Gutters Before or After a New Roof? How to Time It in South Florida

The order of work when gutters and roof replacement overlap

Here is the sequence that protects both the roof and the gutters. Your roofer may tweak it, but the logic holds for shingle, tile and metal roofs alike.

1. Walk the house together. Before any work, note gutter condition, fascia damage and where downspouts discharge. Photos help settle questions later.
2. Remove gutters and downspouts. We take them down a day or two before tear-off, label runs if they will be reused, and either store them on site or haul them away.
3. Repair fascia while it is exposed. Rotted boards are easy to see and replace now, before the drip edge goes on.
4. Roofer installs underlayment and edge metal. The drip edge, or tile eave closure, sets the line the gutter will hang below.
5. Roof is completed and inspected where required. Building departments in Broward and Miami-Dade inspect reroofs in stages; wait for the roofer to finish the edge work.
6. Gutters go back up. Reused or new, the gutter is hung behind or under the drip edge so roof water lands inside the trough.
7. Water test. Every outlet and downspout is flushed to confirm pitch and flow.

Reinstall gutters or put up new ones? How we decide

Plenty of homeowners assume a new roof means new gutters. Sometimes it does. Often a seamless system that is only a few years old comes down clean and goes back up looking like it never moved.

A reroof also changes how water leaves the roof. Concrete or barrel tile throws water farther out than shingle, and a steeper or larger roof plane may outrun an old 5-inch gutter. If you are upgrading roof material, it is worth checking whether gutter size and outlet count should change with it.

Fascia condition can override everything else. If the boards behind the old gutter are soft, the reroof is the moment to replace them, while the drip edge is off and nothing is hanging from the wood. New or reused, a gutter is only as secure as the board its hangers bite into.

Drip edge, tile closures and flat-roof edges: where gutters meet the new roof

Shingle roofs

Shingle roofs get a metal drip edge at the eave. The back of the gutter should sit under that drip edge, or a gutter apron should bridge the gap, so water cannot run behind the gutter and rot the fascia. That detail only works if the gutter goes on after the drip edge.

Barrel and flat tile roofs

Tile overhangs the edge and sheds water farther out. We set the gutter to catch that throw and check that the eave closure or bird stop is not blocking flow. Gutters on tile homes also need careful hanger placement because there is little room to work under the tile.

Flat roofs and metal roofs

Flat roofs usually drain through scuppers, so the work is matching leader heads and downspouts to the new scupper locations. Metal roofs shed water fast and can send it over a shallow gutter, so outlet size matters.

Remove gutters for roof replacement: who does what

Some roofers pull gutters themselves, and some will not touch them. When the roofing crew rips them off with the old shingles, the gutters are usually scrap. If you want to keep them, ask a gutter crew to remove them first.

Our gutter removal and reinstall service is built around reroof schedules. We take the system down, store reusable runs or haul away what is not worth keeping, and come back when the roofer is done. We also take removal-only jobs, where you just need the old gutters off and gone, with no requirement to buy new ones from us.

Managing water while the gutters are down

Most reroofs in South Florida take longer than homeowners expect, especially between May and October when afternoon storms halt work. For those weeks the house has no gutters. Move potted plants away from the drip line, lay a tarp or splash pads at entries, and clear underground downspout inlets so they do not fill with roof grit.

Plan the gutter return date with the roofer, not just the start date. In Pompano Beach, the 1950s–60s ranch homes in Cresthaven and Kendall Green carry low hip roofs of shingle or flat tile, and switching from one to the other on a reroof makes the gutter size question real. Farther north around Delray Beach, flat-roof homes with scuppers need their leader heads matched to the new roof edge.

What we see when gutters go back on a freshly roofed house

The roof is new, so everyone expects the gutter part to be easy. Most of the trouble we run into on reroof jobs sits in the few inches where the roof edge meets the fascia.

• Drip edge set too tight to the fascia. With no room to slip the gutter’s back flange behind it, water finds the seam between the two and stains the board.
• Old hanger holes everywhere. Reused gutters go back on with hangers shifted to fresh wood, because a screw driven into a stripped hole holds nothing in a summer storm.
• Fascia patched instead of replaced. A thin trim wrap over soft wood looks fine on day one. Hangers pull out of it within a season.
• Tile that changed the throw. A shingle-to-tile reroof can send water past a gutter that used to catch everything, so the run may need to sit lower or go up a size.

The honest trade-off on reuse: putting a sound seamless system back up saves material and waste, but it will carry its old scratches and may not match a new roof color. When the table above points to new metal, our gutter replacement work is timed to the same reroof window. When the boards behind the old gutter are soft, fascia board repair happens before the drip edge closes the gap.

Five things to settle with your roofer before tear-off

1. Who removes the gutters and downspouts, and who stores or hauls them.
2. Which edge metal goes on (drip edge, tile eave closure or gravel stop) and how far it should project.
3. Whether soft fascia is in the roofing scope or the gutter scope.
4. The day the roofer expects to be finished at the eaves.
5. Who pays if a reusable run is damaged on site.

Getting the timing right on your reroof

Gutters off first, roof and edge metal next, gutters back on last. Inside that order, the decisions that matter are whether your old system is worth reusing, whether the fascia needs work, and how soon the gutters return once the roofer leaves the eave. Put each of those answers in writing on both contracts.

If a reroof is on your calendar, call Southern Gutters FL for a free estimate. We will look at the existing gutters and fascia, tell you honestly whether reuse makes sense, and plan our dates around your roofer’s.