DMR's Kistler's Copper Gutter Work Photopage #2

Pre-clean-up, & Set-up
The Kistler Copper Gutter Project
Photo & Description Page #2
2325 A St., Forest Grove, Oregon
(11/04)

Updated 11-23-2007

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The Set-up and Pre-clean-up

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These changes complicated things for us and made this project take twice as long to do. I was there a full month. It cost $9 a day just in gas to drive the 60 mile round trip out to and from their house. Regardless of the extra time and expense, we love having the opportunity to do such excellent work. If it were only about the money, that would not be enough to put what we do into these jobs.

I came out on November 8 2004 to set-up shop in their back yard. I hauled the equipment in our scrap metal trailer. It was loaded with tarps, sheet metal, lumber, our table saw to cut the lumber, and the brake to bend the custom sheet metal that will hold the bottom of the fascia boards out.

I would have got some measurements and started work that first day, but I noticed the painters had neglected to leave a pile of the old gutters in their back yard. So after I set up the equipment, I spent the rest of the day cutting up those old gutters and hauling them off. I did not happen to get a picture of the old gutters loaded up, since it was already dark and I was too tired to think of it.

This house is surrounded by huge oak trees that are far taller than the house. Being late fall, I found all 6 valleys full of oak leaves, branches, and the decomposed debris from previous years that had piled up, turned to mud. To the point that there were small plants beginning to grow in the valleys. I just could not bare to leave the valleys like that. Especially when the valley metal was just cheap painted steel, that would surely rust out prematurely if left up there. Without charging anything extra, I cleared these roof valleys out. I made a special custom valley rake to clear them out, and as a courtesy, I left it with the client afterwards.

This part of the roof was poorly designed and the roofers did a crappy job covering over it. There was a good deal of water damage right under this section of roof, and it will likely suffer soon again. It is one of the worst leaf traps I have ever seen on the 5,000 homes I have done bids on, and working on the roofs of well over 2,000 houses over the last decade.

The roofers should never have put wood shingles in the valley here. Especially since it cannot be seen from any angle on the ground. It should have been covered with a Water & Ice Shield and covered again with a rust-proof sheet metal pan in this triangle area, so the debris could have a chance to slide down and out.

The roofers also neglected to make a cricket above the chimney to divert the debris off to each side, so a good deal of very hard to reach debris had collected there as well.

The bottom of this valley had 4 sets of valley metal all converging to one point. At the end it was flashed with some clear plastic wrapper that had curled from age. I cut this valley open at the bottom to let the debris pass better. so I shoved some custom fitted copper sheet metal under the valley flashing in it-s place. I even cleared the debris from above the chimney.