thatch guttering

[shobo]

Morning,

I have a bit of a leak from a skylight (actually comprising a glazed tile) in a single storey lean-to roman tiled roof. I do have a plan for fixing the leak, but there may be an opportunity to try a simpler fix first, as follows.

The glazed tile is positioned exactly underneath the thatch overhang. I have found that the leak occurs only when the rain is heavy enough for the water to drip (or pour) from the edge of the thatch onto the tile. So, putting in a rather weird looking short piece of gutter might solve the problem temporarily. It is at the back of the cottage, and wouldn't be particularly conspicuous. Has anyone out there had experience of installing guttering, or a water deflector of some sort, or a box gutter, onto a thatch overhang ?

I've not seen anything like it around here.

Many thanks

 

[88v8]

Well it can be done. Although I can't recall last time I actually saw a gutter on a thatch roof. The overhang is usually such that it would need very long standoff brackets, could be done, iron gutters on iron brackets from a proper blacksmith....
Back in the day if it had been done would probably have been a wooden gutter, perhaps lined with lead but perhaps not. Wooden gutters look pretty clompy and 'orrible, imho, and are not durable. And gutters need downpipes, or gargoyles.

We had a situation here where the rain poured off the thatch, a valley, onto a terrace and splashed one of the doors, I fixed that by making oak gates as a barrier in front of the door.

If you want a deflector, get some oak and make one. Some 2x1" for a frame and standoff and some 6x1" for the deflector. Stainless screws, or pegs if you want to be more 'period'. You could make the frame ornamental or not.
Soak it in linseed before you put it up and let it dry off. After a decade or three it may start to rot of course, but never mind.

Temporary fix. But I wouldn't be the first to observe that the temporary has a habit of becoming permanent.

Of course, if you just want to stop the rain coming in I suppose as the bare minimum you may be able to lift up some tiles and tuck a few feet of roofing membrane underneath. See however my observation about temporary fixes.

Ivor