Gutter and downpipe repair that gets the water off the roof and away from the house

A gutter only has two jobs: catch the water coming off the roof and carry it to a downpipe with enough fall that nothing sits behind. When one of those fails, the symptom tells you which.

Sagging means the brackets have let go or were spaced too far apart to begin with. The gutter dips between them, water ponds in the dips, and ponding water is where rust starts and where mosquitoes breed. It also means the fall to the downpipe has gone, so the whole run drains slowly.

Splits and drips nearly always sit at a join, a mitred corner or a stop end. The sealant that was put in on the day has dried out, or the join was riveted without sealant at all, and every rain the drip lands on the same spot.

Rust starts from the inside on older galvanised and zinc gutters, under the leaf litter and silt that hold water against the metal long after the rain has gone. By the time you see rust from the ground it has usually pinholed the base. Debris is the cause more often than age, which is why gutter cleaning is the simplest gutter repair there is.

Overflow in heavy rain is a capacity or a fall problem: too few downpipes, outlets that are too small, a blocked run, or water arriving faster than a sagging gutter can move it.

We repair when the fault is local and the gutter around it is sound. One leaking join is resealed and refixed. A run of brackets that has let go is re-bracketed and the fall reset so the water moves again. A short section that has rusted through can be cut out and a new length spliced in, and a stop end or a mitre that was never sealed is done properly.

We replace when the fault is the run itself. Rust in more than one section means the rest of that gutter is not far behind, and patching it is paying twice. Back-fall through the length of a run cannot be fixed by resealing joins. Fascia that has gone soft behind the gutter needs the gutter off to repair, and it is not worth refitting an old one.

New gutter is matched to what is on the house. Quad is the common profile on brick veneer and estate homes, half-round and ogee turn up on period and weatherboard homes, and slotted gutter gives an overflow path on roofs that back onto a wall. Colour is matched to the fascia and roof, and the run is ordered as continuous lengths so there are as few joins as possible to leak later. If you want leaf guard fitted while the gutter is new, our gutter guard guide explains what it does and does not solve.

Downpipes fail at their joints and their bends. A pipe that has parted at a socket sprays the wall behind it, wets the footings and, on a brick veneer home, can push damp into the cavity. Undersized pops, the outlet where the gutter meets the pipe, choke in heavy rain even when the gutter is clear. We replace the joint, the bend or the whole drop, refit the pop, and make sure the base discharges into the stormwater drain and not onto the ground beside the slab.

Box gutters are the gutters you cannot see: the trough behind a parapet on a Victorian or Edwardian shopfront or terrace, or between two roof planes on a flat-roofed extension. Because they sit inside the roof line, an overflowing box gutter floods the ceiling, not the garden. They need a sump or an overflow that discharges outside, a rainhead where the downpipe leaves the building, and enough fall along the trough. When a box gutter fails it is a licensed roof plumber’s job to rebuild it, and it is one we take seriously because the damage inside is what you pay for otherwise.

Rainheads are the boxes on the wall where a box gutter or a long run meets a downpipe. They give the water somewhere to go when the pipe cannot keep up. A missing or rusted rainhead is usually the reason a box gutter overflows inward instead of outward.

A surprising number of calls about a leaking roof are a gutter. Water that overflows the back of a gutter runs down the fascia, into the eaves and onto the ceiling near an outside wall. It looks like a roof leak from the lounge. From the ladder it is a blocked or sagging gutter with a perfectly good roof above it. That is why we look at the gutters first whenever the stain is near an external wall, and why our roof leak repair page starts with where the water is coming from rather than where it is landing.

The reverse also happens. A valley discharging into a gutter at one point can overwhelm it there; a rusted metal roof sheds rust into the gutter and starts it rusting too. Because our crews do the roof and the gutter, you get one honest answer about which one is the problem.

Keeping gutters clear is a separate service and we do that across Melbourne as well. Our roof and exterior cleaning team clears gutters, downpipes and roofs of the debris that causes most of what is on this page, and photographs the gutters before and after so you can see what came out.