through that.
Reading the evidence without a hose
If you can't run the test, the house has been keeping notes for you.
- A dark stripe or algae streak down the brick or siding under a corner: that corner has been dripping for a year or more.
- Bubbled or peeling paint on the fascia in a band: water behind the gutter, hanger or drip-edge problem.
- A trench in the mulch under a section of roofline: overflow, not a leak, and it's been happening a while.
- Rust streaks on the outside of the gutter: steel gutter, rusting through.
- A gutter with a visible dip when you sight down it from the corner: a belly, pitch problem, and the leak is probably at the seam nearest the low point.
- Water on the porch ceiling with a gutter directly above: usually a corner drip landing on the porch roof and finding a way in, not a roof leak.
What to tell us
When you call for gutter repair, the useful version is: which side of the house, which corner or how far along the run, whether it drips from the bottom or spills over the front or back, and whether the downspout on that run flows. With that, most Nashville corner and end-cap leaks get a price over the phone and a fix in a single visit. Without it, the first visit is the hose test, and you've already done that.
One warning. Two-story houses and the back of a hillside house in Bellevue or Forest Hills are not stepladder jobs. Run the downspout test from the ground and leave the rest of it to a crew with the right ladders.
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