Period gutter protection?

[tycarregydwr]

So I think we are not the only people to have lost some guttering as a result of the snow. In our case it's all plastic stuff on the new extensions. On one side a huge slab of snow slid into the gutter and weighed it down before eventually sliding off. Two of the supports buckled, allowing the pipe to twist and possibly crack - not sure yet - with the result that water is chucking it against the house now. At the back, a small piece of gutter pipe was pulled off, as I discovered when I found it on the woodpile this morning. I think nothing is damaged there and it just needs to be reattached.
But I was thinking, is there some reason our gutters are particularly suceptible to this kind of damage, have they been built wrong? It's only on the new part of the house, but I don't see a great deal of difference between that and the gutter arrangement on the old house. The old roof had less snow accumulation on it though (primarily as a result of prevailing wind direction I believe).
In properly snowy countries, houses have more of an overhang to protect the walls and I guess the gutters too?
I have also seen some roofs with little spikes to retain the snow - these always confused me as I thought you wanted to get the snow off the roof rather than keep it on (many traditional roofs in snowy countries are smooth and steeply angled to enable them to shed snow) - but I guess if they held the slab so that it melted rather than sliding onto the gutter, that might help?

 

[Penners]

I suspect that many houses' plastic gutters would be vulnerable to that kind of damage, given enough weight of snow on them. The cantilever supports for such guttering systems always look pretty flimsy to me, and I reckon they're probably the weakest part of the system.

For long-term peace-of-mind you may want to consider spending a bit more on the replacements. Aluminium, copper or cast iron would be much more robust.

 

[Feltwell]

Must depend in part on the angle of the roof compared to the position of the gutter, as to if it ends up with the weight of the snow sliding down the roof resting on it or it just passes over the top.

The main bit of Feltwell Towers has cast iron guttering which I reckon it needs, as the back part of the roof in particular is very large and has a valley that all the snow seems to gather in and then slide down en masse. The block of snow ends up resting on the gutter - only problem is as it melts the water misses the gutter completely as the block of snow/ice overhangs it, so it splashes down the wall and over the window below. Still, for the number of times it happens I doubt it does much harm.

Our scullery has plastic guttering (a long way down the list of jobs is to replace this with cast iron) and it survives the snow OK, even with a fair weight of snow that has slid down the roof resting on it - but then it's only a single-storey structure.

Tycarregydwr, if cast iron is too pricey for you then I can recommend Lindab Rainline steel guttering - I used this on my dormer windows when I replaced the roof, as they are so hard to access it would be very difficult to get up there to paint cast iron. It won't be as strong as cast iron under snow load but will be much better than plastic.

 

[worms]

Snow boards on the roof might be the traditional answer to this. Google images only gives me things for the roof of the car to hold other things to slide down hills on, so I can't post a pic! However these guys do a modern version.

I would imagine that the bendyness of plastic guttering also introduces lateral pressures on the fixings in ways that cast iron doesn't.

 

[wobs]

Try "gutter snow guard"
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gutter+snow+guard&hl=en&tbo=u&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=cWQGUcWCNaOd0QXKjoDoCA&ved=0CG4QsAQ&biw=1600&bih=719

 

[Penners]

Snow boards on the roof might be the traditional answer to this.

I can't really see how that would help...

 

[tycarregydwr]

great photo :lol:

thank you everyone for your replies. if we get another big snowfall this winter i may seriously consider fitting some sort of snowboards/ gutter protection, since cast iron guttering is so far down the list of priorities, financially, that it is but a distant speck in the future...