Gutters are the part of your exterior nobody thinks about until the basement floods or the fascia turns soft. In Franklin County that day comes faster than most homeowners expect. A single eastern Missouri thunderstorm can dump an inch of rain in under an hour, and a roof with no working gutter dumps every drop of that straight down against your foundation, your siding, and the soil around your home. When a Union or Washington homeowner finally calls us about a leak, the water almost always traced back to a gutter that pulled loose, clogged, or rusted through years earlier.
Emmendorfer Exteriors started as a roofing company in 1990, and founder Matt Emmendorfer added gutters and siding for one reason: storm customers wanted one crew to fix everything the hail and wind tore up, not three different trucks on three different days. Today our in-house family crews run a portable seamless machine right to your driveway and roll your gutters out of a single coil of aluminum, cut to the exact run of each roofline. That is the difference between a true seamless gutter and the sectioned, pre-cut lengths a big-box store sells you to snap together yourself, where every joint is a future leak.
We work the full county the same way. Union, Washington, Pacific, St. Clair, Sullivan, Villa Ridge, and New Haven all sit in the same severe-storm corridor, and they all share the same freeze-thaw winter that splits seams and warps cheap sectioned gutter. Whether your gutters came off in the last hailstorm or just rusted out after twenty years, we get on the roofline, check the fascia and gutter boards underneath, and tell you straight what needs replacing. No upsell on a section that has good years left.
A gutter job done right starts behind the gutter, not at it. Here is what happens once you approve the estimate.
Before a single foot of gutter goes up, we check the wood it hangs on. Old gutters that held water for years usually leave soft or rotten fascia and gutter boards behind them. We show you what we find and replace the bad wood, because new gutter screwed into rotten board pulls right back off in the next storm.
We measure each run of your roof to the inch, then size the system. Most Franklin County homes get 5-inch K-style gutter, but steeper or larger roofs that shed a lot of water fast get 6-inch with oversized downspouts so a hard Missouri downpour does not overshoot the trough.
Our machine forms each gutter from a continuous coil of aluminum, cut to the exact length of the run. One unbroken piece per roofline means no mid-run seams to leak, the single biggest failure point on sectioned store-bought gutter. You pick the color and we color-match it to your roof and siding.
We hang the gutters with hidden hangers, pitch them so water actually runs to the downspouts instead of pooling, and seal every corner and end cap. Downspouts get placed to carry water away from the foundation, not dump it at the corner of the house where it soaks back in.
We haul off every scrap of old gutter and magnet-sweep for fallen screws. Customers tell us our cleanup is our signature. We want to get in, do the work, and get out without leaving a footprint in your yard or your gutters full of our debris.
We keep it simple and honest. Gutters are an aluminum product, not a brand-name shingle, so the value is in seamless forming, the right size for your roof, and the fascia work underneath, not a label. Here is what we hang.
Our most common install and the right call for most Franklin County homes. Formed on-site from a continuous coil, baked-enamel aluminum that will not rust, in a wide range of colors we match to your roof and siding. Seamless means the only joints are at corners and downspouts, not every ten feet.
For larger roofs, steep pitches, and homes around Pacific and Villa Ridge that shed a lot of water fast, 6-inch gutter with 3x4 downspouts moves roughly 40 percent more water than standard 5-inch. The fix for gutters that overshoot in a hard rain is usually size, not more gutter.
If you fight clogs from oaks and maples every fall, we add a gutter guard so you are not on a ladder cleaning troughs twice a year. We talk you through which guard fits your tree line and your roof pitch rather than selling one product to every house.
The wood behind the gutter is part of the job. We replace soft or rotten fascia and gutter boards before we hang anything, then wrap fascia in aluminum trim coil so it never has to be painted again. This is the step a hang-and-go gutter crew quietly skips.
Most gutter problems are not bad gutter, they are the wrong size for the roof above it. We size the system to your actual roof so it stops overshooting and pooling. Here is the rule we use.
| Your home | Usually 5-inch | Usually 6-inch |
|---|---|---|
| Roof size | Average ranch or two-story | Large roof or many slopes draining together |
| Roof pitch | Standard pitch | Steep pitch that sheds water fast |
| Water overshooting now | Not an issue | Gutter overflows even when clean |
| Tree cover | Light to moderate | Heavy leaf load, pair with guards |
| Downspouts | Standard 2x3 | Oversized 3x4 to move more water |
We bring the same in-house family crews and the same written-estimate promise to every town in Franklin County.
A real Emmendorfer measures your rooflines, checks the fascia underneath, and gives you a number that does not change. Free and no obligation across Union, Washington, and all of Franklin County.
