Buying New Gutters? Be Sure You Read This First!
Here at Gutter Supplies, we appreciate that you don’t buy guttering every day. Whilst it’s meat and drink for us, you will probably only ever buy these products once or twice in your lifetime (unless of course you are a builder or plumber!). So when you do buy, it is important to be acquainted with as much information as possible to ensure that you make the right decisions and get your order right first time. To help you with this, we’ve put together a quick checklist of things to look out for.
There are so many choices out there – what type of Gutter should I buy?
Ok, first things first. Before we get into the detail, you need to decide whether to go for PVC or metal. In volume terms, PVC is by far the most popular – it’s easy to fit, virtually maintenance free and when compared to metal gutters it is considerably cheaper. However, if your budget allows, do take a look at the metal options on our website; if you have a period property, or perhaps a modern house with a particular style, cast iron and steel gutters look great to the eye and they give you lots of shape and colour options.
For the benefit of this exercise though we’ll assume that you have decided to go with the PVC choice.
You have 4 basic styles to choose from – Half Round, Square, Deep Flow (like Half Round but deeper), and Ogee (a moulded shape with decorative feature lines on the front).
If your roof is a standard size and not particularly large or steep, Half Round or Square guttering will work just fine. If the roof pitch is steeper than normal or if you have a larger house, you may wish to consider Deep Flow or Ogee, which have larger flow capacities and can deal with a greater amount of rainwater.
Joining on to Next Door?
If you live in a semi-detached or terraced house, your gutter will join up with your neighbour’s gutter at some point. Whilst this needn’t restrict your choice unduly, you do need to be aware of it. Most gutter systems incorporate adaptors to join onto other types of system, but you need to find out what shape and make the gutters next door are. If your neighbour doesn’t know, and they probably won’t, have a look on a fitting – there is usually a name, manufacturer’s code or logo that will help identify it. Once you have found this, just give us a call or email us and we’ll let you know what your options are.
Colour Scheme
Just about all PVC Gutter systems come in Black, White and Brown, so in some respects, it is down to personal choice. Most are also made in Grey, which is a generally lighter shade, although strangely square is not available in grey.
Think about what your house looks like from the kerb – does it have an overall colour “feel”? For example if your doors, windows and fascias are all mahogany coloured, brown gutters will definitely be more suitable than white. On a period or older terraced property, Cast Iron effect looks great – it has a satin, textured finish and the fittings are moulded to look like old Victorian gutter fittings; take a look at the video on our YouTube channel.
Rainwater Pipes
Easy choice this – they are either circular or square. Half Round and Deep Flow gutters look best with circular pipe, Square and Ogee suit either circular or square. Circular pipes are slightly easier to work with when it comes to bends and swan necks (the two bends that bring the pipe from the eaves back to the wall) as they swivel in all directions, but to be honest working with square pipes is easy enough too.
Guarantee
Look for a system that has a ten year guarantee and is made to British Standard. At Gutter Supplies we use Floplast, which is the leading gutter manufacturer in the UK. If it doesn’t have a guarantee, don’t buy it, unless you want to replace it again in a few years’ time when the colour has faded and the seals are leaking!
Price
It may sound obvious, but if you are comparing prices between companies then check the whole system – many internet sellers use headline grabbing prices on gutters and brackets but then charge a lot more for angles, outlets, pipes and fittings.
Measuring Up
Just a few golden rules here. Measure the length of all the bits of roof that need the gutter fitted to, add all the measurements up and then add another 10% - this will allow for cuts and wastage. Don’t forget if you are measuring from ground level that the roof overhangs the wall slightly, so the length of the roof will be slightly longer than the length of the wall that you measure.
When working out the numbers of brackets, take your total gutter measurement (before you added the 10%) and multiply by 4 for square and half round gutters, or by 5 for Deep Flow and Ogee. You’ll also need two brackets to support the gutter around every gutter angle and one for each stop end, but as gutter unions (joiners) also act as support brackets you’ll have enough for these if you stick to the 4 x and 5 x calculation above.
Allow for 1 downpipe clip every 1.8m – essentially it works out as two per downpipe drop on bungalows and three per drop on two storey houses.
Don’t forget to allow enough downpipe to make your swan neck up – on a bungalow a 2.5m pipe is usually perfect, the drop is around 2.2 m and the offcut can be used for the swan neck. A 5.5m pipe does the same job on a normal house, assuming the eaves are just a normal depth overhang.
Don’t forget to order screws – there’s nothing more annoying than starting the installation and realising you don’t have any fixings! On our site we have them on the same page as all of the fittings.
If you did decide to go for Ogee gutter, don’t forget that it isn’t symmetrical. That means that all the fittings are handed, so for example a right hand stop end fits onto the right hand end of the gutter as you look from the front. This is only an issue for Ogee, as all the other gutter styles are symmetrical.
Hopefully the information above will help you to choose and order the right parts for the job. As for the installation, take a look at our installation & maintenance guides & tips section and YouTube channel - there’s plenty more information there to help you plan and carry out the work.
Happy shopping!