Gutter Cleaning - Letter from Petra

eleMental

I received a rather curt email from Petra this morning "urging" me to get the gutters of my house cleaned to avoid water leakage (makes sense). The letter offered no recommendations, suggestions etc on how to go about this (which I found a bit disappointing) so I was just wondering how this usually works if you live in a terraced house. If I get all the gutters of my house cleaned it wont make the blindest bit of difference unless all of my neighbours also get theirs cleaned too (otherwise I'll likely be the one that ends up with the water problems!!).

Does anyone have any previous experience of how theyve gone about this - did you go door-to-door, was there a meeting or an approach theyve found successful in other places theyve lived? It makes sense to do but surely as a collective rather than individually. Many thanks in advance.

Eponymous

You're quite right. Unless everyone does it (and at the same time), then it makes no difference. I cleaned ours out about three weeks ago, but we still had the rain over flow on Monday. Truth is, I doubt very much that all the clean gutters in the world would have made no difference.

Astrofluff may confirm, but I think that the big problem is that there is an insufficient proportion of downpipes. For example, I grew up in a terraced house built in the 50s and there's a down pipe between every house. In our block at least there's only down pipes at the ends of each block (ie on the three bed houses). For the volume of water that fell in such a short time, and the amount of surface area of roof that the gutters had to deal with, they simply weren't up to the task, clean or not.

loyatemu

all my gutters overflowed at the weekend as well - no normal house gutters or downspouts can cope with that volume of water in such a short space of time.

happyhappy

loyatemu wrote: »

all my gutters overflowed at the weekend as well - no normal house gutters or downspouts can cope with that volume of water in such a short space of time.

100% correct.

Sure the roundabout at Supervalu flooded for half an hour such was the volume of water and cleared away again. Same as everywhere else. The gutters over flowing was nothing to do with being blocked with dirt, more to do with the sheer volume of water and being unsuitable when the houses were built. The joints between them are very tacky. I've had mine fixed 3 times.

HappyDaze007

The gutters don't have near enough down pipes, sure we don't even have a drain in our back garden to create one, where as other terraced houses do...?
I cleared the whole row of our terrace guttering only a few weeks ago but the end terrace houses get over whelmed with all the water..

I see the water has also lifted a load of cobble locking and a grid up on the green in the park...

eleMental

Cool - thanks all for the feedback. I've cleaned the lower gutters in my house but theres plants growing along the way in some others so I dont think its going to have a material impact!!!

Petra sent another mail this morning cos it seems some people got the wrong one yesterday - it was slightly reworded

Annasopra

Mod comment

Hi elemental

Have you checked with the email sender if it is ok for you to publish these emails? I think there may be issues around that and it might be unwise to publish all emails without consent!