Gutters

[iteles]

home was built in the 1960s and without any gutters.

https://thespoutoff.com/gutters-vs-no-gutters/ https://www.soundhome.com/article/why-do-we-need-gutter-system

The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the reason you need gutters is to direct the water away from the foundations of the house and also the walls to prevent water and moisture damage. With the foundations, it can cause the floors and walls of the house to crack if they are too disturbed.

However, there is a cement walkway all around the house and it seems that this was done very purposefully:

](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eePUWhHbFDY)

"When water rolls off a roof it comes off in a nice even sheet at a fairly low concentration. What you don't want to do is take that and concentrate it in the line of the eaves trough [gutters] and then further contrate it at the point of the down spout. (...) If you do have down-spouts make sure it extends at least 10 feet away from the foundation of the house"

He proposes a hard surface around the overhang, sloping away from the house.

As can be seen from the monthly charts, the 2018/2019 winter has had above average rainfall but it usually not very rainy except some days (some months more than others) in November-March, even on unusually rainy years:

We could leave it for now and only install gutters later if we need to, but it would be more intelligent to do it now, whilst the paved sides of the house are uprooted for the existing plumbing works.

Proposed next steps: Speak to roofers who are coming on Monday to give us a quote about this #35

Tasks

• [x] Collect budgets for guttering
  • [x] Gutters
  • [x] Piping to guide the water to ground level
  • [ ] Collection boxes at ground level
• [x] Decide whether to install guttering
• [x] Decide on which one to go with
• [x] Install guttering if that's the way to go
• [ ] Fix broken guttering, see #
• [ ] Determine where gutters will empty out water
• [ ] Install piping for gutter emptying

[iteles]

Our roofers vivaciously recommended gutters.

The only additional advantage I see to having gutters is noise. I remember it being really pretty noisy at the house when the water from the roof slammed into the cement of the walkways in the garden.

I will speak to Pedro about whether our plumbers also do this.

[iteles]

Budgets

• Caleiras da Vila, 966 046 730
  • €11 ao metro para as caleiras
  • €10 ao metro para as quedas
  • Pedreiros fazem as caixas para as quedas
• Caleiestore 253 563 412
• Caleibracara, 964 249 264

[iteles]

@nelsonic Where would we have the measurements of the house itself so that we can calculate how many metres of gutters we'd need?

[iteles]

Quote from Caleibraga:

These are the gutters they have proposed. They can either run along the wall or slightly sticking out from the wall - but in any situation, they'd have to stick out further than the roof tiles (of course) to catch the run-off. Meh, a little unsightly. We can have them in any of the standard colours.

The biggest advantage I see of having the gutters is noise - when it rains in Braga, the noise of the water hitting the ground around the roof is loud. Technically it also pulls the water away from the foundations of the house but it's been that was for 60 years so I imagine that's less of a priority 🤷‍♀

Maintenance however, will not be fun!

[nelsonic]

@iteles if we are able to get a well then we don't need gutters because the water will just seep back into the water table where we can retrieve it using our solar power ...

[iteles]

The point of gutters for me is to avoid the crashing of water on the pavement below as it runs off the roof and avoid the large puddles of mud all around the pavement that made everything messy when it rained as I grew up.

Also, to disguise the wiring from the solar panels that needs to come down on the outside of the house (though this can be disguised another way).

I wasn’t even considering the water recycling facility at this early stage as we had discussed having this put in later.

The water furo doesn’t solve either of those two problems really, so the question really is whether they’re problems worth solving.

I’ll look into the furo separately 👍🏻

[nelsonic]

@iteles if you already know that water run-off from the roof is an issue (mud when growing up), then you shouldn't have assigned this issue/task to me ... 🤔 I was not aware that the south (back) garden gets "puddles of mud", if that's the case we must have guttering installed and it must get done now with the new roof. #35

Also, we 100% need to have the water recycling room built before the house opens as building it afterward will be very disruptive to the main entrance of the house. The only reason we were considering delaying it was based on the exorbitant cost we had been quoted (20k), but building the underground room is a much more reasonable 5k and we need to get it done before we close the pavement around the pool otherwise we will have to rip that up too to install the pipes to get water from the well to the pool pumps and Sunroom #14

[nelsonic]

@iteles Carlos is asking what colour we want the gutters to be. I have told him to ask you. But you/we need to have an answer. Most of the houses in the area have white or grey.

[iteles]

We haven't discussed it before. I reckon either white or green to match the plants (but this might look a little weird before there are any plants). As I mentioned on the phone my concern with white was that it would get dirty super quickly but seems like the best of the various alternatives.

[iteles]

Our current roofers #35 have proposed they do the caleiras for €12 a metre. This is marginally more expensive than Caleiras da Vila https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/67#issuecomment-493688062 but cheaper than Caleibraga and it will get done much faster this way. Then we don't have to think of the roof again, so we've agreed to it 👍

[iteles]

This is now mostly complete, with the 'quedas' going in next week. The current open question is around where they will lead to.

The key is that they should eventually lead to the water recycling facility (sort of linked to #79).

I spoke to Carlos about this on Friday and I'm not convinced at all of his proposal. He proposes that:

• On the left hand (pool) side of the house, we use the open holes for pipes to pass the pipes through to the front garden water recycling area (I actually suggested this but my open question which is yet to be answered is where does it get passed to before the containers have been installed and so that we avoid a marshland?)
• On the right, the pipes lead back to the pool machine room which will be equipped with a pump to pump out any water back to the front of the house
  • I imagine this is proposed for small amounts of moisture or water and will 100% not have the capacity to deal with the volume of half a roof's worth of rainwater!!
  • We do also need to speak to the pool guy about this because I know nothing of this pump

[iteles]

I don't know who the right person to discuss this with is 😕 We're definitely not redirecting the water back to the pool machine room, but we need to figure out the right solution this week before the pool works start to look finished.

[nelsonic]

@iteles is what is the open question for this? (the gutters were installed in July...)

[iteles]

@nelsonic https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/67#issuecomment-511148745

This is now mostly complete, with the 'quedas' going in next week. The current open question is around where they will lead to.

It would be useful to discuss this with Pedro tomorrow actually.

[nelsonic]

@iteles rain water should be going to the Grey Water treatment tank in the front garden with the overflow going down the waste water (agere) drain.

[iteles]

As I said in https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/67#issuecomment-511148745, that seems obvious for the pool side. It would be a huge pain for the garage side, except we'll have to make the pathway anyway if we create the furo. https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/79

The question now, is timelines. The furo won't be done for another 2 months or so. Keeping a hole open from the garage for pipes all the way to the water recycling plant for that point isn't useful. We'll need to work it out with Pedro.

[iteles]

The guttering has been applied with 'quedas' so that the water can be drained.

However, there has been an issue https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/20#issuecomment-549135213 whereby the gutters have been bent so that ALL the water running off the roof is now collecting in the South corner of the guttering (by the garage).

I have spoken to the solar panel folks about this and will follow up this week to define how it will get fixed.

[iteles]

Looks like the current showers will end with November so I've booked in this work for Tuesday 3-Dec-2019.

I would like to be there to:

• Explain what happened/needs doing
• Make sure they take a hose up and test that the water runs correctly around all guttering
• Speak to them about requirements for the pipes that lead from the quedas - ideally this would be discussed with someone ahead of time so the work can get done

[iteles]

The guttering folks came to review the situation in that week of sun and determined that we would need to set up scaffolding in order to get to the gutters and fix them.

New brackets will also be needed on the side that is broken (tree side).

They have suggested leaving it until the new year and/or until the sunroom #14 is being put together which will also require scaffolding.

[iteles]

This question of where the 'quedas' will direct the water from the gutters is still a high priority, more so now that the pool will be completed in the near future https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/90#issuecomment-576020187.