How To Build A Box Gutter

Wood box gutters were the premiere gutter design for the drainage of rain water from roofs in the united states from 1890 to 1925 and can still be found on houses today.

How to build a box gutter.

A box gutter is actually built into the bottom of the roof or into the roof overhang. I knew i wanted the width to be 200mm where the gutter terminated at the hopper end. Advice varies on the rate of fall for the gutter. I would make support boards from 18mm osb.

Poor quality box gutters installation and maintenance can result into large expenses to professionally rebuild or repair them. I started by working out the width of the boards. Low and behold the box gutter is rotted out. K style gutters are the overall most popular style but there are other styles such as box half round and fascia style.

Built in gutters also referred to as box gutters are considered a concealed roof drainage system. This will likely be based on the demand in the area where you live since those who make the significant purchase of a seamless gutters machine usually try to derive income from the machine. There is more information on this later. The k style gutter is an adaptation from a design based on the classical orders of design.

For box gutters to work effectively they should be installed by building them into the bottom of the roof or into the roof overhang. In many cases however a built in or box gutter may be what your house originally had and what it should have now. The foundation of most box gutters is wood that is then covered with thin sheet metal such as tin copper lead stainless steel or some other metal that will not readily corrode. Some suggest 1 40 some 1 60.

Box gutters are actually built off of the rafters of the building they are not hung from the building as metal gutters are. Since they are not readily visible they typically don t alter the historic character of buildings and don t detract from or conceal decorative cornice details. The issue today is the copper would disappear not counting the cost to reinstall. The esthetics of the box gutter hid the gutter from sight which was important during that time.

The old box gutters worked great in the day.