`Gutter men are avid weather channel watchers,” says Mike Griffith of Sandwich, a gutter installer for Premier Exteriors in Aurora since 1991. “A good day is 70 degrees, with a light breeze and no mud. A bad day is rainy or windy. Rain makes the ladders slip and prevents the caulk from setting in the joints. The wind makes it hard to hang onto the long pieces.”
His greatest enemy, says Griffith, 41, is lightning. “Then, I’m outta there. Otherwise, I’ll get hit because there I am, on the roof, carrying around a 40-foot, aluminum lightning rod.”
Six days a week at 7 a.m., Griffith and his partner, Dave Leffew of Aurora, load their truck, pick up their orders and head for a job site. The duo is one of Premier’s two gutter crews. (“Water disbursement system designers,” says Griffith, tongue in cheek.) The company also installs siding.
“I get paid by the foot, not the hour,” he says. “So if I load up the truck with the wrong material, I don’t get paid for reloading time. But mistakes are made. Occasionally, the wrong color is called in by the builder or the homeowner. They’re easy to mix up because one company calls white `snowmist’ and another calls it `snowcap.’ And, `snowmist’ gets confused with `mist,’ which is gray.
“Ten years ago, there was white, brown or ivory. But more and more, people pick out a gutter color to match the siding–designer colors with names like heather, brandywine and cactus. I’ve taken down brand new gutters because the new owners of the house didn’t like the color.”
Prior to installation, one of Premier’s employees measures and gives the homeowner a bid, which then serves as a work order, telling Griffith how much gutter and downspout and how many end caps and elbows to bring. Premier buys the downspout in 10-foot lengths and the gutter in coils of flat aluminum. On the job, Griffith feeds the coil through a machine that shapes it and cuts it to length with a guillotine-like blade. Griffith’s other tools include snips for cutting downspouts to size, a long-handled hammer for attaching gutter brackets, a utility knife for trimming fascia, a level and a nail-setting tube he calls “the kabonger” for aiming the nails where the hammer can’t reach.
“By the time I put everything in my tool belt, plus nails, I’m carrying 40 pounds,” says Griffith.
Griffith’s first order of business is to decide where to locate the downspouts. “We’re usually there before the landscaper, so we have to figure out how the yard is going to be graded and how to make the water flow away from the house so it won’t go into the basement,” he says. “After I figure out where the downspouts will be, I work backwards, mapping out where to run the gutters.”
While Griffith draws his water map, Leffew unloads their ladders–one 40-feet, two 36-feet, two 28-feet, two 16-feet and a 10-foot step ladder. “The longest, the 40-foot, gets us up three stories. Higher than that, and I have to rent a boom truck,” he says.
Before installing the gutter, Griffith slips aluminum flashing under the bottom row of shingles, if the roofer hasn’t already done so. He cuts the gutter lengths and attaches them to fascia boards with aluminum brackets set every 2 feet.
“The longest gutter I’ve installed was 220 feet long. It took six of us to hang it,” Griffith recalls.
“The gutter should slope as little as possible–just one inch is enough for a 30-foot gutter,” says Griffith. “But there isn’t a level house in this country, so we have work with the slope of the house. The gutter man’s worst nightmare is the house that’s framed too crooked. We can’t make it straight; we just have to work with it.”
New homes are Griffith’s favorites because he can begin installing as soon as he draws his plan. Existing homes require tear-downs of old gutters and minor repairs. “We find all kinds of stuff in the gutters–children’s toys, dead birds, dog toys. Nine times out of ten, there’s a tennis ball in there. Once I found a bullet in a roof in Aurora,” he says. “But the worst is the wasps. The hotter it is, the more ornery they are. I’ve been stung twice this year. That’s why I wear a baseball cap–it’s a handy swatter.”
While they work, the partners play 1970s rock ‘n’ roll music on the truck radio. “In a new subdivision, where a lot of people are working, we turn to the station the guys across the street are listening to, so we’re not all playing something different,” says Griffith.
They usually eat breakfast and lunch on the job. “A hot dog and banana is the breakfast of champions,” says Griffith. By 4 p.m., they can equip two three-bedroom, two-story houses with 220 lineal feet of gutter and 120 feet of downspout each.
Griffith works year-round, layering clothing in the winter and warming extra gloves on the truck’s defroster. Fall is his busy season, when builders scurry to complete new homes before the snow falls.
Someday, Griffith hopes to retire to a home on a lake in southern Illinois, where he and his wife, Vanessa, can fish off their deck.
Meanwhile, Griffith savors the autonomy his job offers. “I used to drive a truck long distance; so I was used to working independently. With this job, Dave and I are on our own all day,” he says. Raised on a farm in Big Rock, he says he learned early on to respect hard work. The danger doesn’t seem to phase him, as he reports nonchalantly: “I’ve fallen off roofs three times and broken my ankle once. Once, I fell off a 1 1/2-story house and landed on my feet.”
Griffith takes pride in his work, noting that several of his customers’ million-dollar homes have been featured in newspapers and on television. But bigger is not necessarily better, he warns homeowners. “We see the work up close, so we know,” he says. “I tell people if you want a good gutter guy, ask a builder. And, if you want a good builder, ask the gutter guy.”
———-
For more information, contact Mike Griffith, Premier Exteriors, 244 S. River St., Aurora, Ill. 60506. Telephone: 630-897-0774.
