Roofing, gutters and skylights in Albany

Most of the housing here is modest, single story and built within a few feet of the boundary on each side. The roofs are simple, which is welcome, but the ground around them is unforgiving: a downspout that ends beside the wall has no slope to work with and the water takes the shortest route down. We look at every discharge point before talking about the metal above it, and more often than not the useful change is a length of pipe carrying the flow out to the front or back where the ground actually falls away.

Fog settles into this stretch and lifts late, so roofs stay damp longer than the temperature alone would suggest. Moss takes hold on the shaded slope and along the lower courses, and left for a few winters it lifts the edges of the covering and holds damp against it long after the rain has passed. It comes off gently with a treatment and a soft brush worked down the slope. It does not come off with a pressure washer, which strips the surface and drives water under the laps, and we will say so even when someone has already been quoted for exactly that.

On the streets below Albany Hill the eucalyptus adds its own work. The bark comes down in ribbons and the litter is constant rather than seasonal, and on a small roof it takes very little of it to block the one outlet that side depends on. Guards help where the debris is fine and they make matters worse where it is coarse and lands as strips, so the choice depends on what is actually growing over your house. We would rather walk the roof and tell you which it is than fit the same cover everywhere and hope.