Your guttering is an essential part of protecting your home from water damage. Your gutters will stay in place and carry out their primary functions year-in year-out with very little maintenance required from you (well, apart from regular cleaning). Even with the minimum amount of maintenance, your guttering will continue to carry out their vital role and give you the peace of mind that your home is protected. Regardless of the amount of effort (or lack thereof) you put into looking after your gutters there will come a time when you will need to fully replace them. In this article I will discuss scenarios where you will need to repair your gutters and those that will require them to be replaced.

When to Repair

The following represents situations when your gutters need to be repaired rather than replacing:

• Once it starts to rain heavily put on a raincoat and check your gutters to see if there are any small puncture holes throughout the piping. If there are, wait until the gutter is dry and patch them with silicone using a caulking gun.
• If the holes you identify are larger than those mentioned above, remove any rust with a wire brush or cutters if need be and use roofing cement to attach a metal patch to the required area. It is important that the patch applied is non-corrosive to the material of the gutters, as this will prevent further damage from occurring.
• The seam of the gutter may not be water tight. If this is the case, it is important to run a bead of silicone along the entire seam and give it time to dry.
• In some cases your guttering may have come loose from its brackets and will require reattaching. If you can see water stains on the wall behind the guttering, this is most often the case. If the brackets themselves are in a state of disrepair, you may want to go out and buy new brackets.

Replacing Your Gutters

As previously stated, even with the utmost diligence in your approach to maintaining your gutters, they will still require replacing every twenty years or so. Over the years rusting, external damage and other corrosion issues will take their toll and the whole guttering system must be replaced. Below is a list of options available to you when deciding to replace your gutters:

• If you want to install new gutters a cheaply as possible, then vinyl is an excellent choice of material. Vinyl is not suitable for use in countries that have extreme weather conditions, as the material expands and contracts easily.
• Another option is galvanized steel which is durable and robust in nature but is still prone to rusting, despite its zinc coating.
• Aluminium gutters have the light weight properties of vinyl but have a degree of the durability associated with steel. Aluminium gutters can be fitted without seams using specialized equipment that bonds the metal.

These are just a few of the options available to you but they are generally regarded as the most popular materials on the market. It is important to make an informed choice about what material best suits your environment and also your financial constraints.

We generally go about our day without every noticing our rain gutters but once something goes wrong we find them impossible to ignore. What is more, ignoring a damaged or leaking gutter can be detrimental to the structure of your home.

The primary purpose of guttering is to drain water away from the house and without them water would run straight from the roof and down the side of the building. Guttering is the initial line of defence against water damage, as it prevents water from collecting at the base of the building’s foundations. If the foundations of a home flood, hydrostatic pressure accumulates causing internal damp in the rooms above. Although there are many dangers involved with water logged foundations, it is equally important to keep the area surrounding your home dry. An efficient water drainage system is essential to maintaining the infrastructure of your home and in this article I will outline a few methods that will help you make repairs to this system. Detailed in this article are methods aimed at patching holes and repairing joints and spouts that may have developed leaks.

Patching Holes

Holes in guttering is inevitable, regardless of the maintenance you regularly undertake on your drainage system. Steel gutters are prone to rusting, while aluminium gutters are susceptible to puncturing via daily ware and tear. Often you will come across holes in your piping that has been purposely drilled in an attempt to drain water from a blocked gutter. This is the wrong approach to draining a gutter, as many drainage problems are as a result of improper sloping angles or blockages. Any holes like this must be patched immediately and ignoring this problem will lead to a more expensive repair. Roofing plaster and a metal repair patch will be sufficient for repairing small holes in the pipe but the patch needs to be considerably larger than the hole. Try to choose a repair patch that is the same colour as your drain pipe or gutter, as this will be secured to the outside of the pipe. This is not just for aesthetic purposes but it also ensures that two different metals do not induce a chemical reaction causing further erosion. The first step is to thoroughly clean the gutter of any debris and gently sand away any rough edges on plastic gutters. Use a wire brush to remove any rust from aluminium and steel gutters, with rust being the primary reason for secondary leaks.

Leaking Joints

Joints are one area of a guttering system that is more prone to leaks than any other area of piping. Seamless gutters have rectified the historical problems of joints but they still can develop leaks that can be very expensive to repair. A small bead of fibreglass caulk on the inside of the seal should stop any water from passing through but this can only be applied when the gutter is completely dry. If this does not resolve the issue, you may need to replace the entire joint. Sagging gutters can also put pressure on the joints causing the seams to come apart which in turn allows water to seep through.

Gutter Repair

Some people find that the task of cleaning their gutters is unnecessary but this could not be further from the truth. Cleaning your gutters is a crucial part of the maintenance carried out on your home, especially in Liverpool due to the persistent rain and adverse weather conditions. Throughout the year, debris builds up in your gutters and this has to be removed before blockages occur. Plants can easily grow in this environment and the roots from these plants can damage the structure of your gutters causing them to leak.

Once your gutters start to leak, the water can cause thousands of pounds of damage to your home. Rotten wooden fascia, water damage to the brick work, foundation damage, damp and roof damage are a common occurrence when you leave your gutters unmaintained. The UK housing authority recommends cleaning your gutters twice a year and here at KD Guttering, we fully agree with this assessment. You will also need your guttering checked regularly for leaks and damage to the structure of the piping. It is important that this is carried out to prevent a costly replacement project being carried out on your gutters.

If you have any questions regarding any issues discussed here, give us a call and we will be happy to answer any queries you have on this subject. The dangers of clogged up gutters is something that is not giving the respect it deserves and if you do not respect your guttering system, you may end up having to pay thousands of pounds to repair the problems associated with it. Damage as a result of poorly maintained system, will not be covered by your home insurance policy, as it is the home owners job to maintain the upkeep of your home.