An eavestrough is not roof trim. It is the only thing carrying a spring melt off your roof and away from a foundation sitting in Calgary clay. We install, repair and re-slope eavestrough and downspouts, using the same in-house Red Seal crews that build the roof above them.
An eavestrough has one job, and it is not decorative. It catches everything the roof sheds and moves it to a downspout that discharges well clear of the house. Get that wrong in Calgary and the water does not simply pool on the lawn. Much of this city sits on clay-heavy soil that swells when it takes on water and shrinks again as it dries, and that movement is what turns up years later as a cracked basement wall, a settled walkway, or a damp corner nobody can explain. The roof is the part homeowners budget for. The eavestrough is the part that decides where all of that water ends up.
A downspout that dumps at the wall soaks the backfill against your foundation. Calgary clay swells with that water and pushes back, and the bill arrives in the basement rather than at the roof.
A chinook melts the roof through the afternoon and the temperature drops back overnight. A trough already packed with ice has nowhere to put the next melt, so the water backs up under the shingles.
Water is heavy, and a run that holds it is heavier still. That weight works the fasteners loose, soaks the fascia board behind the trough, and starts the whole elevation drooping away from the roof edge.
Eavestrough fails slowly and then all at once. The tell is almost always visible from the ground during a heavy rain, which is exactly when nobody goes outside to look. Walk the perimeter after the next real storm, and again after the first chinook of the winter.
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Eavestrough is the trade that gets handed off most often. The roofer finishes at the drip edge, a gutter crew hangs trough on whatever fascia happens to be there, and the joint between them belongs to nobody. Because our in-house Red Seal crews do the roof, the fascia and the eavestrough, the water has one accountable owner from the ridge to the splash pad. Backed by COR safety certification and $10M liability coverage.
A full replacement, one failed run, or the downspout work that actually moves water away from the house. Every metre installed in-house by our certified team.
Continuous aluminum trough formed to the length of your run, so the only joints on the house are at the corners and the outlets. Hung on solid fascia, sloped to the outlet, and finished in a colour that matches the rest of the roofline.
Most trough that spills is not worn out, it is out of level. We re-hang and re-slope the run to its outlet, reseal the corners and seams, and replace only the sections that are genuinely finished.
The half of the system most quotes treat as an afterthought. We size and place downspouts for the roof area actually feeding them, then get the discharge out past the backfill to a safe point on your own lot, so the water drains away instead of soaking in beside your foundation.
There is no point hanging new trough on a rotted board. We replace soft fascia, correct the drip edge, and give the eavestrough straight, solid backing before a single hanger goes in.
Roughly a quarter inch of fall for every ten feet of run, pitched toward the nearest outlet. That is small enough to be invisible from the street and large enough that getting it wrong is the most common reason a trough spills. A dead-level run holds water, and water that sits is what freezes solid in a Calgary January, corrodes the seams from the inside, and adds the weight that eventually pulls the run off the fascia. Slope is also why a long elevation is usually better served by a high point in the middle falling to a downspout at each end, rather than one long run draining to a single far corner.
We set the high point and string the run to its outlet before a single hanger goes in, so the slope is built into the job rather than hoped for afterwards.
Trade practice is one downspout for roughly every 30 to 40 feet of run, tightened up on steep or large roof planes that shed their water fast.
Hidden hangers set every 24 to 36 inches, and tightened up on the elevations where snow slides off the roof and ice sits in the trough all winter.
Slope, downspout count and hanger spacing all shift with roof area, pitch and how much of the roof drains onto one elevation, so treat these figures as the starting point we verify on your home rather than a fixed specification. If the board behind the trough also needs attention, that work is covered on our soffit and fascia page, and roof-edge and flashing detail sits with our residential roofing work.
Five-inch handles most Calgary bungalows and standard two-storeys. Six-inch earns its money on steep roofs, on big single elevations, and on any roof that drops a lot of area onto one short run. The honest answer depends on how much roof drains into that trough, not on the size of the house.
Standard residential
The default on most Calgary homes, and the right call when the roof area feeding each run is modest and the pitch is moderate. Paired with correctly placed downspouts it handles ordinary rain and a normal melt without complaint. It becomes a problem only when it is asked to drain more roof than it was ever sized for.
Steep or large roofs
A materially larger channel, and the profile we reach for when a steep roof sheds fast, when one elevation collects several planes of roof, or when a run has to travel a long way to reach the nearest outlet. It also copes better with the debris and ice that choke a smaller trough over a Calgary winter.
High-volume
Six-inch trough paired with the larger downspout profile, for roofs that overwhelm a standard system. Common on big custom homes, multi-plane rooflines and commercial buildings, where the trough is rarely the bottleneck and the outlet usually is. The wider downspout also plugs far less readily.
Lifespans assume the trough is draining properly and the fascia behind it is sound, which is the part you cannot judge from the ground. Aluminum dents under Calgary hail in any profile, so a storm-damaged run is usually a section replacement rather than a sign the material failed early. Relative cost compares these options to each other, not a quote for your project. Your price depends on size, access and what we find underneath.
If the trough itself is sound and the fault is slope, hangers, seams or a blocked outlet, it is a repair, and often a same-visit one. If the aluminum is split, badly corroded, or dented far enough out of line that it will not hold a straight run, that section is finished. The distinction is worth insisting on. Plenty of eavestrough gets torn off when all it ever needed was re-hanging, and plenty gets patched for three more seasons when it should have come down the first year. We tell you which one you are looking at, and we put it in writing.
Spilling at one corner, a run that has gone level, fasteners backing out, a leaking seam, or an outlet plugged with shingle grit and needles. The metal is fine and the geometry is not.
Scattered hail dents, a section sagging over a long unsupported span, or an older run that still drains but is showing corrosion around its outlets. We price both routes so the choice is yours.
Split seams, rust holes, sections torn loose by sliding ice, or trough hung on fascia that has gone soft behind it. New eavestrough on a bad board only moves the failure date.
Eavestrough is fast work when the sizing and the fascia are sorted out first. Here is exactly what to expect.
We walk the perimeter, trace where each run currently drains, and look at what the ground is doing at every downspout.
We work out how much roof feeds each elevation, then size the profile and the number of downspouts to that, not to whatever was there before.
We test the board behind the existing trough. Anything soft gets replaced before new eavestrough is hung on it.
Seamless trough hung to a strung slope, with hangers set close enough for Calgary snow and ice load.
We run water through every outlet, confirm the discharge lands clear of the foundation, then walk each elevation with you.
Five-inch K-style is the standard on most Calgary homes and handles a typical roof fine. Six-inch is the better call when you have a large roof area draining to one point, a steep pitch that throws water fast, or a spot that has overflowed before. Six-inch also pairs with a larger downspout, which is usually the real bottleneck. We size it to your actual roof area and pitch rather than defaulting to whatever was there before.
For most homes, yes. Seamless eavestrough is formed into one continuous length per run, so there are no intermediate seams along the run itself. Joints remain where they have to be, at corners, outlets and end caps. Sectional eavestrough joins every few feet, and every one of those extra seams is a place that can eventually leak as the metal expands and contracts through chinook swings. Fewer seams means fewer future failure points, which matters more here than in a milder climate.
Usually one of three things: the trough is undersized for the roof area draining into it, the slope toward the downspout is wrong or has sagged, or the downspout itself is too small or partly blocked. Water can also overshoot the trough entirely on a steep roof if the eavestrough sits too low relative to the roof edge. Overflow is a design or installation symptom as often as it is a debris problem, so cleaning it out does not always fix it.
Ice at the eave has several possible causes and it is worth diagnosing rather than guessing. The common one is heat loss: warm air escaping into the attic melts snow mid-roof, that water runs down to the cold eave and refreezes. But a trough that is out of slope, blocked with debris, or draining to a frozen outlet will also hold water long enough to freeze, and a hard freeze-thaw cycle can do it on its own. Because the cause decides the fix, we look at the attic intake, the slope and the drainage together rather than assuming any one of them.
Plenty of problems are genuine repairs: a failed sealed joint, a loose or missing hanger, a sagging section that needs re-sloping, a damaged downspout, or a separated corner. Full replacement makes sense when the trough is widely corroded, dented along its length by hail, undersized for the roof, or when it is sectional and joints are failing in several places at once. We look at it and tell you which it is, because replacing a run that only needs re-hanging is money you do not have to spend.
They help with leaves and larger debris and can genuinely cut how often you need to clean, but they are not maintenance-free and no guard stops ice. Fine grit off an asphalt roof and seed fluff can still pass through or mat on top of some designs, and a guard installed over an eavestrough that is already sloped wrong just hides the real problem. They are worth considering if you have mature trees, less so if you do not.
Further than most people think. Water dumped right at the wall is a common cause of damp basements and settling in Calgary, because much of the city sits on clay soil that swells when it takes on water and shrinks when it dries. Extensions or buried leads that carry water well clear of the foundation and onto ground that slopes away are the point of the whole system. Getting the trough perfect and then discharging against the wall wastes the job.
It often is, since eavestrough and downspouts are part of the building envelope and hail can dent or split them, but coverage depends entirely on your policy, deductible and the adjuster assessment. We photograph what we find and document it clearly so you have what you need for a claim. Confirm the specifics with your insurer, since we cannot speak to what your individual policy covers.
Tell us where the water is going. You’ll get a clear written quote.
Serving: Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Chestermere. Flexible financing available.