Spring Gutter Inspection Checklist After a NH Winter

Winter leaves marks you can read. Hampstead averages about 53.8 inches of snow a year, with 17.1 inches in January alone (BestPlaces), and every inch of it pushes on a gutter as it slides, melts and refreezes. A spring gutter inspection works best as a short walk, done in the same order every year, so you can compare this April with the last one.

What to bring and when to go

Pick a dry morning after the snow has left the roof edge. The gutters are easiest to read before leaf buds and pollen cover the roofline, so April beats May. Bring a notepad, a phone for photos, and binoculars if you own a pair. Photograph anything odd, because a picture lets you compare it with the next storm.

Stay off the roof and off icy ground. Where snow or ice still hangs at the eave, wait. Falling ice can seriously hurt someone.

The walk-around, station by station

Go clockwise from the front door. At each corner stop and look up for about a minute.

Station one: the line of the gutter

Sight along each run from the end. It should hold one steady line. A dip between hangers means a hanger let go under the weight of snow or ice, and a belly in the middle can hold water for months.

Station two: the front lip and corners

Look for dents or bowing in the front edge. Sliding snow and ice hit this lip first. Corners and end caps deserve a second look, because they take the push from all the water behind them.

Station three: the gap at the fascia

Look at the line where the gutter meets the board behind it. A gap that was not there last fall means the fasteners have pulled out or the board has moved. Press gently on the fascia from below with a long stick. Soft or spongy wood is a sign it has been wet for a long time.

Station four: downspouts

Check every downspout for splits along the seam, crushed sections and gaps at the elbows. Water that froze inside can split a seam. A pale stain trail below an elbow tells you where water has been leaking.

Station five: the ground

Look at where each downspout empties. A washed-out patch, a tilted splash block, or a downspout that dropped its extension over winter will push water toward the foundation.

Spring gutter inspection by symptom

A worked example: one page of notes

Here is what a useful set of notes looks like for an illustrative house with a front run, a back run and four downspouts. Nothing here is a record of a real job.

• Front run: straight line, two small dents in the lip at the porch corner. Cosmetic, recheck in fall.
• Back run, north side: dip of about an inch midway along, 3-foot gap at the fascia near the corner. This side stays frozen longest. Priority one.
• Back downspout: seam split at the lower elbow, pale stain trail on the siding below. Replace the section.
• Left corner: dark streak under the miter. Likely failed sealant. Priority two.
• Inside: faint brown ring on the bedroom ceiling below the north eave. Check the attic for stained decking, and think insulation before blaming the gutter.

That is five findings from about 25 minutes. Two need a crew soon, one is a section swap, one is cosmetic, and one points at the attic. Without notes, all five blur into "something is wrong with the gutters."

Check inside too

Water that gets past the gutter ends up in the house. Look at ceilings and the tops of walls on every side. Pale brown rings, peeling paint or a musty smell near an exterior wall are all worth chasing. If you can reach the attic safely, look at the insulation and the underside of the roof deck at the eaves for dark stains.

Ice dams are the usual cause. They form when attic heat melts snow that refreezes at the cold eave, with or without gutters. Insulation and ventilation are the real fix, and a gutter alone cannot cure them.

Roof edge, flashing and the first-rain test

The gutter is only half of the system, so look at what feeds it. Spend a few minutes at the roof edge, from the ground.

• Shingle grit. Dark granules in the trough or at a downspout outlet mean the shingles are wearing. A little is normal on a new roof. Heavy grit on an older roof is worth showing a roofer.
• The drip edge gap. Water that runs down the fascia behind the gutter, instead of into it, points to a missing or bent drip edge or apron. Tightening the gutter will not fix it.
• Flashing at walls. Where a roof meets a wall, a kickout flashing should direct water into the gutter. If water has stained the siding beside that spot, the flashing is missing or has shifted.
• Valleys. A roof valley pours a lot of water into one corner. If that corner shows streaks or an overflow stain, it may need a larger gutter, an added downspout or a splash guard.

Then run a test. On the first moderate spring rain, stand under an umbrella and watch the gutters work for ten minutes. Water should travel to the outlets, not sit, and none should pour over the front lip or drip from seams. Where it fails, mark the spot. The test beats any checklist, because it shows how the system behaves under real flow, which a dry walk-around cannot. Gutter size matters here too. A 5-inch gutter is rated for about 5,520 square feet of roof and a 6-inch for about 7,960, at one inch of rain per hour, and harder rain or a steep roof lowers both numbers.

How a crew reads ice damage

This is general trade knowledge, not a story about a job.

Ice damage has a direction. If the gutter is pulled away from the house at the top and bowed outward, ice or sliding snow pushed it. If it sags in the middle but is still tight at the ends, water and debris sat in the trough and the hangers gave way. If a seam is split and the metal is bright on the inside, water froze in the joint. Telling these apart matters, because each has a different fix and the wrong repair will fail by next winter.

A crew also compares both sides of the house. The north side stays frozen longer and tends to show the worst damage. If one side looks fine and the other does not, start your list there.

Another honest limit of a ground inspection: you cannot see the inside of the trough or the top of the fascia from the yard. A dip you can see is real. A clean-looking run might still hold a seam that weeps only under flow. That is what the rain test is for, and what a crew's hands-on check adds. We would rather you call about something doubtful than assume a ground check cleared everything.

Derry homes and what to expect

Derry mixes older East Derry houses with 1980s subdivisions off Route 28, and the median home was built in 1983 (ACS 2020-24). Gutters on a house that age are often well past the 20 to 30 years listed for aluminum, so winter damage lands on tired hardware. About 70% of Derry homes are owner-occupied, so most of those repairs are the homeowner's call.

Derry is roughly 5 minutes from our Hampstead base by our estimate. If your walk-around turns up more than you want to handle, our gutter inspection page explains what a visit covers, and our Derry service area page covers the town. Our gutter service in Hampstead overview lists the rest of what we do.

Booking a spring look at your gutters

If your notes show a sag, a gap at the fascia or a split downspout, treat it as a repair before the spring rains, not after. Our gutter inspection page explains what a visit covers. Two guides go deeper on what you may find: why New Hampshire winters are hard on gutters and what to do when a gutter is pulling away from the fascia. If the walk turns up nothing, write down the date and do it again next April.

Call Lanes Gutters at (208) 464-4195, tell us what the photos show, and we will set the earliest visit we can.