Are rain gutters really necessary?
And in particular, are rain gutters that get filled with sludge and don’t drain, even when you’ve cleaned them once this season, and consequently back up and splash water against one corner of the house where the flashing is adequate except when the ran gutter backs up and splashes water against it, when water leaks inside and drips through the ceiling of the family room, are gutters such as this, to wit, the gutters over the second floor windows outside my bedroom, really necessary? Would there be some horrible catastrophe if I had them yanked out and just let the water run where it will?
Or would I just discover more places where the flashing is mostly adequate?
The View from the Foothills 
Without gutters, the rain runs straight off the roof and digs a line in the garden/lawn/whatever is under the eaves. This is inconvenient over a door that people come and go through as you get drenched in transit. The gutter directs the rain to a spout and down to wherever it’s more convenient for the water to go. (You didn’t really need to know any of this, did you?)
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At my own place, I found that putting in rain gutters greatly reduced leaks of water into my basement. Your mileage may vary. You do have to keep them cleaned out, though.
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In point of fact, we have no basement; and there’s nothing below the gutters but pavement (brick or flagstone, take your pick) or (in the case of the gutter in question) the roof over the patio, which gets its own supply of rain.
However, the gutter in question is below a peaked roof that’s broken by three gables, so that the rain comes down to it in four rivers rather than all along its length; and I suspect that the sound of those four rivers plummeting to the patio roof below would be…unpleasant. Not to mention that the water would hit the patio roof and splash back onto the windows, which might cause problems.
So yeah, it needs to be there…but I can dream, can’t I?
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Yes, and you can be thankful that you don’t live in Portland where it rains a heckuvalot more than it does in L.A.!
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