Internal gutter replacement in Christchurch

Why so many Christchurch homes have this problem

Internal gutters arrived in force with the architectural fashions of the late 1980s through the 2000s. Plaster and monolithic-clad houses, parapet walls, flat eave lines, box ends and shallow pitches all suited a gutter that could be hidden inside the roofline, and Christchurch built a great many of them, particularly through the growth belt of Halswell, Wigram, Northwood, Redwood and Belfast, and across the infill developments closer in.

Those houses are now thirty to forty years old. The steel in a concealed gutter has a service life like anything else, and it spends that life under wet leaf litter in a channel almost nobody can safely reach. Sooner or later the coating gives up, and because the channel sits inside the building, the failure goes inward.

The Christchurch factors

Three local conditions push these gutters harder than they would be pushed elsewhere in the country.

• Nor'west winds. Christchurch gutters do not fill gently over a season, they fill in an afternoon. Leaves, needles and grit get driven into the channel and pack around the outlets.
• Earthquake movement. A great many rooflines shifted in 2010 and 2011. Where a gutter no longer falls the way it was built to fall, water ponds instead of draining, and ponding water is what starts corrosion.
• Hard frosts, then heavy rain. Water that has been sitting in a gutter freezes, expands and works at every seam and joint, then the next big fall tests those joints straight away.

Coastal suburbs add a fourth. Homes in Sumner, Redcliffs, New Brighton and out along the estuary sit in a salt-laden environment, which shortens the life of steel and changes which COLORSTEEL grade is the right specification for a replacement. We check the environment zone for your actual address as part of the quote rather than applying a citywide default.