Oakland Township, Michigan · northern Oakland County
Seamless gutters, replacement, repair and leaf protection on large wooded parcels at 938 feet, where roof water is managed on your own land. Family-run out of Fraser since 2011.
Family-owned and operated in Michigan since 2011
Based at 31097 Fraser Dr, Fraser, MI 48026
Serving Macomb, Oakland and St. Clair counties
Free on-site inspection and a written, itemized scope before work begins
Most heavily treed suburbs got that way by accident of age. Oakland Township got that way by decision. The township maintains what it calls a rural, wooded residential character through restrictive zoning and ordinances limiting commercial and industrial development, and it has held that line while the population went from 13,071 in 2000 to 20,067 in 2020 — up 53 percent, and still only 553 people per square mile.
Put that next to Royal Oak’s 4,914 people per square mile and the picture is clear: this township is under one ninth as dense as a built-out inner suburb. What arrived was large custom and semi-custom housing on big parcels, not tract subdivision, with the tree cover between houses preserved rather than cleared and replanted. The roofs are relatively new and the canopy over them is old, and that pairing drives most of our work here.
A twenty-year-old house was designed by someone who assumed the gutter would be cleaned. Set that same house under mature mixed hardwood on four sides and the assumption stops holding — the trough fills faster than the maintenance interval anyone planned for, water starts overshooting at the valleys, and the first sign is usually a stain on the fascia rather than anything you can see from the driveway.
Height compounds it. Larger homes here often put the main eave twenty-five feet or more off grade, which makes routine ladder work a bad idea for a homeowner. That changes the honest recommendation: on a tall house standing under permanent canopy, protection is usually cheaper over ten years than the alternative, and we will say so plainly.
The township sits at 938 feet, high ground by any standard in this region, with Paint Creek and Stony Creek running through it. Michigan’s first rail trail, the Paint Creek Trail, opened along that corridor in 1983, and the old Goodison Mill site of 1835 sits on the same creek. Only 0.42 of the township’s 36.3 square miles is water, but the ground it stands on has real fall, and that fall is the thing to design around.
On a large parcel there is often nowhere convenient to hand water off to. Whatever leaves the downspouts is yours until it reaches a creek, a swale or a low corner of the property, and a downspout aimed downhill toward the house — which happens more often than people expect on a walkout elevation — puts hundreds of gallons against the foundation every storm. We work out where each outlet actually discharges before deciding anything about gutter size.
County drains and stormwater here fall under the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner, which handles operations and maintenance for 22 local municipalities and oversees infrastructure valued at more than 18 billion dollars. The township’s building department is at 4393 Collins Rd in Rochester, open weekdays 8:00 to 4:30 on 248-651-6930, and publishes its own permit requirements and fees.
Rolled to length on the property, which matters on a wide custom elevation where a sectional joint would sit in the middle of the front of the house.
Where years of packed leaf have held standing water in the trough, corroded the back edge and worked the hangers loose from the inside out.
Re-pitching, new hidden hangers, resealed corners, and additional outlets at the valleys where a large roof concentrates its flow.
The core question on a treed parcel. We look at species, overhang and eave height, then quote the system that suits your roof rather than one product for everything.
Larger roof areas need larger throats. On steep, tall elevations the outlet is usually the constraint, not the trough width.
Deep overhangs on custom homes carry long soffit runs. We replace rotted board, wrap fascia and keep the intake ventilation working.
Buried solid pipe routed with the grade to a pop-up emitter well downslope, so a walkout elevation stops collecting its own roof water.
Runs measured, contributing roof area calculated, overhanging species noted, fascia hand-checked, and the fall of the ground around the house walked.
Profile and size, hanger type and spacing, outlet count, guard system, fascia repairs and drainage routing — priced line by line.
Old system stripped, deteriorated board cut back to sound timber, the fascia line trued before anything new is fixed to it.
Every run flooded and every discharge point watched, the grounds cleared and gone over with a magnet, then a walk-round with you.
One company across the whole roof edge means the gutter, the fascia behind it, the soffit under it and the shingle above it are all somebody’s responsibility — ours.
The central question on a wooded parcel, priced as its own decision. See leaf protection.
Under permanent canopy the maintenance interval is the design input. It belongs in the estimate, not in a conversation next autumn.
On a graded parcel with a walkout, an outlet in the wrong place is worse than no gutter at all on that elevation.
We recommend protection where the lot justifies it and say so when it does not. Both answers get given here.
The same people quote, install and come back. Licensed and insured, working Oakland and Macomb counties from one shop.
Sizes, spacing, outlets, guard type and drainage routing, itemized, so you can compare our scope against anyone else’s line for line.
Pulled live from our Google Business Profile rather than retyped into the page, so nothing here has been selected or edited by us.
The township borders Addison to the north, Orion to the west, Rochester Hills to the south and Washington Township across the Macomb County line to the east, and we work all of it.
On a parcel with mature hardwood on several sides, usually yes — and the reason is eave height as much as leaf volume. A house whose gutters cannot be safely reached from a ladder is a house that will not get cleaned on schedule, and an uncleaned trough is what destroys the fascia behind it.
Because something upstream is melting snow that then refreezes at the cold eave. The code tables set Oakland County at 25 psf of ground snow load and GLISA puts regional freeze-thaw cycling near 42 a year, but the trigger is usually attic heat loss. Guards and heat cable do not address that; air sealing, insulation and balanced ventilation do.
Because the house is young and the trees are not. Systems get specified to a standard detail that assumes routine clearing. Preserved canopy overhead changes the loading without changing the specification, and the gutter loses that argument every time.
Where a scope requires one, we pull it with the Oakland Township Building Department at 4393 Collins Rd in Rochester. Requirements and fees are set locally and are revised from time to time, so we check the township’s current position for your job rather than repeating something off a web page.
Not onto the slope above the house, which is where they very often end up. On graded ground the discharge has to be carried in buried pipe past the low side of the building and released downhill of it. That is a routing exercise on your particular grade, not a standard detail.
Yes. Material comes in on the truck and gutter is formed at the property, so access is a scheduling question rather than an obstacle. We look at turning and staging space during the inspection.
More often the outlets. Wide troughs still back up if the water has nowhere to leave, and on a large roof the flow concentrates at the valleys. We total the area feeding each run and place outlets against that number.
We measure the runs, count the outlets the roof needs, look at what is growing over it, walk the grade and hand you an itemized scope. If protection is not justified on your lot, the scope will say that too.
