Guttering in Wiltshire

Guttering is one of the cheapest things on a house to put right and one of the most expensive to ignore. A gutter that overflows or leaks soaks the wall below it, rots the fascia and soffit it's fixed to, and works its way into damp patches inside — problems that cost many times over what fixing the gutter would have.

The work covers full replacement, repairs to joints and brackets, realigning sections where the fall's wrong, downpipes and outlets, and clearing. Most jobs are one or two of these, not all of them — we'll tell you which.

uPVC is what most houses get — cheap, low maintenance, does the job. On period properties, cast iron is often the correct look, and if it's sound it's worth keeping and repairing rather than replacing; it's heavy, expensive to renew, and lasts decades when it isn't left to rust through. Aluminium is the longer-life alternative to uPVC where you'd rather not do this again in fifteen years.

Common faults: sections sagging between brackets, joints leaking at the seals, a fall that's wrong so water sits in the gutter or overshoots the front instead of reaching the outlet, gutters undersized for the roof area on an extension, blocked outlets and downpipes, and overflow at valleys in heavy rain where two roof slopes meet.

Gutters fix straight to the fascia board, so a rotten fascia means the gutter has nothing sound to hold it — see fascias and soffits if the boards themselves need attention too.