Home maintenance: Leaking rain gutters!!

[OleBoy]

I'm posting this in hopes that someone here has a solution. I have aluminum gutters on my home. Ever since we bought the place I have been fighting (trying to repair/fix) leaking corners. I have completely cleaned the corners of all adhesives, etc, and have re-sealed the corner joints numerous times. I've also re-riveted the corners where they tie together, and then re-sealed the lap joints with a hefty coat of black mastic roof sealer. They still leak.
Short of the corners leaking there is nothing wrong with the gutter system. Although I've been trying to fix the leaking corners for nearly 15 years. I'm really tired of having to mess with this re-sealing every year. But nothing seems to last. I'm almost to the point where I am just going to take them all off and have new installed. But even those are susceptible to leaking at the corners. I'm not sure what the warranties are. But I know new gutters are not cheap!! And I really can not afford to replace them.

I'm in hopes that there is a handyman type member here that may have a solution to my problems. Sigh


HELP!!!!

 

[Roger]

Plastic gutters with brass screws through the plastic supports into the guttering to stop them moving with expansion/contraction.

 

[Odie]

oleboy, have you tried that spray-on sealer that they've been hawking on the TV lately....? THe one where they float the boat with the screen door bottom that
has been sprayed with the stuff. Might not hurt to try before incurring a major expense. Sometimes those things do work...

 

[pfflyers]

When I had a new furnace installed a few years ago the plumbers left a roll of aluminum tape behind. I used it to fix something and I was hooked. I've used up that roll and used over half of the roll I bought at Home Depot.

It has worked for me on metal gutters (plastic too), the roof flashing, all sorts of stuff.

 

[737trio]

Leaking aluminium gutters.

Clean back to bare metal, then use woven fibreglass mat with resin. This floated my trailer yacht with never a sign of leaks.

Good luck.

Trio

 

[aeromed202]

I was going to suggest the black stuff too. My ancient gutters finally rusted through in spots and I plan to scour down, cut some sheet steel, spray the surface, lay the steel then top coat everything and see what happens. Hard to say without a picture but one problem might be movement of the joint as I assume there is a 90 degree angle. Might be enough to work things open. Saplings can crack concrete and all that. Fixes for that sort of problem usually mean designing some freedom of movement for expansion and contraction. The problem with fiberglass is there needs to excellent bonding and the right amount of mat, again to allow desired flexing without cracking. On my same old gutters I did once modify a round elbow to poke up through the gutter end, making a crude flange and gobbed it with silicone and riveted it into place and darned if it still works 12 years later.

 

[Naismith]

oleboy, have you tried that spray-on sealer that they've been hawking on the TV lately....? THe one where they float the boat with the screen door bottom that
has been sprayed with the stuff. Might not hurt to try before incurring a major expense. Sometimes those things do work...

Our CTV consumer did a bit on that last week - not as good a product as you may it to be. Check out CTVBC "Steele On Your Side" videos they may still have the video on the website.

 

[kilo delta]

Clean back to bare metal, then use woven fibreglass mat with resin. This floated my trailer yacht with never a sign of leaks.

Good luck.

Trio

+1

I need to do the same with mine too.