Has anybody installed 175mm quad gutters?

[wylie]

We have a couple of quotes for replacing our guttering. One chap has given us two quotes. First one for 150mm quad and another price for 175mm quad.

He said the small size difference almost doubles the amount of rainwater the gutter can carry, great for sudden and heavy storms, and it still goes down the downpipes, due to the swirl, insofar as downpipes don't get "filled" with water anyway.

We want to reduce the number of downpipes on our house and the larger gutter makes this easy, according to this chap. We can still reduce the number of downpipes using 150mm but I'm keen to hear if anybody has the 175mm quad gutters, what they think of them, pros and cons?

 

[nww]

Our standard size down south for quad is only 115mm.
From memory its about 1.5L per sec for a 1 m length and can hold just over 6Litres.
Ive just added another 2 downpipes to a house which originally only had 2
using 90mm storm water pipe , always think more downpipes the better.

 

[AlmostBob]

[opinion]
150mm is a huge gutter. unless rusty why replace?
reducing downpipes is crazy, the inground piping is already installed, even with big gutter, the extra available flow in an extra downpipe is well justified
leaf guard is more important than gutter size,
for sudden downpours the downpipes arent blocked with leaves and crap, and metal screen is bushfire rated
I know everybody has the filter box on downpipes, useless when the overflow is before them, it is ALWAYS before them. not having leaves in the gutter or the pipe above the screens is more important,
[/opinion]
[fact]
rain in logan last week 2mm gutter overflowed
rain in logan 2 days ago 4mm clean gutter & downpipes no overflow,
[/fact]

I am house sitting.
I fixed the horse float. fixed the pump and rain tank, fixed the mower, fixed the leak in the town water input pipe that was costing $$$, vet the horse.
leaf guard is much less $$ than replacing gutters, if gutter replacing is necessary, 150mm & leaf guard may be better bang for the buck(?)
make sure the gutters are installed with a fall toward the downspouts, so many houses here in cedar vale, brand new have level gutters, no flow

bringing Territory rain planning, ( Its only gonna rain once, got to catch ALL of it ) to Qld

 

[wylie]

Interesting to read your reply AlmostBob. Thanks for the info.

We asked the gutter quote men about leaf guard. Advice was not to use it, because leaves can sit on top, rot and block the water from flowing into the gutter. Advice was to leave the gutter guard off and clean out the gutters occasionally. His suggestion is to have a first flush system on the down pipe that runs into our tank to deal with leaf matter that washes down, and it can be easily cleared out by us regularly. One side of our house is single level, and the remainder is pretty high, so cleaning gutters is no easy task. Access via ladder is not easy either due to retaining walls.

We want to reduce downpipes because we have too many, and a couple should have been repositioned when we renovated and extended (and when the previous owners renovated and extended). Now we have too many. Two thirds of our gutters are old, don't fall properly with several sections rusted through and allowing the fascia boards to rot.

Instead of replacing two thirds, we want to strip the lot, have new gutter run with proper falls, remove redundant downpipes.

I just was curious to know if anybody had 175mm quad gutters. They are not common, but we have a very steep pitch on our roof and a "ba$tard" valley set up which should have been addressed by the previous owner that sheds a lot of water onto one small section of gutter. Changing to 175mm would mean more water carried in the gutters in a Brisbane storm, rather than filling up and overflowing, which is the risk.

 

[Ace in the Hole]

Wouldn't 175mm quad look weird on residential?
Why the need to hold so much water?
Brackets and facia would have to be stronger.

From my roofing experience of about 5 years, I agree with nww in that it's that downpipes which do the work.

Check your rainfall levels for your area and the cross sectional area of your downpipes. You should be able to find some tables online showing downpipe requirements based on rainfall volume.

What size downpipes are you running?
Increasing the size will instantly increase the volume flow.

 

[AlmostBob]

I have gutter guard, on properties where 275mm falls in a week, and nothing the rest of the year
good leaf guard, the leaves just slide over, blow off in the dry, self cleaning

bad leaf guard they stick,

high no access house, good leaf guard is a good idea

Advice was not to use it, because leaves can sit on top, rot and block the water from flowing into the gutter

note position of gutter and leaf guard, This is a deliberate water havesting setup, not the typical install where the outer edge of the gutter is higher than the roof to make a pretty image to street traffic, gutter is inline with continued slope of the roof, to provide a path for leaves to slide off slope. besides in the territory there just isnt passing traffic.
would be good for the back high area,
95%++ of leaves fall straight off good leaf guard, 100% "leaves can sit on top, rot and block the water from flowing into the gutter" with no leaf guard

1 cleaning sometime or cleaning all the time​

first flush systems only work well with small amounts of debris, leaves will end up in the tank, google pictures explain the concept better than i do, have to hope there isnt more than 3-4 litres of dirty water
better to remove most of the c**p beforehand

If your inground is 200mm, (the pipes to the tank here are), then judicious reduction of downpipes is reasonable, apologise for previous mild-paranoia

 

[wylie]

Wouldn't 175mm quad look weird on residential?

That is why I want to see some photos of houses with the larger size. It is only 2.5cm wider, so we are keen to see a house with such a gutter "in the flesh" or even a photo. Finding such a photo is not easy .


Why the need to hold so much water?
Brackets and facia would have to be stronger.

We have to deal with a "Ba$tard valley" left over from when our house was extended before we moved in. It is a very odd set up with one section of guttering actually running into the roof cavity. The gutter men each said it is amazing we haven't had water into our kitchen area where it runs into, though we have had it overflow into the eaves. It has an end cap, and the skillion extension which was added has two very high pitched hips flowing onto it.

We are having a "flood pan" piece of roofing valley being made and will be installed by a builder for us to get this water further away from where the hip spills to the skillion (which seems to have been pitched too low and the wrong roofing material used, to add to our woes), but with much of the old guttering not falling properly and rusted out, it is time to start over.

One of the gutter chaps suggested due to the amount of water this part of our house carries in a heavy storm, we might want to consider 175mm quad. If we do this, we will have to do it on the whole house, which is why I want to see a "normal" house with the larger gutters. Google tells me going from 150mm to 175mm means "effective area" increases from 8912 to 14672. This chap said the gutter will hold more water whilst it is making its way down the downpipes, which are large and not old (mostly).

Our fascias are solid and very straight, so extra weight should be ok (according to the gutter man).



From my roofing experience of about 5 years, I agree with nww in that it's that downpipes which do the work.

Check your rainfall levels for your area and the cross sectional area of your downpipes. You should be able to find some tables online showing downpipe requirements based on rainfall volume.

What size downpipes are you running?
Increasing the size will instantly increase the volume flow.

The quote chap said that the extra volume the 175mm gutter will hold will minimise the risk of this section of the house back flowing into the eaves (as it has in the past). My understanding is that downpipes don't "fill" up with water, but water spirals down them, and they are large now, so having extra holding capacity for a few minutes whilst the water gets down the down pipe sounds good to us.

I'll see if I can find a table, but just looking at where some of our downpipes are it is clear they no longer carry water due to old renovations and changed rooflines, and wrong "fall" that should have been corrected as the house was added to and rooflines changed. We will move some downpipes to aid better flow, add another tank and eliminate at least one down pipe. Most downpipes are new(ish) but a couple are older and not doing much at all. These will be removed or run to a tank.

We have seven downpipes, and it seems from each quote, that we can lose at least one (possibly two) and reposition a couple to better shed the water.

 

[Scott No Mates]

Leaf guard is good provided you install the right type.

Down pipes should be spaced no further apart than 6m. Beefing up the size of the gutter only increases the water held if you find the gutters overflow due to inadequate downpipe spacing. Gutters can overflow towards the eaves and cause damage to ceilings and electricals.

 

[wylie]

Leaf guard is good provided you install the right type.

Down pipes should be spaced no further apart than 6m. Beefing up the size of the gutter only increases the water held if you find the gutters overflow due to inadequate downpipe spacing. Gutters can overflow towards the eaves and cause damage to ceilings and electricals.

This has been the case in one area of our house where an extension was done badly and the gutter left inside the new roof. Thankfully no water has ever leaked through the plaster ceiling inside the house (to their amazement) but the eaves have held water and it has flowed out of a light fitting and bubbled the paint all along this internal corner section. We are having this fixed and need to replace the rusted gutter.

Rather than continue to part-fix, we will remove it all and start fresh with correct falls and correct downpipes.

Each person who has quoted has agreed we can lose one down pipe which really isn't carrying anything much and fix the fall, add one further down etc. They all seem to agree we need things rejigged and it is just the comment by one that 175mm would carry heavy rainfall in our "problem area", but we would have to do the whole house. I just want to see what it looks like on a house.

We "could" just replace the rusted out parts, fix the "Ba$tard valley" issue but a nice straight run of new gutter that doesn't wander all over the place, up and down, is what we want to do.

 

[AlmostBob]

something like this diverter trap, this one is from bunnings, to divert large leaves off the sloping grid, much better than those I am familiar with that only have the flat screen

installed at shoulder height for easy cleaning, in the downspouts, may remove the need for leaf guards high up, and make the first flush diverter all that is needed

 

[wylie]

something like this diverter trap, this one is from bunnings, to divert large leaves off the sloping grid, much better than those I am familiar with that only have the flat screen

installed at shoulder height for easy cleaning, in the downspouts, may remove the need for leaf guards high up, and make the first flush diverter all that is needed

That looks like a good idea. Thanks Bob. Will show hubby.

 

[nww]

something like this diverter trap, this one is from bunnings, to divert large leaves off the sloping grid, much better than those I am familiar with that only have the flat screen

installed at shoulder height for easy cleaning, in the downspouts, may remove the need for leaf guards high up, and make the first flush diverter all that is needed

I have this same one and works excellent and easy to clean , only really have to clean the inner screen the outer cleans itself.

 

[westminster]

Interesting topic as we are thinking about guttering for the new PPOR at the moment. We want to harvest our rain water.

We are considering winged gutters which have awesome capacity

 

[AlmostBob]

in use, and works
Thanks nww,

guess this now negates much of the need for a much bigger sloping screen at the gutters
saved the link to the good ideas list on my laptop

 

[westminster]

And reuse your old guttering

garage

garden

 

[wylie]

Interesting topic as we are thinking about guttering for the new PPOR at the moment. We want to harvest our rain water.

We are considering winged gutters which have awesome capacity

I like the look of the winged gutters and they suit that house, but they wouldn't suit our house. I like the idea of the 175mm and what is an extra 2.5cm between friends .

I just cannot imagine them looking much different. It is only an extra inch. I've emailed the company to see if there is a house or photo they can show us before we decide.

 

[westminster]

I don't think they'd look much different either as they are just wider not taller

 

[wylie]

I thought I would follow up for anybody wanting to know how these look.

We went with the 175mm gutter and it will be finished tomorrow.

They look so good and I wouldn't pick them as "different" to any other gutter. I doubt anybody would even notice that are slightly bigger than what came off. They certainly don't look odd.

When they are finished, I'll post up some photos.

I'm so glad we chose the larger gutter. Next big storm will be interesting. We've deleted two downpipes and hopefully the extra gutter capacity will cope with it. If not, we will have to reinstate one of the deleted downpipes I guess.

 

[vbplease]

Next big storm will be interesting. We've deleted two downpipes and hopefully the extra gutter capacity will cope with it. If not, we will have to reinstate one of the deleted downpipes I guess.

You may need to check that each downpipe services no more than 12m length of gutter. The building code requires this. Removing a downpipe would void your insurance policy in the case of water ingress..
But 12m is pretty long..

 

[wylie]

You may need to check that each downpipe services no more than 12m length of gutter. The building code requires this. Removing a downpipe would void your insurance policy in the case of water ingress..
But 12m is pretty long..

I am hoping the gutter company people who came and quoted would have that knowledge. I do know we had three quotes and each said we didn't need all the downpipes we have now. The house had been added to before we bought it, we've added to it and I think the gutter issue and placement, including correct falls were never addressed as additions were made.