I am designing and building a good-sized Cape (5,000 square feet), with a full-width front porch. Main roof is 12/12 pitch, and porch is 4/12. I will use Azek crown to dress up the cornice detail, but don’t want to hide it with the rain gutter on the front of the porch.
I would like to install a hidden gutter systen in the front of the house, maybe have the opening or trough 12 inches back from the drip edge. Anyone done this, or have ideas or sources, mag articles to reference, etc. which might help me design this? I will have 6 tapered hollow columns supporting the front of the porch roof, and I plan on running the downspouts inside these 14 inch wide columns.
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I've probably done several miles of built in gutter. Design is important, execution is critical. If there's a leak, it's damaging something. Give me some sketches and I'll talk you through it.
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I've never met a man that was owed as much as he thought he was.
The gutter is not a problem, but I'd caution installing downspouts inside the columns.
Could be a recipe for disaster if they become clogged,frozen,etc. I'd rethink that detail.
Walter
Thx for the caution, but I feel comfortable putting the downspouts inside the columns. My own home has a flat roof portico with a membrane roof and downspots hidden inside my columns. 13 years old with no problems whatsoever. I'm in PA and you are in Maine. Could that explain your cautionary opinion, and my own experience?
Thx for your input
Yes, climate would play a major role.
Also depends on what type of spouting, but for my money I would still not do it.
Yeah, downspouts in columns are definitely a problem anywhere where you get significant snow. A clog of ice forms, the fill up with water, and then the freezing bursts the column open.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
Worse is during long dry spells in spring/summer, birds nest in them, then it rains and they ( the nests) get swallowed up and lodge at the elbow.
Yeah, but that can happen to any type of downspout.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
But the columns hide the gusher when it boils over. Usually a seam in an elbow will show a full stick of water...it'll dribble.
(But bird nesting is a major problem with hidden gutters -- very attractive to the birds.)
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin