Eavestrough Repair · Kitchener
Eavestrough Repair in Kitchener
A trough that drips at one seam or holds water in one bay is a repair, not a replacement, and we would rather tell you so from the ladder than sell you a new system from the lawn.
Eavestrough rarely fails all at once. It fails at the seams, at the hangers, at the end caps, and at the outlets, and most of those are separate repairs that take a few hours. The condition for a repair being worth doing is that the trough itself is sound metal; aluminum that has only sagged or pulled loose has decades left in it once it is re-hung.
Sagging and standing water
A trough that holds water after rain has lost its pitch, usually because hangers have pulled out of the fascia or because ice pulled the run down over a winter. The repair is to re-hang the sagging section on new screwed hangers at the correct slope — and to find out why the hangers let go. On the postwar streets of Forest Heights and Stanley Park the answer is often that the fascia behind that bay is soft, and a new hanger needs sound wood or a sister board behind it. On a newer house in Huron Park it is more often spike-and-ferrule nails that worked loose, and the fix is to replace them with screws along the whole run while the ladder is up.
Leaking seams and end caps
Corners and end caps are sealed from inside with a flexible gutter sealant, and sealant ages. A seam that drips gets cleaned back to bare metal, dried and resealed; a corner that has opened or corroded gets replaced with a new mitre. Where the leak is at the outlet, the drop itself may have been cut too small or set too high, so water overshoots it, and that is a resizing rather than a resealing.
Ice and snow damage
Kitchener winters produce two kinds of damage. Ice forming in a trough with poor pitch gets heavy enough to pull hangers and bend the front lip outward; snow sliding off a steep or metal roof can tear a run off the fascia entirely. The repair is straightforward in spring — re-hang, replace bent sections, reset the pitch — but the useful part is reducing the chance of a repeat: tighter hanger spacing where snow slides, correct pitch so water does not stand and freeze, and, where the real cause is heat loss through a poorly vented or under-insulated attic, telling you that, because no trough repair fixes an ice dam that starts on the roof.
What a repair visit covers
- Clearing the affected run so the pitch and seams can be seen. This is part of the repair, not a cleaning service.
- Re-hanging and re-pitching the sagging section on screwed hangers.
- Resealing or replacing seams, mitres, end caps and outlets as found.
- Replacing crushed or disconnected downspout sections and elbows.
- A plain assessment of the rest of the system, so you know whether this was the first of several repairs or the only one.
What we will not do is seal a seam on a steel trough that is rusting through, or re-hang a run into fascia that will not hold it. Those are replacement conversations, and the repair quote says so.
Frequently asked questions
Water runs behind the eavestrough and down the fascia. Is that the trough?
Often it is the drip edge, not the trough. If the metal drip edge under the shingles is short or missing, water runs down the roof deck and behind the trough. The fix is a drip edge or apron flashing tucked under the shingles and over the back of the trough, and it is a common repair on postwar Kitchener roofs.
Can one sagging section be fixed without redoing the run?
Usually. The section is lifted back to pitch and re-hung on new hangers, and the adjoining hangers are checked. If the whole run has dropped, re-pitching all of it at once is the better job and not much more work.
Do you fix eavestrough in winter?
Where it is safe to, yes. Sealants need a dry surface above a minimum temperature to cure, so some seam work waits for a mild spell. A run torn off by snow can usually be secured in winter and finished properly in spring.
Serving Kitchener and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.