Why gutters matter more than most owners think
A roof is a collection surface. Every square foot of it delivers water to the eave, and a one-inch rain on a 2,000-square-foot roof footprint produces well over a thousand gallons. All of that arrives in a few minutes during the kind of downpour that is normal across the Gulf and the southern plains. The gutter is the only thing standing between that volume and the soil holding up your foundation.
Expansive clay soils across North Texas and much of Oklahoma make this worse than it is in other parts of the country. Clay swells when it takes on water and shrinks when it dries. Water dumped repeatedly at one corner of the house creates a wet zone next to soil that is drying everywhere else, and that differential movement is what cracks slabs and racks door frames. Controlling where roof water lands is cheap. Correcting a foundation that has already moved is not.





