Home DIY

Cheers mate. After doing some searching online I realised most people call them "eaves protectors" rather than the "drip trays" prescribed by the roofer I got a quote from.

I watched a few videos, checked prices, and have ordered them up. For less than 30 quid, I should hopefully have all the bits I need for 9 metres worth. I'm gonna try and fit them all tonight if kiddos don't wake up lots. The pointing needed where the drips splashed back onto the wall and caused lots of moss growth and then frost damage will have to wait a bit longer, but that's fine. I just want to prevent more damage being done as quickly as possible. The only tricky bit for this job is getting up above the gutter. It's only 1 storey above a flat roof, but about 40% of that area has a lantern style roof light so I'll need to figure out how to get a ladder around all that safely, alone, at night. What could go wrong?

Last night's job was fixing the guttering on the flat roof. I took down 8 metres worth, cleaned it all up, took off all the clips and started from scratch. Each of the clips was secured with 1 rather than 2 screws, and many of those weren't even screwed in all the way. As it's such a long section, there's a joint piece that should have been screwed in but wasn't at all. I realised as I was doing this that there was no fall on the clips at all. They were all just put up as close to the top of the fascia as possible. I had known there wasn't enough fall, but didn't realise it was just completely flat. Of course it was never going to work properly.

Anyway, it was pretty easy work given I can access either from a step ladder on the ground or from a door onto the flat roof above. I was able to get it done in a shade over 2 hours, including set up and tidy away.

Roofer #1 had quoted £350 to do this. Roofers 2, 3, and 4 still haven't bothered to show up to quote for the work when they said they were going to. TBH that has been a good push to just DIY it, even if life feels very busy right now with 2 kids under 3.

This was one of those rare DIY jobs where nothing went unexpectedly - the holy grail! If a clip or a section of gutter had snapped or anything like that I'd have been stuck at 10pm praying it didn't rain overnight and that I could find somewhere with the right product in stock in the morning, while also needing to do nursery drop off and collection and a full day at work. Fingers crossed installing the eaves protectors this evening goes as well!

The final part of the guttering fixes is then figuring out why water drips out of the side trims of the flat roof, and then fixing the root cause. After a quick bit of research and inspection, I think it may be missing the foam tape underneath the kerb trims that are meant to provide the watertight seal. If that's the case, should be an easy fix. If anyone has experience diagnosing and fixing this type of issue, I'd appreciate any input you have!