Guttering · Croydon & the CR postcodes
Guttering In Croydon
Is water running down the wall instead of down the pipe?
Clearing, repairs, realignment and full replacement of gutters and downpipes across Croydon
Guttering is the cheapest part of your roof and it causes a disproportionate share of the damage. Water that should be going into a gully ends up going down the wall instead, and it does it quietly for months. By the time anybody notices, the problem is not the gutter any more - it is the render, the pointing and the inside of the wall.
Free guttering quote
Four details and somebody will come and look at it. There is no charge for the visit, no obligation afterwards, and if the answer is that your roof is fine, that is what you will be told.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
What you are seeing, and what it usually means
None of this replaces somebody actually looking at your roof, but it will tell you roughly what you are dealing with and how much of a hurry to be in.
A vertical green or black stripe down the wall
Water has been overflowing at that point for a long time. Algae marks the route. The gutter above it is either blocked, split or dropped.
Water sheeting over the front edge in heavy rain
Blockage, or a gutter that has lost its fall. Very common under the tree cover in Shirley, Selsdon and West Wickham from October onwards.
Dripping from the joints between lengths
Failed seals on uPVC, or corroded joints on cast iron. Cheap to fix and it does not improve on its own.
A damp patch at the base of an outside wall
The downpipe is discharging onto the ground or into a blocked gully rather than into the drain. This one soaks the wall from the bottom up.
Why use us for guttering in Croydon
Cleared, then actually checked
Anyone can scoop leaves out. The point of the visit is to find out why it filled up and whether the fall is still right, which is what stops it happening every year.
Cast iron kept where it should be
On the Victorian stock in Addiscombe, South Norwood and the older parts of South Croydon, original cast iron is often worth repairing rather than ripping off. It also looks right, which matters in a conservation area.
Brackets and falls reset
Most overflowing gutters are not blocked. They have dropped, and the water pools instead of running. Resetting the fall is a proper fix and it is not expensive.
Downpipes traced to the drain
There is no point clearing a gutter if the gully at the bottom is silted up and the water backs up again in the next downpour.
Shared gutters handled sensibly
Terraces in the north of the borough often run one gutter across several houses. We will tell you plainly which part is yours and what needs a word with the neighbours.
Ten year guarantee on installed work
On replacement and repair work. Clearing is maintenance and is priced as such.
Croydon's trees are the reason your gutters fill
The council looks after somewhere around 33,000 street trees, and that is before the private planting in the residential roads. Shirley and Selsdon run up into serious tree cover on the Addington Hills and around Selsdon Wood, West Wickham has mature planting through most of its interwar roads, and Purley and Sanderstead are wooded on the slopes. From late October the gutters on those roads fill with leaf litter faster than anywhere in the borough. Further north, in Thornton Heath and Norbury, it is less leaf and more grit and moss washed off older roof coverings, but the effect on a shallow-falling gutter is the same.
"Plenty of the damp problems we get called to are nothing to do with the roof. They are gutters, and the bill lands nowhere near where the homeowner had braced for it."
Based on the guttering jobs handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
How a guttering job runs
You describe the symptom
Which room, which wall, and does it only happen when the rain comes from a particular direction? That last question narrows things down more than people expect, before anybody has been anywhere near the roof.
Somebody comes and looks - loft included
Free, with no expectation that it becomes a job. Half the evidence is on the underside of the roof, so the loft gets looked at as a matter of course rather than as a favour.
You are told the cause before the price
In plain terms, with photographs where they make the point better than words. If you want to take that diagnosis to somebody else for a second quote, that is entirely reasonable.
A written, itemised price
Access priced as its own line, so it is obvious what you are paying to reach the work as opposed to doing it. The figure on the quote is the figure on the invoice.
The work, back to something solid
Failed material comes out until there is sound timber and sound masonry underneath. Matched covering, code 4 lead at the junctions, mortar mixed to suit the brick it is going onto.
Checked, cleared and guaranteed
The details either side get checked while the access is still up, the site is cleared, finished photographs come to you, and the written guarantee is handed over the same day.
The 10 year guarantee, and why it is safe to offer
Promising a roof will stay dry is easy. What counts is what happens if it does not. Work booked through Roof Repairs Croydon carries a 10 year workmanship guarantee, on paper, handed to you on the day and written in language you can actually read. The slates, tiles, lead, mortar, membranes and rainwater goods carry their own manufacturer cover on top of that. It varies by product, so you get told which cover applies to your job rather than one headline number that would be wrong on most of them.
Here is the reason a guarantee like that is not a risk. Repairs come back for one reason above all others: the fault was never found in the first place. Somebody went up, saw a stain on the ceiling below, mended whatever looked worst directly above it, and left. Water does not cooperate with that approach. It lands on a slate, runs under it, drops onto a rafter and travels along the rafter before it finds anywhere to fall. On a wide hipped roof in Sanderstead or Shirley that can be five metres from where it came in.
Find the entry point and the repair holds for years. Miss it and no amount of guarantee wording helps anybody. That is why the survey happens before the price, and it is why, if the same water finds its way back into your house inside the guarantee period, putting it right costs you nothing.
10 year
Workmanship guarantee
1,000+
Roofs put right
Covered
Public liability insurance
Per product
Maker's own warranty
Three questions worth asking whoever you use
Including us. If the answers do not stand up, that tells you something useful.
Do they check the fall?
A gutter has to drop steadily towards the outlet. Brackets sag over time and the water then sits in the middle. If nobody puts a level on it, nobody has diagnosed anything.
Will they follow it to the drain?
The gully at the bottom of the downpipe silts up. A cleared gutter feeding a blocked gully still floods, and you will be told the gutter was done.
Are they pushing full replacement?
Plenty of guttering only needs new brackets, new seals or a single replacement length. Wholesale replacement of a sound run is an easy sale and often unnecessary.
Cast Iron Or uPVC?
Relevant on the older stock in the north of the borough, and in the conservation areas, where the choice is not purely practical.
| Comparison point | Cast iron | uPVC |
|---|---|---|
| Life expectancy | A century or more if it is kept painted. | Typically 20 to 30 years before it goes brittle and the seals give up. |
| Maintenance | Needs repainting periodically. Neglect it and it rusts through at the joints. | Essentially none beyond clearing it out. |
| Cost | Several times uPVC, both for the material and for the labour to hang it. | The cheapest option by a distance. |
| Appearance on period houses | Correct. The deep half-round profile is part of what a Victorian elevation looks like. | Noticeably wrong at close range, and increasingly obvious as the plastic ages. |
| Conservation areas | Generally what the council will expect on a front elevation. | May be resisted where it is visible from the street. |
| Repairability | Individual lengths and joints can be replaced without touching the rest. | Sections clip out easily, though matching an older profile can be awkward. |
Clearing is worth doing before winter, not after
The cheapest gutter job is the one booked in November. The expensive one is the same gutter in February, after three months of water down the wall, when the pointing has gone soft and the plaster inside has started to bloom. There is nothing clever about it - it is simply the maintenance job with the best return of anything on a house, and the one most consistently skipped.
See what a repair costs
What guttering costs in Croydon
Clearing and checking gutters on a typical Croydon semi is cheap. Repairs - brackets, resetting a fall, a replacement length - sit in the low hundreds. Full uPVC replacement on a two storey house runs from the high hundreds into the low thousands. Cast iron is a different order of cost and gets quoted on its own.
See the full cost guideGuttering - your questions
How often should gutters be cleared?
Once a year for most houses, in late autumn once the leaves are down. On the heavily wooded roads in Shirley, Selsdon, Purley and West Wickham, twice a year is more realistic - one clear in late autumn and one in spring after the blossom and seed drop.
My gutter overflows but it is not blocked. Why?
Almost certainly the fall. Brackets sag over the years and the gutter ends up level or running slightly the wrong way, so water sits in it and the next heavy shower has nowhere to go. Resetting the brackets to a proper fall fixes it and costs far less than replacement.
Can you repair cast iron or does it all have to come off?
Usually repairable. Individual lengths can be swapped, joints can be remade, and rust can be treated and the run repainted. Replacing an entire cast iron system when three joints have failed is an expensive answer to a cheap problem, and on a period house in a conservation area it is often the wrong one aesthetically as well.
Do you fit gutter guards?
We will if you want them, with a caveat. Under heavy tree cover, mesh guards trap leaf litter on top and can turn an annual clear into a more awkward one. They work well against birds and against the occasional twig. They are not a substitute for ever looking at the gutter again.
Who is responsible for a gutter shared with next door?
On the terraces in the north of the borough this comes up constantly. Broadly, each owner is responsible for the length over their own property, but water does not respect that and a blockage two doors along will flood your wall. In practice the useful thing is to establish where the problem physically is, which is what the survey does, and then have an informed conversation with the neighbour.
Is guttering work covered by the guarantee?
Installed work is - new runs, replacement lengths, downpipes, brackets and repairs all carry the ten year workmanship guarantee. Clearing is maintenance rather than installation, so it is not guaranteed against filling up again, for what should be obvious reasons.
Also worth a look: Fascias and soffits ·Roof leak repairs ·Flat roof repairs
Where we work
Guttering across the whole borough and over the boundary where it makes sense - from the Victorian terraces at the Thornton Heath end up onto the chalk at Kenley, Coulsdon and Sanderstead, and out to Wallington, Caterham, Warlingham and West Wickham.
What Croydon homeowners say
From roads across the borough, once the ladders had gone.
"Damp patch on our landing ceiling for about three years. Two roofers had been out and both mended the tiles directly above it, and neither made the slightest difference. This chap spent twenty minutes in the loft with a torch before he even went outside, then showed me a photo of a split in the lead in the valley about four metres away from the stain. Fixed it in a morning. Three winters on and nothing."
"Water was coming down the front bedroom wall every time it rained hard and I had convinced myself the roof was finished. It was the gutter. Half of it had dropped so the water was sitting in the middle and going over the front rather than down the pipe. He reset the brackets and cleared the gully, charged me a fraction of what I had budgeted for, and told me the roof itself had years left. Could easily have sold me a new one."
"Ours is in the Chatsworth Road conservation area and I had no idea the rules on roof work here are stricter than the rest of Croydon. He knew straight away, explained what I could and could not do without an application, and did the repair in matching slate. That saved me a very awkward conversation with the council later on."
"Lost most of the ridge tiles along the back in a February gale. Rang in the morning, sheeted the same afternoon so the weather could not get in, came back the following week when it was dry and rebedded the whole ridge properly. Sent me photos of everything for the insurance without me even asking. The bill was exactly what the quote said it would be."
"Gutters had been overflowing under the trees for years and the fascia behind them had gone soft. What I appreciated was that he explained why the timber had rotted rather than just quoting to replace it, and pointed out the new soffits needed vents or I would end up with condensation in the loft instead. Nobody had ever mentioned that to me before."
Had us out to your roof?
Two minutes writing a review does more for a small local firm than any amount of advertising, and it helps the next person in Croydon work out who to ring.
Get a free guttering quote
Ring and describe what you can see, or send a message and somebody will come out and put their head in your loft. It costs nothing to find out what is wrong. The price you are quoted is the price you pay. And if the answer turns out to be that it can wait another few years, that is what you will be told.