Guttering in Manchester
Failed guttering causes more damage than people expect. Water that should be leaving down the drain runs down the brickwork instead, soaks the wall and gets in at the eaves. It nearly always starts small: one blocked outlet, one union seal gone, one bracket loose in a soft fascia board. We clear and repair guttering where the run is sound and replace it where it is not. Dave looks at it first and gives you a free written quote before anything is booked in.
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How guttering fails
Gutters fail in an order, and the order tells you what you are looking at. The outlet blocks first. Leaves, moss off the tiles and the grit that washes out of old concrete tile all travel to the lowest point of the run, the top of the downpipe. Water then stands instead of leaving, and standing water comes over the edge at that point in any heavy rain. It is also heavy, and it sits against the joints rather than running past them, so the union seals go next and the run drips at fixed points even in light rain. Then the weight works the screws loose in wet timber and the length sags. Most of what we get called to is further down that list than it needed to be.
Reading it from the ground
Standing outside in heavy rain is the best inspection there is. Water over the front edge along one stretch, with the rest dry, is a blockage or a dropped length at that point. A steady drip from one spot in ordinary rain, with a green streak down the wall beneath it, is a failed joint. Water still lying hours after the rain stopped is that same blocked outlet, or a length off its brackets making a dip. It is only a fall problem if the outlet is clear and the run still holds water, so we check both first. One thing we will always say: do not lean a ladder against the guttering for a closer look. uPVC distorts under the weight and cast iron can come off the fascia with you on it.
Clearing the run, the downpipe and the gully
A gutter is only half of it, and most of what gets reported as a fault sits below the outlet. We take debris out by hand and away with us rather than flushing it, because a downpipe packed with wet moss is a worse problem than the gutter was. Then we run water through, which is the only way to know the clear has worked. On older terraces the downpipe runs into a hopper head at first floor level, and a hopper full of leaves overflows onto the brickwork. The split nobody finds is at the back of the pipe, showing indoors as a damp stripe. On solid brick walls in Swinton and Salford, this water soaks through the outer leaf, ruins plaster, and breeds black mould behind wardrobes. At the bottom the gully silts up. We look at hopper, pipe and gully as one run, because leaving the gully blocked only moves the overflow lower down. If the blockage is underground that is a drainage job, and Dave will say so. Where water still stands after a clear, the fault is the run itself, and the repair goes in a free written quote.
What the water does if it is left
Some of the overflow goes down the brickwork out front. The rest works back over the inside edge onto the fascia, and that is the half that does the damage, because timber takes water in at the end grain and behind the bracket screws. Once the board is soft the brackets have nothing to hold and the run drops further. Outside you get a green streak and moss under the fault. Inside, on the same elevation, a damp patch high near the eaves and plaster blowing. A tide mark starting high and working down came off the roof, not up out of the ground.
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Cast iron, uPVC and the houses round here
The Victorian terraces around Swinton, Pendlebury and Salford were built with cast iron, often an ogee profile, bolted through at every joint and bedded on putty. It lasts a very long time while it is painted. Left bare it rusts from the back edge where nobody looks, the bolts seize, and a socket can crack in a winter that freezes it full of water. Sound cast iron is worth rebolting, resealing and repainting rather than stripping off, and on a period frontage we usually say so. The 1930s semis around Wardley and Moorside mostly carry uPVC now, often on runs sized for the original half round and never resized once a concrete tile roof started shedding grit into them. On a pair of semis the run is lowest and fullest at the join between the two houses, which is the awkward place to work and the first place it overtops.
New guttering, set out properly
For a new run we fit sectional uPVC half round or square in 112mm or 150mm, or seamless aluminium rolled on site so there are no joints. Setting out matters most. We give the run a shallow fall to the outlet, a few millimetres to the metre, so nothing stands. Brackets go at metre centres, closer either side of a union and on an exposed gable. A long run off a big pitch, or a valley firing into the middle of a length, wants the deeper section or it will overtop. Dave sets the falls out in a free written quote.
Repair or replace, and what affects the price
A repair is right when the run is sound and the fault is local: a blocked outlet, one failed union, a bracket out of the board, a dropped length. Replacement is the answer when the plastic has gone brittle, when the board behind it is rotten so there is nothing to fix to, or when the section is too small for the roof above. If a clean is all it needs, that is what Dave will say. What it costs follows the metres of gutter and how many elevations carry it, then the section and the material, then whether the downpipe route and the gully are in the job or only the gutter is. After that it is access, because a run over a conservatory or down a tight alley may want a tower rather than a ladder. Dave sets the work out in a free written quote and leaves you to think about it.
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150+ Google reviews. Dave has 25 years on the tools.
Free written quote with no obligation.