Misunderstood, Neglected Gutters

by Diane Bostick of “His and Hers Fix-Its”

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Of the many fixtures outside the house and under the roof, gutters can be the most frustrating. Collections of leaves, twigs, dirt and rocks build up in them and around them, and block them from their critical task; to bring water down off the roof and away from the house. Sometimes they just get bashed into nothingness by ice.

 

Before you blame the gutters for not doing their job, rid yourself of the common phrases, ”get your head out of the gutter”, “shut your gutter mouth” , “don’t land yourself in the gutter”, and let’s try to maintain repair or replace the real ones that are making your life hell.

 

Recently we uncovered a lot of water problem sources, including a collapsed gutter that had been trapped under a deck and around a house. Our was initially , a deck repair job. Once the weakened planks were removed, we began to see why there was such a water problem in the basement. The client had asked us to look for clues as to why there was water there, and, when we found the issues, we did the best to repair them before closing the deck.

 

I’ll focus on mainly the gutter, with sidelights on the other gaps we found and concrete cracks that were compromising the foundation.

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Here is a piece of the gutter (left) that had been disconnected beneath the deck.

 

Here’s another disconnected piece, (right) of many we found when we removed deck plants near the foundation all around the house.

 

We worked to bring the extension piece end out of the deck (where it should have been all along.) Water had been feeding out the breaks in the gutter, and flowing into the foundation.

 

We cut a hole in the wood base bottom of the deck and fed out the gutter end and added the extension to bring water further away from the house.

 

Instead of stopping here with the water problem, we noticed many gaps in the sub base area of the deck. We would not have seen any of these without removing planks and doing our work.

 

Wherever possible, spray Styrofoam filler to cover obvious gaps, enabling a better water seal for the foundation.

 

Sweeping and cleaning and then dry-lock water seal went on this concrete area on the back foundation. There were perceptible cracks over a six foot area.

 

Here’s the way part of our deck looked after: Just the first coat: See the whole deck story next article:

 

“Those lazy, hazy crazy days of deck rec!”