Leaky Gutters

The gutter above the front porch has been leaking for as long as we've lived in the house. It causes the flower garden to get soaked whenever it rains, and I think it's causing some of the wood on the porch to rot from the dampness.

I'd like to replace the gutter when the weather is warmer and dryer, but this past weekend was so warm, I decided to temporarily patch the hole until the weather was more cooperative for the bigger replacement job.

I had actually tried to fix it last weekend when it was somewhat warm outside (5°C), but when I got to the balcony to which the gutter was attached, I found it was filled with ice:


Luckily, by this weekend, it was a balmy 14°C and the ice had all melted, so I could get to work!


The gutter was full of decomposed leaves, which was probably making it rust, causing the hole.

So, using a garden trowel, I scooped out all the rotten leaves, then took the hose up there and sprayed the gutter clean. In the process, I found several other holes!   :-(


You can sort of see the water leaking out of the gutter in this picture:


As the gutters dried, I cut a bunch of sheet metal pieces for patching the holes using these tools:




Then, I brought out the ladder, climbed up, and started sticking the pieces into the gutter using silicone adhesive. You can see a bit of blue sky peeking through the leftmost hole (before being patched) from the underside of the gutter:



While I was patching, I found even more small holes and cracks adjacent to the big holes. I ran out of sheet metal, so I just smeared adhesive on top of all of those openings.

Here's how the end result looks:


It rained the night after I did the patching, so I don't know if the adhesive had enough time to cure. I'll have to wait until the next big rain storm to test my work.



At least I hope it's good enough to divert some of the water away from the flower garden and porch. I was concerned that my flower bulbs may have rotted because of all the water from the leaky gutter, but I was happy to discover the little buds pushing through the soil while I was doing my gutter patching: