This is a post on how I created gutters for my house using PVC pipe! So, quite awhile ago, I stumbled on to the coolest thing online: Rain gutters made out of 3″ PVC pipe. Since then I cannot find it online ANYWHERE! The only thing I can find online about it is forums of people like me who want to try it and other people telling them to just hire a crew to put up seamless gutters because apparently: we’re all rich. Not that I wouldn’t love to be able to afford seamless gutters!
See, this 100 year old farm house has never had a gutter on it and has never had a water issue. However my poor little flower garden in the front of my house absolutely gets hammered. The summer rains create a trench right down the middle of it and, not to mention, all along the front of my house my hydrangea bush and various other plants get similarly beat up. I decided we would start above my flower garden and, eventually, do the rest of the front of the house too.
The next dilemma was figuring out how to hang/attach it to the eve. (My eves are only covered by little 1x4s so they wouldn’t be strong enough to hold it so I would need to make certain I hit the ends of the roof joists with whatever screws I used.) I did some looking at pipe hangers etc. because not only have I seen them in hardware stores I’ve also used them but I didn’t find anything I thought would work and also look ok. PVC pipe is very strong so I just put steel screws inside through the back of it.
Initially I was going to just cut the completely in half so one pipe would make two gutters but the more I thought about it the more I wanted a “deeper” gutter then that. I ended up cutting off about 1/3rd of the pipe using a table saw.
With the portion above my garden done I can say that this was a brilliant idea that someone had and I would totally endorse it. I got the pipe cut and hung in less then an hour and BOOM: the problem in my flower bed is only a memory.
We had a serious rain storm here just the next day after I got them up and I watched proudly as a plan actually worked like it was supposed to. I hung the pipe so it slanted toward the porch then drained down into the second pipe that slanted toward my driveway.
I’m pleasantly surprised by how nice they look because with no hangers, no parts, no joints etc. they are totally seamless and no one in my family has even noticed that they’re up lol because without looking right at them they’re entirely unnoticeable and I totally love that!
Plastic pipe gets brittle in the sun? Why yes, yes it does, just like ALL plastic including the plastic gutters that you can buy in the store. Because these have literally no other parts I’m confident these will out last any other plastic gutter out there though I don’t know if they could compete side by side with steel in survival time because, seriously, steel is hard to compete with.
All in I am totally stoked that this worked and was so easy to do! It literally cost me nothing but a little time. However, for the curious, here’s the cost breakdown:
One length of 8 foot PVC pipe is around $8 the equivalent gutter in aluminum is $7, the equivalent gutter in vinyl is $4 and the equivalent gutter in steel is $12 and none of that includes the hangers etc that you need for any type of premade gutter to actually attach it to your house. So, do I think I would do this again as opposed to buying actual gutters if I had to actually go out and buy the PVC pipe? YES. I really love how well these work, how they look and how easy it was to do. And with high-quality, UV-resistant PVC pipes available online these days (FORMUFIT provides custom length cuts, for example), buying the required length isn’t a hassle either.
(Oh and YES I am fully aware that my eves need to be painted lol, one thing at a time!)
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