Replacing / repairing cast iron gutters and drainpipes

[Hatster]

Hi folks

It's been a busy few weeks at the Hatster residence, and we have a whole stock of questions to ask the wise people on this forum.

To start off, though, we have a question about our gutters and drainpipes. We have some cast iron gutters and drainpipes, which are pretty rusty in places, although I can't see any holes (see attached picture, looking down on a gutter from our bedroom window - yes, all the moss has been removed since!). We also have a number of plastic gutters and drainpipes. Some plastic gutters run into iron drainpipes and vice versa.




We clearly need to either repair or replace our cast iron gutters and drainpipes. Can anyone tell us about the pros and cons of repair over replacement? It looks to me as though it would be a big job to remove all the flaking paint and rust and repaint. I'm not sure that all the guttering sections are actually saveable, though we could salvage a couple from our garage. Because of this, I'm wondering if we'd actually be better off to replace all the guttering and drainpipes - cast iron and plastic - perhaps with a bit of a tidying up job on the drainage at the same time (some of the plumbing looks a bit ad-hoc to me).

I wondered whether it might be cheaper to go with something like these GRP gutters - http://www.rainguard.co.uk/grp_gutters ? Any opinions? Any experience? Any idea what the CO might think?

The house is a Grade-2 listed 17th century timber farmhouse in Cambridgeshire, although it is actually covered in a cement pebbledash which makes it look pretty grim, and which is not coming off any time soon.

Thanks very much for any ideas!

Hatster

 

[DaveBrigg]

I'm jealous. We only have plastic gutters and downpipes and I hate them, although at least they are easy to take apart, move and chop to size. Aluminium is cheaper than cast iron, and there are a number of suppliers online, They shouldn't rust. I suspect that the CO will take a dim view of replacing with plastic, but when I looked at the cost of buying cast iron for our house it made my eyes water; it was all the various corners, bends and joints that racked it up.

(as for the cement render, the only job more satisfying than knocking chunks of it off with a chisel and letting the surface below breathe for the first time in years is lime-washing the new lime render then sitting back with a cup of tea and seeing the colour slowly develop)

 

[Jon Maine]

Try http://www.epsonline.co.uk/index.php?cPath=6&main_page=index

I wouldn't bother with Grp.

I have always found the need to replace guttering with new and downpipes generally seem to be either more easily salvagable or more cost effective to overhaul secondhand or existing from the building.

Always check around the back for holes and cracks, i.e. the bits which dont easily get painted. If it makes a rasping sound under impact it will have a crack in it too.

Of course if you have a lot of existing you could get it shot blast to clean it up.

I always paint the outside with good quality gloss and have been known to apply a coat or two even to the inside.

 

[Hatster]

Sadly the cement render seems well and truly fixed to the walls - it's not up for being banged off this year at least :-(

On the other hand, at least our guttering doesn't involve all that many twiddly bits - it's large amount of straight lines, so perhaps this will come in cheaper.
So maybe what we need to try is to repaint the existing downpipes and connectors (replacing connectors and missing downpipes where necessary), and look at replacing gutters. The downpipes seem to have been repaired a few times already, but don't appear to have any holes in them. I've sent a mail to the company you gave a link to to investigate prices.

How do you get your drainpipes and gutters shotblasted? What sort of company does it, and do they have to take them off the wall first?

Thanks very much for your advice! I've spent all day going round staring at gutters - nearly walked into a car!

Hatster

 

[Jon Maine]

Try the yellow pages or yell.com for shotblasters or blast cleaning services. You could ask in a local reclaim yard or haulage companies as they often use shotblasters. Best approach is to ask if they are doing a job locally where you could take them as it is very messy and saves them hauling all there kit to you = less money.

Will need to be taken down.

 

[Moo]

Removing the downpipes seems to be a good idea, and not just for ease of sanding/shotblasting/painting. As someone said earlier, most of the rot occurs at the back of the pipes, where they don't get painted, so taking them off the wall would enable one to assess the damage and carry out any necessary repairs at ground level (or scrap them).

 

[Jon Maine]

It is also good to cut short sections of steel waterpipe and use longer fixings when re-installing the downpipes so you can get to the back to paint.

 

[Hatster]

Thanks very much for the link, Jon - I've got some prices back and it's much cheaper than I'd imagined, so I think we may well look at replacing some of the plastic guttering as well while we're at it. And I've now found blast cleaners in Yell - though the drainpipes may just need rust removing by hand. I suppose we'll need a bit of scaffolding in one or two places to get them off and back up - but the house isn't very high, so it shouldn't be too expensive (??)

I like the idea of taking the drainpipes off and then making sure they're re-attached with plenty of room for painting behind them - they are quite far out already (a lot further out than plastic drainpipes) and I hadn't consciously realised why, despite having spent Easter staring round the back of drainpipes.

Thanks - this forum is a wonderful place to get information!

 

[Jon Maine]

You could potentially use a scaffolding tower on wheels or the job is far quicker from proper scaffold but that costs more, get a few quotes for scaffold from local companies.

 

[MattW]

Also consider salvage guttering

http://salvagedoctor.com/rainwater-guttering.html

They might even buy your old ones off you?

 

[Feltwell]

I'd be wary of shot-blasting old guttering.

I too thought it would be a good idea, especially as I'd managed to pick up a load of cast iron gutter cheap off Ebay. I rang round local shot-blasting firms, and one I spoke to said he did a lot of sub-contract work for the Saint Gobain foundry (which is just down the road from me) - they blast their new guttering to clean it before it is painted.

He told me that up to 10% of new guttering in a batch will fail under shot-blasting, and he reckoned that he's seen up to 50% fail when he's done second hand guttering - not because he's blasted through thin corroded sections, but because it cracks. His recommendation, bearing in mind he was doing himself out of a job by telling me this, was just to wire brush and then metal paint them - which I did.

Incidentally, I found Screwfix's cheapo metal paint to be much better than smooth Hammerite.

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/18967/Paint/Metal-Paints/No-Nonsense-Smooth-Metal-Paint-Black-500ml

The gutters have only been up for 2 years but all is well so far, finish is good and no sign of any corrosion appearing.

Another tip is if you are after new guttering, ring round your local builder's merchants rather than buying online - certainly for the Saint Gobian Classical Rainwater range, which seems to be quite a popular one:-

http://www.classicalrainwater.co.uk/

I found that buying items through my local Jewson was about 55% of the cost of buying direct off the website above.

I'm not that smart though. I found I needed some more bits later on, went back to Jewsons to find that there was a £40 delivery charge for orders under £200 - still worked out cheaper than buying direct online though. Annoying thing is that after paying the £40 delivery I have to drive past the foundry to get to Jewsons! (No collections allowed)

Lastly, I needed some odd sized fittings for the front of my house, which no one seemed to have. But I then found a company called J & JW Longbottom,very helpful indeed, they do all the old odd-sized fittings as well as the more regular stuff - as well as specials like curved guttering. Quite reasnobly priced as well, had I known about them earlier I think I would have got all my guttering from them.

http://www.northpole2006.org.uk/jjwlongbottom/index.htm

http://www.longbottomfoundry.co.uk/

In short, shop around! Prices for cast iron gutters & fittings vary a lot.

 

[Jon Maine]

I have in the past had good results shotblasting, although I question its cost effectiveness.

Longbothams are great.

 

[Hatster]

Ta muchly - after a discussion with the CO, I'm getting a couple of specialists out to give their opinion and to quote. I may actually end up getting a builder I know to put up new gutters that I pick, but the CO will be much, much happier if a firm they trust has a look at them and does a quote for repair first.

 

[TheRoost]

Hi there,

We have recently bought a late Victorian semi that has cast iron guttering at the front of the house. it is a flat bottom Ogee profile, that sits on a brickwork 'ledge'. Part of it is behind the bay window roof, which is decorative and its brickwork/finials finishes higher than the eaves. The problem we have is that the gutter joints are leaking, so behind the bay window the water leaking from the gutter has no where to go other than flow into the loftspace and along the ceiling!

We are struggling to find a good roofer/specialist in the North West to repair/re-seal the guttering for us, we have had one roofer inspect it so far, as far as he can see the condition is ok and he is recommending cleaning followed by a liquid rubber coating - has anyone had any experience of this in cast iron? I can see that for him it would be a lot easier/quicker to do rather than removing the guttering and repairing in the traditional way.

In an ideal world I would have scaffolding up and repair it properly myself, but with the wet weather we have currently and time of year etc. would a quicker repair such as this would be a better option, even if it ends up being a temporary fix?

Any thoughts or suggestions most appreciated! thanks.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

bumping this up as a new member has found a way to add to an existing conversation, someone should be along to help soon.

 

[Jon Maine]

I install and repair a lot of cast iron gutters.

Firstly to take all apart and thoroughly de-rust and then paint before re-fixing and resealing would be the prefered option in my opinion.

Secondly, coating the inside of cast iron probably will not last long, but may be the answer for a short term fix. Far better than doing nowt.

Word of warning, cast gutters fail on the rear edge often due to not being accessible to paint. Are you sure its just the joints or could the back be holed?

If you do overhaul either drill the fixing bolt heads out, or cut the bottoms off with a grinder, otherwise you will likely split the ends of the gutter surrounding the bolt holes.

I hope this helps....

 

[Feltwell]

My place is Victorian and has Ogee guttering on the front, and I agree completely with what Jon says. If it is the joints that have gone, taking them apart and putting them back together again - having cleaned all the old putty out of them and resealing them with something like roof & gutter seal instead - is the only proper cure.

I thought my guttering was fine until I took it down as part of a re-roofing job, when I found the back edge was rotten - Ogee is very prone to this, no way to redecorate the back edge. Beware that you might think yours is OK from looking just at the front.

For a temporary fix, one option is to line the inside of your existing gutter. I did his successfully with some very thin plated steel sheet - which I discovered laying at the back of an old shed in my garden! - I cut it into strips, bent it roughly to shape around a wooden former and pushed it into the gutter, starting from one end and continuing past the problem section, sealing the lengths together with roof and gutter seal. This worked Ok for a couple of years until the guttering was replaced with new. You could do it more easily with some thin lead flashing, only really worth doing though if you think that it will need to last a couple of years or so. Another option for a temporary fix is to use lead substitute flashing to line the gutter, should be cheaper, comes on a long roll so no joints to worry about and I think it's self adhesive - I've never used the stuff and wouldn't dream of using it as flashing, but for a temporary fix it could work well for you.

You can try just cleaning the inside of the joints and then smearing some roof and gutter seal over them, but in my experience this rarely works, and even if it does then it will fail relatively quickly.

Hope all this helps, although I doubt it's what you wanted to hear!

And welcome back Jon - long time since we heard from you.

 

[Jon Maine]

Been busy with one or two of life's ups and downs!!

Still cant leave old buildings alone tho' ;-)

 

[TheRoost]

Thanks for the replies, yes it all definitely does help!

The roofer didn't check the full length of gutter for condition so I should really get up on the ladders myself and check for rusting through on the back edge as you both advise.

Good tip about the grinding off the old bolt heads (very much reminds me of working on old cars) another reason for me to do this job myself to avoid any damage to the gutters on removal.

I like the idea of steel sheet or flashing as a temporary fix, seems more robust than a brushed on rubber coating. I actually bought a roll of that lead substitute flashing to do a temporary fix on a pitched bay window roof we have, where the overhang is a rotten piece of coated timber, and strangely the rest of the roof is properly leaded. I have another couple of roofers coming to take a look so i'll suggest these other temporary gutter lining methods to them.

To do any work myself I would have to get scaffolding put up - to get to the sections behind the bay roof would require leaning across from the side or over the top of the bay from a ladder - too dangerous for me. Perhaps a full strip down project for next spring then.

 

[MatthewC]

From my limited experience, there were a couple of things that the Victorians were not good at. One was underfloor ventilation (often non-existent or woefully inadequate) and another was guttering: the ogee on my house had no hope of ever coping with the amount of water from a good-size roof, and the holes on the back of the ogee guaranteed that the fascia would rot. I'll bet that the existing ogee is in far worse condition than you expect. So, when you come to replace this, make sure that your new guttering is adequate - I fitted 5" half round instead of 4.5" ogee and this (coupled with 3" downpipes) gave a huge increase to the capacity. I suggest a good look during some heavy rain this winter!

By the way, is the roof itself OK?