Our work, on real roofs

The low-pitch section beside this tile roof had been holding water for a long time. Once the old covering came off, the substrate underneath was soaked right through and coming apart in the hand, which is what you find when the drainage above it has been failing quietly for years.

The section was taken back to bare framing, re-covered in new long-run steel and hung with a new external gutter. Two days on site, and the water now leaves the building where you can see it.

People are often surprised by the volume. This is one house in Dunedin, and it came out by the armful: compacted leaf litter, soil, and a bird's nest built end to end in the waterway. None of it visible from the ground, and none of it reachable without getting up there.

A gutter in that state has no capacity left at all. The first heavy fall goes straight over the edge of the waterway, which on a concealed gutter means into the soffit rather than onto the garden.

A two-storey home with the fence tight against the wall on one side, which is the sort of access that decides how a job gets priced. Our own scaffold and edge protection meant we could set up and start rather than wait on a scaffold company to fit us in.

Old fascia and spouting off, new white fascia and gutter on. The soffit line is straight again and the downpipes now discharge clear of the wall.