Wall before re-
pointing
Wall after re-
pointing
Gutter before
cleaning
Gutter after clearing
Broken tile
New Tile
garage roof before
cleaning
Clearing moss from
garage roof
Broken down pipe
replacing rotten
floor timbers
Inserting a
‘soakaway’
Inserting a
‘soakaway’
Crystal Multitrade
Handyman Services
handy@crystalmm.com
Mrs Smith’s Borders! We were asked to undertake a little bit of garden border tidying for a customer we’ve done work for
over a number of years, lets call her Mrs Smith. We tidied up the borders, installed horticultural gauze to suppress weeds
and applied about three cubic metres of tree bark, it was a large garden in one of Wolverhamptons leafy suburbs. Towards
the end of the work, Mrs Smith asked “do you know anything about floors”? Having just completed a full refurb of a first floor
flat and with experience of many other flooring upgrades and replacements, “Yes we know a bit about floors”, “Could you
have a look at my Lounge”?
We looked at the sagging carpet! Lifted it up and found the floorboards had rotted completely through, along with the Joists
and the Skirting board. Investigating further we traced the problem back to a lack of any surface drain for the rainwater
flowing down from the conservatory roof. It was flooding through an airbrick and through the brickwork straight into the
foundations.
We installed a Gulley, a Soakaway and associated piping leading from the bottom of the downpipe, to take the water down
through the raised patio into the lower level garden and away from the property. After removing rotten timbers, about half the
room, and treating the damp problem with chemicals we started repairs to the floor and sub floor. While repairing the
floorboards joists etc. we had a spell of really heavy rain, the soakaway worked a treat. But - the roof of the conservatory
started to leak like a sieve. We then realised that although the lack of drainage was an issue the other culprit was the failure
of the conservatory flashing and the fact that the wooden rafters on the conservatory roof had rotted in quite a number of
places letting rain enter the property. To add to this the gutter above the conservatory looked like the hanging gardens of
Babylon and was distributing rainwater straight down the walls of the property. How do we clean that out? Scaffolding to
span the conservatory, cost, 1K + of dead money. Why not re-roof the conservatory, it’s on its last legs, and once we’ve
removed the old roof, replace the guttering.
That’s just what we did, we had to get a bespoken replacement roof manufactured but the end result looks about ten times
better and there is not one leak on the whole of the 6 metre wide conservatory.
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