Water Behind Gutters

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thinkxingu

thinkxingu

Minister of Fire
Jun 3, 2007
1,125
S.NH
Installed gutters at the camp this week and noticed water is running behind them. Looks like drip edge isn't long enough to come out to gutter and through capillary action is coming around and dripping down behind gutter.

I'm thinking the easiest remedy (looks don't matter) would be to bend the existing drip edge bottom out enough so the water runs off into gutter. That'd certainly be easier than installing new drip edge. Would that work? Any other suggestions?

Thanks!
 
That would be the first thing I'd try. The 2nd would be to make a small brake out of 2x and bend sheet metal to fit under the shingles and over the lip of the gutter. A bit of silicone on the sheet metal would hold it in place.
 
Okie dokie- it looks like I'll only have to pull it out a bit for the water to run off into the gutters, so I thought that would be the easiest. Thanks!
 
If bending it out fails and you don't have a brake to bend metal up you could probably buy new drip edge, either buy a shorter (like a 3" flat on it) or cut some down with snips and just slide it up under the shingles and over the existing, let it stick out an extra inch. Like the other post says, I'd use some silicone or maybe roofing tar to hold it in place.

Also, most gutters that mount directly to the fascia board call for a bead of silicone to be applied between the top back side of the gutter and the fascia board. I think there's pros and cons to that though.

Either way it's a easy inexpensive fix.
 
You can always slide an extension strip of flat metal under the existing drip edge and have it overlap over the back edge of the gutter and, tack in place with trim nails.
Or reset the gutter higher. so that the back edge of the gutter slides up behind the drip edge.

Unless you have a very low slope roof, or you did not leave the 1" shingle overhang past the drip edge bend, water should not be flowing behind the gutter.
 
Yeah. Ya need to determine if it is flowing behind them or over the front of the gutters. After spending a ton last Spring for new gutters and doubling the downspouts heavy downpours, like we had tonight, still flow over. I was able to determine tonight that it is over, not behind the gutters. I got really we determining that.
 
The shingles barely come out over the drip edge, so the water was running onto the drip edge and behind the gutter. Since the drip edge was only about 1/4" from the gutter, I was able to bend it out a bit and voila! it's fine. Had some serious downpours last weekend and all worked out. Now I gotta put some diverter length on each side as, again, the previous owner only came out about 1/2 inch from sides of roof and water drips into porch--have some rotted trim and sheathing as a result. Grrr...
 
Same problem here, wasnt sure what the right solution was. As a patch until i could figure it out I used aluminium flashing tape (real duct tape), the aluminium with sticky stuff on the back. Used that to bridge the gap between the existing drip guard and gutter.

That was 2 years ago. When it worked perfect and didnt start coming lose from the water (like I thought it would) I figured that ht epatch might be good enough! its also easy to get to, so replacing the tape would only take about 15 min, its just a single story up and about 15 feet long.
 
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