Gutter Contractor Software in West Virginia

Water is the whole story in West Virginia. On June 23, 2016 up to nine inches of rain fell on Greenbrier County in a day, and the floods that followed killed 23 people and destroyed more than 1,500 homes and businesses. A gutter does not stop that. On a normal storm it is the difference between water running off cleanly and water going straight down a hillside foundation, and on a state that is nearly all hillside, that matters. Six-inch gutters and oversized downspouts are a normal spec, and where the downspout empties matters more than anywhere flat, because water dumped at the top of a slope comes out at the bottom through somebody's basement wall.

Ice does the winter damage. The mountain towns get real snow, a gutter carrying an inch of ice in a hollow wind pulls hangers out of the fascia, and ice dams form above any poorly insulated ceiling. Heavy-duty hangers spaced tight are a normal spec, and the guards that survive are the ones that stay put under ice. The derecho of June 29, 2012 brought trees down across the state and took the gutters with the limbs.

The trees keep the work coming. West Virginia is hardwood country, and the oaks, maples, and hickories fill gutters in a few weeks each fall. Seamless aluminum in five and six inch K-style is nearly all of the residential work, formed on site from coil, and the work runs from April into November.

West Virginia licenses at $5,000. A full house of six-inch gutters with guards can reach that line and take a license from the Contractor Licensing Board, and a company that also roofs holds the license anyway and carries the roofing law's five-day right to cancel and its ban on paying the deductible on every claim. Any sale made in the home carries the three-business-day right to cancel. The statewide building code applies only where a county or city has adopted it, so whether anyone inspects the work depends on the address.