Perhaps you are wondering why we chose the title ‘Draining An Upper Half-Hipped Roof’ for this article. The real estate industry has a number of fairly unique expressions it uses as it goes about its business.
One of these phrases is ‘curb appeal’, which is the first impression a property makes when viewed from the street. Bad curb appeal can cause a prospective purchaser to lose interest, or value a property down.
How Eavestroughs May Influence Curb Appeal
Many folk in Calgary max their budgets when they purchase a property. That’s because mortgages are long term, secured loans, with attractive interest rates. This may mean that new owners don’t have cash flow left over for immediate improvements to their purchase.
Sagging, deteriorating, or otherwise unattractive gutters and down pipes may put purchasers off at first sight, especially if they need immediate repair. Valiant Exteriors understands this. We would like our eavestrough projects to enhance the value of our client’s property.
A Project to Drain An Upper Half-Hipped Roof
A Calgary homeowner called us with an unusual problem. They owned a home with a half-hipped roof that had water dripping over one end, and causing damp below as you can see in our photo above.
A previous contractor had used the standard approach of connecting the upper and lower roof areas with a piece of down pipe. This was not the right way of draining an upper half-hipped roof, and was not a pretty sight.
Steady On For a Moment. What Is a Half-Hipped Roof?
The commonest roof types in Calgary are gabled and hipped ones. Hipped ones have slopes on all four sides, that connect the peak above to the four walls below. While gabled roofs only have slopes on two opposite ends, that connect to two gables and two walls below.
Half-hipped roofs, by comparison, are a cross-over style, that some folk also call clipped gables and jerkinhead roofs. These combine the features of gable and hipped roofs, by clipping off the top of the gable, and replacing it with a smaller sloping roof between a short hip at each end.
Draining an upper half-hipped roof presents challenges, in particular what to do with the sloping edges on either side of the clipped gable. The standard and cheap approach is using pipe, which looks terrible and works poorly.
The other method involves using gutter, which looks great and functions much better, but it requires more time and skill, which is why other installers typically avoid it. Speak to Valiant Exteriors if you need eaves troughs that work properly, while improving the curb appeal of your home.
More Information
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