Guttering, fascias, soffits & rainwater goods in Macclesfield

Guttering is the cheapest part of a roof to maintain and the most expensive to neglect. An overflowing gutter puts water down the wall for the whole of the winter, and a saturated wall means damp inside, perished pointing, and rot in the fascia and rafter feet behind it. By the time it shows on the inside, the repair is joinery rather than gutter-clearing.

Most problems are one of four. It is blocked, usually with moss off the roof rather than leaves. It has dropped, so it no longer falls to the outlet and stands full of water. The joints have gone — cast iron rusts through at the back where you cannot see it, and plastic joints perish and pull apart. Or it was never big enough for the roof area draining into it, which is common where a large extension was added and everything still runs to the original downpipe.

Cast iron deserves saying something about, because there is a lot of it in this town and it is worth keeping. Original cast iron on a Victorian house can be de-scaled, repaired and repainted rather than skipped, and in a conservation area that is often the right answer aesthetically as well as practically. Where it genuinely has gone, cast-effect aluminium looks right and does not need painting.

There is a local reason to take rainwater goods seriously. Cheshire East attributes Macclesfield's flooding record partly to an ageing network of unmapped, culverted watercourses running under the town — and a hundred houses discharging badly-maintained rainwater into a stressed surface-water system is not a neutral act. Keeping your own gutters and gullies running is genuinely part of the answer.