Property owners often don’t think too much about the essential regular maintenance that is required to keep your London property in tiptop condition. Unfortunately, this can lead to bigger structural issues requiring professional costly repairs.
At this time of year, we cannot stress enough how important it is to clear out gutters. In these darkest months of winter, after the trees have shed their leaves there is bound to be a considerable amount of debris sitting in your gutters. If you don’t address this issue and carry out some basic routine clearance the consequences can be disproportionally damaging to your property.
We’re currently working with the owners of this property in East London to correct massive structural issues caused simply by not clearing out roof level gutters. The resulting water ingress from the overflowing gutters has caused decay to the ends of the roof timbers and the timber floor joist ends bearing on the solid masonry exterior wall. The subsequent decay of the roof timber and joist ends has caused a loss of lateral tieing to the flank wall which has then begun to move away from the remainder of the structure causing the significant cracking which we see in the photographs below:
As a consequence, the flank wall has had to be pinned back to the remainder of the structure using metal shores. This entire process is extremely expensive to put right and will take a considerable amount of time, as well as causing significant inconvenience to the occupiers.
Therefore, our number one household maintenance tip of the moment is simply to CLEAR OUT YOUR GUTTERS!