Websites for eavestrough installers.

Twice a year for most houses — late spring after the seeds and keys drop, and late fall once the leaves are down. Under mature maples or pines, more often. The signs you are overdue are water spilling over the front edge in a rainstorm, plants growing in the trough, and staining down the fascia.

The good ones are, on the right roof. A fine mesh or reverse-curve system genuinely reduces cleaning on a leaf-heavy lot. Pine needles and maple keys defeat many of the cheaper screens and can make matters worse by trapping debris on top where you cannot reach it. No guard is truly maintenance free, and anyone promising that is overselling.

Five inch handles most residential roofs. Six inch, with larger downspouts, is worth it on big roof areas, steep pitches that dump water fast, valleys that concentrate flow, and anywhere you keep seeing overflow at one particular corner. Downspout count and placement usually matter more than trough width, and that is free to get right.

Usually a missing or incorrectly installed drip edge, so water wicks off the shingle edge and goes behind the trough instead of into it. Sometimes the trough was hung too low or too far out. Either way it rots the fascia over time, so it should be corrected rather than caulked. We check the drip edge on every quote.

Well away from the foundation — extensions, splash blocks or a buried line to daylight — because a downspout dumping at the wall is one of the most common causes of a wet basement. If yours connect into the old weeping tile or a municipal storm connection, we will tell you what your city currently allows, as many now require disconnection.

No, and we would rather say so before taking your money. Ice dams are caused by heat escaping into the attic, melting snow that refreezes at the cold eave. Eavestrough gets destroyed by the ice; it does not cause it. The real fix is air sealing, insulation and attic ventilation. We can install heat cable as a stopgap, but we will tell you it is a stopgap.