South Holly Church Gutter Issues

I was relating the gutter issue to Ellen, and telling her of the problem of seeing what is going on up there, when she said, “‘Why don’t you just use your drone?”. Duh. So, I collected drone images on April 1 & 2, focusing on the gutter issue at the southeast corner of the church.

You can click on any image to get a full-screen view.

This photo shows the corner at issue. Note that there is absolutely no debris in he gutter.

Closeup view of gutter.

Here is gets interesting. Note the weathering of the facia board at the corner.

This closer view shows the weathering in greater detail.

Still closer view. Note the gap at the top where the gutters meet…it does not extend into the curved part of the gutter…it is only about a one vertical inch gap at the corner. This does not appear to be the problem.

This appears to be the culprit. The gutter slopes down about 2” beginning about 3’ from the corner of the gutter. The red lines are horizontal and parallel, and they show that the shingles, the bottom edge of the shingles, and the bricks are not distorted in the photo. The blue line is also horizontal, and shows how the gutter drops to the left as it approaches the corner.

Water overflowing the outside of the gutter at the corner will cling to the gutter and travel back to the facia board due to surface tension. One could also suppose that water is overflowing the gutter to the inside of the gutter, though nothing can be seen to support this.

Regarding the drip line in the soil visible within the red box below, there are no obstructions in the gutter that would cause the water to overflow the gutter. It’s possible that the downspout at this corner is not sufficiently sized to allow the water to be evacuated through the downspout before water backs up and overflows the gutter. As there is no apparent drip line around the corner on the south side of the gutter intersections, the overflow of concern is probably related to the non-level gutter, as shown in the photo above.

Here are a series of photos showing the church from various compass points. Click the first image to get a larger view and arrow through other images.