Repair

Drip Edge and Gutters: Roof Faults Blamed on Gutters

By Gutter Repair Tulsa · November 9, 2026 · 8 min read

A lot of what gets called a gutter problem in Tulsa is not a gutter problem. The water is real, the stain on the fascia is real, and the gutter is doing exactly what it was built to do. The fault is six inches above it, at the edge of the roof, and no amount of sealant or re-hanging will touch it. Understanding how drip edge and gutters are supposed to fit together is most of the diagnosis.

Here is how to tell, before you pay anyone to work on the wrong part of the house.

Drip edge and gutters: fault one, no drip edge

Drip edge is the L-shaped metal strip that runs along the eave under the first course of shingles, with its lower leg hanging into the back of the trough. Its job is to stop water from curling backward off the shingle edge and running down the face of the fascia. A related piece, the gutter apron, is a wider flashing that tucks under the shingles and laps over the back of the gutter for the same reason.

Plenty of Tulsa houses built before the mid-1980s never had it, and plenty of re-roofs since, including fast re-roofs after the big spring storms, skipped it. The signs:

• Dark vertical streaks on the fascia, worst directly under the shingle edge.
• The gutter is half empty during a rain while water is visibly running behind it.
• Paint peeling on the fascia in a band along the top, right where the gutter meets it.
• Rot in the fascia board with a perfectly dry gutter interior.

This is a roofer's fix rather than a gutter fix. Adding drip edge to an existing roof means lifting the first shingle course, so a retrofit is typically $4–$9 a foot and often bundled into a re-roof. If the roof is near the end of its life, wait and insist on it next time.

Fault two: shingles cut short

The shingle overhang matters. The shingle edge should overhang the roof deck by about an inch and reach past the back lip of the gutter, so water leaves the shingle and lands in the trough. When a crew cuts the last course flush with the deck, water arrives at the gap between the roof and the gutter and goes down the wall.

You can check this from the ground with a phone camera: stand back, zoom in on the roof edge, and look for whether the shingles hang over the gutter's back edge or stop behind it. If you can see the top edge of the gutter and a sliver of decking above it, they are short. The fix is shingle extensions, or drip edge sized to bridge the gap.

Fault three: open valleys dumping in one place

A valley is where two roof planes meet, and everything that falls on both planes leaves through it. On the big hip roofs in south Tulsa and Jenks, a single valley can be collecting 700 square feet and delivering all of it to a two-foot section of gutter. Roof valley overflow is the result: in a Tulsa spring storm that drops an inch or more in an hour, with short bursts far heavier, that stretch of gutter cannot swallow it, and water shoots straight over the front lip.

The tell is concentrated: a wet, eroded patch of mulch or a rut in the lawn directly below the valley, with dry ground either side. Nothing is leaking. The gutter is being overrun.

There are two honest fixes. A valley diverter, a small metal flashing that spreads the flow along the gutter instead of firing it at one point, is $75–$150 and helps. Six-inch gutter with a 3x4 downspout on that run, placed close to the valley, is the real answer at $12–$15 a foot. Why gutters overflow in Tulsa rain has the roof-area math behind it.

Fault four: a roof plane that dumps onto a lower roof

Two-story houses in Owasso and Broken Arrow often have an upper roof that drains onto a lower porch or garage roof with no gutter of its own. All of that water hits the lower shingles at speed, sheets across them, and arrives at the lower gutter in a wall. The lower gutter overflows at the point of impact, and the shingles under the impact zone lose their granules years early.

The fix is a short run of gutter on the upper roof with its own downspout carried past the lower roof, or a kick-out diverter where the upper roof meets a wall. Either is typically a half-day job.

The comparison you need

Kick-out flashing, the one everybody misses

Where a roof edge runs into a wall, over a bay window, at the side of a garage or at a dormer, there should be a small flashing that kicks water out into the gutter instead of letting it run down behind the siding. Missing kick-outs are a quiet cause of rotted wall sheathing on Tulsa houses, and you find out when the siding goes soft. From the ground, look at the bottom of every place a roof meets a wall. If there is no little metal flap turning the water outward, add it to the roofer's list.

The fix

A careful contractor looks at the roof edge on any gutter repair visit, because there is no point selling a reseal for a roof-edge flashing problem. If it is a roof fault, a good one will say so, tell you roughly what it should cost, and price only the gutter work that actually belongs to the gutter. Where the roof is fine and the geometry is the problem, such as valleys, upper roofs and hips with long runs, that is a gutter installation conversation about sizing, and the cost page has the numbers.

Questions to ask before anyone reseals anything

• Is there metal at the roof edge, and does its lower leg sit inside the trough?
• Do the shingles hang past the back lip, or stop short of it?
• Where do the valleys land, and is there a downspout close to each one?
• Does an upper roof drain onto a lower one with nothing to catch it?
• Which part of the estimate is roof work and which part is trough work?

If the person writing the estimate cannot answer those from a ladder, get another opinion before paying for sealant.

Common questions

What goes behind gutters?

Behind it you should find the fascia board, which the hangers fasten into, and above that the drip edge or apron flashing, whose lower leg hangs into the back of the trough. If you can see bare fascia between the shingles and the gutter with no metal bridging the gap, water can run behind the gutter. The fascia should be sound, painted wood or wrapped trim, not soft to a screwdriver.

Should drip edge go over or behind the gutter?

The drip edge should sit under the shingles and lap into the trough, so its lower leg sits inside rather than behind the back wall. If the trough's back edge sits in front of that metal leg with a gap, water can slip down the fascia. During a re-hang, the installer should tuck the back of the trough up under that leg.

Why does water run behind my gutter?

The usual causes are a missing drip edge, shingles cut too short to reach the trough, or a gutter that has pulled forward on its hangers and opened a gap at the fascia. A clogged gutter can also overflow over the back edge. Look from the ground during a rain: if the gutter is half empty while water streams down the fascia, the roof edge is the place to start.