The gutter is the cheapest roof repair you will never do twice: clear it before the rains

On a Nigerian roof, water that misses the gutter has a longer to-do list than anyone likes: the eaves soaks and the ceiling learns the stain map, the wall's fresh paint delaminates from the damp below the soffit, and the ground under the foundation gets the whole roof's yield at its feet, where the flooding article's story already warns it is mining. The gutter is the one system that does all four preventions at once, and its entire maintenance is a half-day, twice a year.

The half-day route

• Clear, from the downpipe up: gloves, a trowel or hand for the channel's mulch (the harmattan dust plus last year's leaf litter makes a felt that holds water like a sponge), and the downpipe's mouth opened first - a clear throat before the sweep, or the cleanings just relocate the blockage.
• The hose test, twice: flush from the far end toward the outlet - the water should run, not pool; then a full bucket at the far end and watch the line: a slow section is a low section, and a standing pool in a channel meant to drain is the sag that starts the rust or the crack at the joint.
• Slope, the honest fix: gutters drain by fall toward the outlet - a re-hung bracket line at the correct grade (a few millimetres per metre, the rule of "a drop the eye can see over the run" is the practical version) solves the pond that cleaning alone never will. The blocked end cap that weeps at the seam is the same story from the other side.
• Joints and the lip: sealant at every lap and end-cap, the fascia board behind the gutter checked for the soft patch (the leak that lives behind the metal), and the gutter's outer lip lower than the shingles' drip line - the one geometry error that guarantees the wind-driven rain goes behind the channel and into the wall, which the pre-rains checklist already tells you to watch from the ladder.

The downpipe's one rule

Take the water away from the house. A downpipe that dumps at the foundation is a gutter you installed to concentrate damage - the elbow and the extension (a length of pipe, channel or the buried drain it used to feed) should land water where the ground can take it: away, down, and away again, which is also what protects the wall's render from the splash-up that paints a house's base a darker grey than its top. The chain that ends in a soaked subfloor and a termite invitation is this sentence.

Two extras that cost nothing

The gutter is the ladder-day for the free roof inspection the same article keeps demanding: look along the sheet seams, the ridge caps and the parapet's waterproofing while you are at the height; and at the end of the rains, do the route again, once - the second half of the year's leaves are the blockages that find you in harmattan with a channel full of compost. The whole of home maintenance is a few loops repeated twice a year; this is the cheapest loop on the calendar.