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Rocky View County

Rocky View County Acreage Eavestroughs, Shop Gutters and Soffit

Rocky View County wraps around Airdrie on every side, and much of our rural work is on the acreages, hamlets and farmyards closest to the city. Acreage eavestroughs face things town houses don't: long runs on big custom roofs, shelterbelt trees dropping needles into every trough, steel-roofed shops shedding snow, and wells and septic fields that roof water should stay away from. We install, repair and maintain seamless eavestroughs, soffit, fascia and downspout drainage on homes and outbuildings in the county around Airdrie, Balzac and the highway corridors between them.

A bungalow and detached shop on an acreage with a long gravel driveway and spruce shelterbelt, surrounded by flat open prairie fields in early fall.

At a Glance

Municipality
Rocky View County
From our Airdrie office
Surrounds Airdrie on every side
Postal prefixes
T4A, T4B, T4C, T3R, T0M

The Homes and Buildings in Rocky View County

Country residential acreages are the heart of Rocky View housing: large bungalows, walkouts and two-storey custom homes on multi-acre lots, many with complex roofs, steep pitches, triple garages and tall stone or timber entries. Big roof planes and long eaves send a lot of water to each downspout, and valleys often concentrate it over entries and garage doors. Builder-installed 5-inch troughs can be undersized on these houses. The upgrade is often 6-inch seamless eavestroughs with 3x4 downspouts, split-pitch runs on long eaves, and heavier .032" coil that resists hail and ladder damage. Acreage homes also tend to have long stretches of soffit, where vented aluminum panels help an attic stay cold enough to avoid ice damming.

Most acreages also have outbuildings: detached shops, horse barns and riding arenas, machine sheds and garages, often with steel roofs and built at different times from the house. It is common for them to have either no eavestroughs or a basic system that has never been maintained. Steel roofs release snow in a single slide, so a trough mounted in the slide path gets torn off; we place troughs below the path, recommend snow guards, or advise leaving the eave open and managing the water at grade. On shingled outbuildings, a simple seamless trough with downspouts routed away from doors keeps the entry from turning into ice and mud every spring.

The hamlets near Airdrie add a different mix. Balzac, Madden, Kathyrn and Dalroy each have older homes on hamlet lots alongside farmyards and country residential land, and Balzac also has commercial buildings near the Highway 2 and Highway 566 area. Hamlet eavestroughs age like town systems do, with corner leaks, sag and blocked downspouts, but maintenance is often irregular because homeowners are used to doing it themselves or waiting until something fails. We keep our county work to the country around Airdrie, so ask about your location when you call and we will tell you straight away whether it is in our area.

Neighbourhood Notes

Acreages northwest of Airdrie toward Madden

Country residential homes here are often large bungalows and walkouts on open land. Long eaves take the full force of westerly wind, and snow packs into troughs. Hidden hangers at close spacing and 6-inch troughs on big roof planes keep systems attached and flowing.

Acreages west of Airdrie along Highway 567

Where the ground starts to roll, walkout homes can stand a full storey taller on the downhill side, so eavestroughs on that face sit high and downspouts drop onto patios and lower decks. We route those downspouts past the walkout level, and use micro-mesh guards where planted spruce rows shed needles.

Acreages east of Airdrie toward Kathyrn

Flat, open farmland means few trees and hard exposure to wind and hail. Many yards have steel-roofed shops beside the house. We use heavier coil on the house and set shop troughs below the snow slide path, or advise leaving the eave open.

Balzac and Dalroy

Between Airdrie and Calgary, this area mixes acreages and commercial buildings along the highway corridor. Acreages here sit in the stretch of hail country between northeast Calgary and Airdrie. Replacement in .032" coil with perforated aluminum guards holds up better the next time.

Country residential along Highway 2

Acreage subdivisions within easy reach of Highway 2 tend to be newer, with builder eavestroughs on roofs larger than a city lot allows. Short, flat-pitched runs holding water and single downspouts serving a whole rear elevation are common. Re-pitching and adding a second outlet usually sorts both.

Farmyards and agricultural buildings

On working yards the question is where roof water ends up: in a corral, across a yard lane that ruts, or at the well. Barns, machine sheds and calving or storage buildings get downspouts turned toward open, downhill ground, with the house and every outbuilding planned as one drainage layout.

Permits and Drainage Rules in Rocky View County

Authority having jurisdiction: Rocky View County

Rocky View County is the authority for building permits, development and lot drainage on acreages and in the county's hamlets, and it sets its own requirements. Check with Rocky View County for your property; we don't apply City of Airdrie or City of Calgary bylaws outside those cities. As a general guide, replacing eavestroughs, soffit or fascia on an existing home doesn't usually need a building permit, while a re-roof, structural rafter-tail or fascia work, a new building or commercial work may. On acreages, keep roof water away from wells, septic fields and neighbouring land, and never tie it into a septic or sanitary system.

Eavestroughs in Rocky View County: Questions

Our Rocky View acreage has a house, a shop and a barn. Can you do all the buildings together?
Yes, and on an acreage that is usually the most sensible way to do it. Each building gets looked at on its own terms: the house for trough size, hanger spacing and soffit venting; shingled outbuildings for a simple trough and a downspout routed away from doors; steel-roofed shops and barns for where snow slides and whether a gutter will survive there at all. One visit means one setup, matched colours where you want them, and a single plan for where water from every roof ends up on the yard.
Should downspouts on an acreage drain toward the septic field or away from it?
Away from it. A septic field is sized for household wastewater, and adding roof runoff can saturate the ground it needs to treat that water. Keep downspout discharge away from the wellhead too. We route extensions or buried lines to open, downhill ground on your own property, clear of the house foundation, septic field, well and property line, and never into a septic or sanitary system. Rocky View County is the authority on lot drainage for acreages, so check with the County before regrading or running long buried lines.
Our acreage home gets long ice dams every winter. What can you do about it?
We fix the roof edge and the water path. That means continuous drip edge so meltwater drops into the trough instead of behind it, eavestroughs re-pitched so they empty, hidden hangers spaced to carry ice, downspouts sized and routed so they are slower to freeze shut, and vented soffit where the attic has no intake. We do not install heat cable. The cause of widespread dams is heat escaping into the attic, and large rural attics often have air leaks and thin insulation, so we note what we see and refer that work to an insulation and air-sealing contractor.

Eavestrough Work in Rocky View County?

Call or send the details. Airdrie Gutters works from Airdrie, and we will tell you what the roof edge needs before we price it.