What should be the fall for a 10m roundline plastic gutter installation?
I have installed the gutters and was testing it last night. I emptied half a watering can in at the far end. Water emerged eventually at the down-spout end.
But this morning I checked. Some water was still present in most of the gutter, after a dry night. I'm not sure whether this is due to a strong Westerly breeze blowing or maybe my slope isn't steep enough.
Should a gutter shed *all* incoming water within a couple of minutes, say? Or will it retain some due to surface tension/muck/prevailing winds?
I don't think it matters that much. In fact you don't necessarily need a fall at all. Marley suggest a level gutter for eaves gutters as it keeps the gutter nearer the roof line, so minimising the risk of water missing the gutter. It does reduce the capacity of the gutter of course though.
Re water remaining in the gutter, I think it's pretty normal to have a little bit of water left lying in the bottom of the gutter, as long as it's not pooling because the gutter dips.
Marley seem to have a fair bit of info on their website:
should shed all quite quickly or you will get a build up of dust/debris in the dips and spillage when there is a storm. 1 in 40 for drains could be too steep for a gutter but any fall is better then none.
So 10 metres will need about 2/3 of an inch fall. Sounds like I need to move some of the brackets then. But the union brackets seem to cause a slight "U" dip purely because they are installed from under the smooth gutter.
Roof guttering can actually be fitted on the level. It then relies on the height of water in the gutter itself to flush it out. So you don't need massive running levels on things like this. A reasonable amount of drop on the length you have is around half an inch over the full length.
The last thing you want on a guttering system, is to have it flush to quickly, because this tends to drag large pieces of debris down the stack pipe, instead of just seeping passed obstacles, and can cause blockages at the junctions when they get stuck. So the gutter needs just a shallow run to allow the rain water to drain away, not gush and cascade along the system.
height of water in the gutter itself to flush it out. <
That seems to be what is happening at the moment. Most of the water heads for the outlet, but some is left behind. Maybe I should fit it all up, then check it when we get some rain, rather than endless faffing about moving the support brackets.
Stop it Mary!!! I said further up in my reply, that the guttering only needs something like a half an inch of a drop along its full length. Have you ever watched a fast flowing river flush debris down to a point where everything gets dammed up and raises the height of water? Then this also happens in a guttering system if the water runs along it to quickly.
It's normal to have guttering on a very shallow run, and rely on the height of water to create a run to the downpipe. Because of movement on the roof and in the building structure, the guttering can become higgle dee piggle dee in shape and cause bits to drop slightly and catch the water. This doesn't do any harm unless the drop is enough to cause a dam and the water level in the gutter comes over the edges instead of going down the pipework.
I said further up in my reply, that the guttering only
I know. You should see our garage gutter.
It will be replaced.
Our house roof gutter is splended now that we have the seamless stuff, no water stays in it but if rubbish collected in it we'd put a cage over the spout.
As it is it's very deep and copes beautifully with all the roof run-off in the heaviest rain. Which we haven't had for agesand I'm having to save every drop of wash water for the vegetables.
Ah! Now! Collecting rain water for an irrigation system is a different matter. The system can be designed to give higher flow rates to fill a butt' and then reduce the flow when the fill level has been reached. It's a bit more technical, but not that much. :-)
As has been mentioned, a small drop toward the down-pipe is all that is required. In fact, if you have wooden fascias that aren't painted too often, you don't want a large drop because splashback fron the gutter will hit the fascia, whereas if the gutter is nearly level, splashback is mainly caught by the underside of the tiles. I have a drop of approximately an inch along my gutters. I used a laser line indicator and spirit level to get the brackets right.
The roof slopes down to the gutters, therainwater slides down thesloping roofto the gutter.
There are outlets in the gutter which allow the water to flow into fall pipes.
A few feet above the ground is a diverter which allows water from the fall pipe into a large water butt, the water flows into that.
That butt is connected to other butts by means of a hosepipe. The water level is the same in all the butts.
We've never had enough rain to fill all the butts at the same time, I doubt that even the heaviest overnight fall would fill two separate butts.
There is also a hose attached to the bottom of one butt which connects to a perforated hose in the greenhouse, I turn the tap to this hose on when I expect rain in dry weather so there is always a trickle to water the greenhouse plants.
In the mornings I fill watering cans from the butts to spot water other vegetables and the odd windowbox. There is never a surplus.
We never have done yet. If there was too much water for all the connected butts - which is highly unlikely given our system - the water from the fall pipe wouldn't go through the diverter into the butt, it would go straight into the drain. The tanks can't overflow from rainwater.
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