Roofing, gutters and skylights in San Pablo

Lots here are narrow and the houses sit near their side boundaries, which leaves a strip of ground between buildings that has to take the runoff from both. A downspout emptying into that strip has nowhere to send it, so the ground stays wet, the lower siding wicks it up and in a hard winter the water finds a crawl space. Moving a discharge point a few feet, or piping it out to the street side, is one of the cheapest pieces of work we do and one of the most useful. We would rather solve that than sell a wider gutter that fills the same puddle faster.

The tract blocks went up quickly and to a pattern, with one outlet serving a long stretch of roof. That was adequate for light rain and is not for a downpour, which is why the complaint here is so often seasonal: fine most of the year, spilling along a whole side in a real storm. Adding a second outlet partway along the run changes the behavior of that elevation without touching the rest of the house. Before doing it we check that the existing pipe is clear, because a choked elbow imitates an undersized system almost exactly.

The older bungalows nearer Old Town carry their own question. Their eaves are shallow, the boards behind the gutters have been painted over many times and the original metal has usually been patched at least once. On those we test the wood before promising anything about hangers, since a screw into softened board will pull out under the first loaded gutter of the winter. Where the board is sound, a rehang at closer spacing lasts. Where it is not, the honest answer is that the fascia comes first and the gutter follows it.