Roofing, gutters and skylights in San Leandro

Washington Manor and Broadmoor were built at speed to a small set of plans, and the gutters went up the way everything else did: a long run, one outlet, hangers spaced further apart than anyone would use today. Those runs bow between fixings once they carry wet debris, and a bowed run holds water where there is no way out for it. Rehanging with closer spacing into sound wood is straightforward and it is usually what the house actually needs. Replacing every gutter on the block pattern is not, whatever an inspection that never looked at the fixings might have suggested.

Closer to the marina the air carries enough salt to matter, and it finds the small steel parts before anything else. We look at straps and screws on any run that has been up for decades, since a gutter held by thinned fixings comes down under one loaded winter. The other thing worth following there is the ground: several of these streets send their downspouts into old buried pipes, and when one of those blocks the water surfaces at the wall. Opening and clearing the line, or giving the water a surface route instead, does more than any change to the metal above.

The pre-war bungalows scattered through the older parts of town need their own look. Shallow eaves, boards painted many times over and at least one previous round of repairs are the norm. We test the wood before promising hangers will hold and we check the roof edge above the gutter, because a re-roof done in a hurry often left no metal strip turning water into the trough. Water running down the back of a gutter is quiet, it does not drip where you would notice it and it takes the fascia apart slowly.