Another sloppy job

Summer has well and truly arrived and along with it comes the bush fire hazard; especially with this hot spell in recent days. So I climbed on to the roof to get rid of the leaves in the gutters. There is a great view of the Canberra suburbs from the roof. It was while on the roof I spotted another goof in the way my veranda had been erected.

I was amazed at the number of broken, chipped, and cracked roof tiles on the house. There were corners missing from the tiles, a lot of hair cracks on the tiles, but some of the cracks were surprisingly large. In fact, there is a water mark on the floorboards in the hallway in the house that has been a mystery. It has been a puzzle because there are no other stains except on the floor boards. The cracked roof tile shows daylight when viewed from inside the roof. Mystery solved: The water flows inside through the cracked tile, and on to the ceiling, perhaps flowing inside a wall (that no doubt had been painted before the house was put on the market) and eventually onto the floor.

Anyway, I was gathering up the leaves and rubbish from gutter, and eventually I reached the front of the house where the veranda has been built. This is not a flash veranda by any means. It’s just a frame to support some corrugated plastic sheeting. It provides a little shade and keeps the rain off the decking. When I got to the gutter adjacent the veranda I could see that the veranda sheeting had been fixed in a way that the sheeting covered the gutter.

It’s difficult to clean the leaves from the gutter when it’s covered like this. Another brainless non-tradesman bit of workmanship. Another problem of having the structure built like this is that when the gutter blocks as gutters tend to do from time to time, and if there is a large downpour of rain the gutter will fill and overflow. Had the veranda sheeting been placed under the gutter the majority of the water overflow would pour onto the sheeting and be carried away. But with this stuff up any water overflow will flow under the veranda and soak everything on the deck.

People who offer home services of this quality need to be shot.