Gutters for tile roofs in Roseville, Folsom and Sacramento

Why tile roofs are different

On a shingle roof the water runs off a thin edge into a gutter hung right on the fascia. On a concrete S-tile or flat tile roof — the standard in Roseville's Westpark, Highland Reserve and Diamond Oaks, Folsom's Empire Ranch and Broadstone, and across Rocklin and the newer parts of Elk Grove — three things change:

1. The tile overhangs. The first course sticks out past the fascia by two or three inches, and water leaves the tile lip with some speed. A gutter hung tight to the fascia at shingle height is partly behind that stream. In a light rain it catches enough; in the heaviest hour of a January storm the water arcs past the front edge and lands on the stucco and the walkway.
2. There's an eave riser and a bird stop. The first course sits on a raised strip, often with a metal or foam bird stop closing the gap. Standard hidden hangers hit it. A crew that doesn't know tile either bends the hanger, screws it low and pitches the gutter flat, or drills through the tile — which is a roof leak that shows up two winters later.
3. You can't walk on it. Concrete tile cracks under a boot placed wrong, and a cracked tile isn't a gutter problem, it's a roof problem. All the work has to be done from the eave.

How we hang gutters on tile

• Long-reach hidden hangers that clear the riser and bird stop and screw into the rafter tails through the fascia, every 24 inches.
• The gutter set lower and forward, so the front lip sits under the water line off the tile in a heavy rain, not behind it. On steep tile roofs we add an apron flashing so water running down the underlayment lands in the gutter instead of behind it.
• First course lifted, not drilled. Where a hanger or an apron needs to go under the tile, we lift the tile, set the hardware, and put the tile back. Any tile we crack, we replace.
• 6-inch on the big roofs. A two-story Empire Ranch home puts a lot of roof onto one run, and the wider gutter gives the faster-moving water off tile more to land in.

The replacement page covers the rest of the system — gauge, downspouts, extensions — and it's all the same on tile.

Repairs on tile-roof gutters

The most common tile-roof call isn't a leak. It's "the gutters are clean and water still pours off the roof in a storm." That's the height problem in point one. The fix is a re-hang: gutter down, new long-reach hangers, gutter reset lower and re-pitched. On a 40-foot run that's $300–$550, and it solves what a cleaning and a reseal never will. We also see plenty of drilled-through tiles from earlier crews, which we replace, and gutters pulled away where a hanger was screwed to the bird stop instead of the rafter.

Cost

Tile adds a small per-foot line to any gutter job — roughly $2–$4 per foot over the standard seamless price on the pricing page — for the hangers, the lifting and resetting, and the slower work from the eave. A two-story tile-roof home in Roseville with 220 feet of 6-inch gutter and six downspouts typically lands at $3,500–$4,800. Cracked-tile replacement is $25–$60 per tile if we find any, and we tell you before we replace them.

Guards on tile

Micro-mesh works on tile roofs, but it has to sit under the tile lip on a frame that doesn't disturb the first course, and the gutter under it has to be at the right height first. We do both together. See gutter guards for which mesh suits which tree — in Folsom and Rocklin that's mostly valley oak catkins and acorns.

Where the tile is

Roseville, Rocklin, Folsom, El Dorado Hills, Granite Bay, Lincoln, the newer sections of Elk Grove and Natomas, and scattered 1980s–90s tile homes in Gold River and Rancho Cordova. Our Roseville and Folsom pages describe what's typical there.