Month: January 2024

Why Now May Be A Good Time For Gutter Replacement

It has been a tough autumn and winter so far for conservatory owners. The arrival of Storm Isha will have added to their woes and Storm Jocelyn will do so even more.

While those in flood-prone areas may have had to mop out their conservatories, rain and high winds bring their own problems, ensuring anything loose does not remain attached for long and bringing lots of flying debris that can cause damage to conservatories and other property.

While a damaged window or skylight might be the most visually obvious problem – along with the dangers of broken glass – there are many other ways your conservatory can be damaged.

Indeed, when the storm calms and you come to inspect your conservatory for signs of damage you may find the gutters have fared badly. In some cases, it may be they just need to be unblocked or have relatively minor damage that can be repaired. However, you may need them to be replaced altogether.

It is important to establish just what the state of your gutters is. One reason is that there may be only minor damage or none at all. It could be that gutters can be cleaned out by methods such as jet washing.

There are some obvious signs that all is not well with your guttering. For instance, if water is spilling over the edges they are clearly not draining. Having birds landing in them is a similar sign, as it is providing them with a place clogged with debris that they can use for nesting. You may also see the gutter sagging, which is often a sign that it may be close to breaking.

In these cases, spillages of water can cause lots of water pooling just where you don’t want it, flooding your garden instead of going down the drain.

Caught early enough, these problems can be resolved by clearing the debris out of the gutter and making minor repairs. But if this does not happen in time, or if the damage done is already too bad, there is nothing left for it but to replace the guttering.

That means the first thing you need is an assessment. Secondly, any repair work that can be done must be done. Thirdly, if at any point it becomes clear that the guttering cannot be made as good as new, you should act as soon as possible.

The faster you remove the old guttering and bring in the new, the sooner the bad consequences of gutters that aren’t fit for purposes blight your home and garden. It means no more flooding and no bird poop and fallen dead chicks everywhere as they nest in it. It means no visual signs of damage that visitors and nosy neighbours will see.

Most importantly of all, it will ensure that your gutters are renewed ahead of the next storm. If this winter is anything to go by, there are sure to be more before the calmer, warmer and drier days of spring arrive.

By acting decisively, you can help ensure your conservatory is in tip-top shape when you come to use it most in the spring and summer months.

Why January’s Extreme Bad Weather May Not Be The Last

While the saying ‘fix the roof while the sun shines’ may be popular, some of the most important maintenance just won’t wait until the days are long and warm. Often what is needed is fast and decisive action to deal with the problem now before matters get worse.

Examples of this include skylight repair or any other form of glass damage. In these cases, the consequences of allowing lots of cold air, rain, snow and wind-blown debris into what should be a dry conservatory interior can be pretty severe, ranging from the disruption of the microclimate you may be nurturing plants in through to the winter to getting furniture wet.

Many conservatories across the UK will have suffered from the recent severe weather. There have been no fewer than eight named storms recorded by the Met Office over the autumn and winter so far.

Indeed, the Christmas and New Year period was particularly grim, with Storm Gerrit on December 27th and 28th and Storm Henk on January 2nd providing a mix of dire weather. Apart from a lot of flooding, severe structural damage included a tornado that ripped the roofs of homes in the town of Stalybridge near Manchester.

Some of these may have flooded conservatories in low-lying areas, but the worst damage that can happen is when falling trees or flying debris strike it, shattering glass and potentially causing further structural damage.

If such damage has occurred, the sooner it is tackled the better. Broken glass poses a danger and leaving a damaged conservatory open to the elements poses both short and long-term risks, including the potential for mould to flourish and for wildlife to enter, adding to the mess.

With plenty of winter left to go, there may be more storms, so if there has been some damage, this could leave your conservatory weakened and less able to withstand the next very windy day.

Suffice to say, storms Isha, Jocelyn and Kathleen could be on the way before long, threatening to batter homes and conservatories once again. That is all the more reason to get any damage that has already happened fixed, so that it is in the best possible shape to handle what comes next.

After the wind and the rain have come snow and sub-zero temperatures. These can also cause plenty of damage, as any cracks or weaknesses that water can seep into can be widened by the process of freeze-thaw.

This is a natural process that shapes landscapes and releases mineral nutrients to help feed plants, but it’s bad news for windows. It means small cracks and chips can widen and shatter windows.

With any plants you normally keep in mild temperatures in the conservatory at risk of being killed by the very cold conditions, even draughts and gaps that are not being widened by ice can produce a huge problem.

Put together, the challenges of winter weather and the impact of the damage it can cause give ample reasons for early action to fix any problems, ensuring your conservatory is in the best possible shape when the warmer and calmer days of spring arrive.

The Mystery Of Britain’s Most Famous Conservatory

Conservatories are designed to be harmonious additions to a home, and because of that take inspiration from a lot of the same places as the house they are built out of, as well as some of the historic landmarks of glass and steel that made up the history of conservatories.

Taking care of conservatories and effective repair can sometimes require an awareness of this history, to ensure that the fixes match all of the work that has gone into the conservatory and maintain the structure’s beauty.

A good example of what can happen when this is neglected came from the mysterious destruction of Britain’s most famous conservatory and one of its largest-ever temporary landmarks.

Conservatories And Crystal Palace

The building that would become known as Crystal Palace was never intended to last as long as it did. It was a gargantuan conservatory of clear glass walls draped over a modular cast-iron frame, only meant to last throughout 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition.

The reason for this was out of necessity; plans for what would be the first World’s Fair had only begun to take shape in 1849, and a year later, less than 12 months from the start of the event, construction of a temporary building in London’s Hyde Park had not even started.

There were 245 designs, but only two were even close to fitting all of the required elements for the event.

Enter Joseph Paxton. At this point, Mr Paxson was known for his work on the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House, which was at the time the largest conservatory ever made and was the home of a variety of exotic plants, most notably the Cavendish banana that he had cultivated.

Mr Paxton was seen as a landscaper and a gardener more than an architect, but on a visit to 

London to meet John Ellis MP, mentioned an idea he had for the hall inspired by his work at Chatsworth House, the latter saying that if he could put together a proposal in nine days he should submit.

Allegedly, he spent a Midland Railway board meeting sketching a design on a piece of blotting paper that would later become the basis for Crystal Palace.

It was initially rejected due to arriving too late, but amidst pressure from the general public after it was published in the Illustrated London News, the plan would ultimately prevail, taking just 39 weeks from start to finish.

After the Great Exhibition closed after a successful six-month event, it was dismantled from Hyde Park and reconstructed on Sydenham Hill in a form remarkably different to the one from the Great Exhibition.

Unfortunately, the move was extraordinarily expensive, costing £1.3m (£150m adjusted for inflation) which ended up never being paid back.

This led to the building being increasingly neglected from the 1890s until the 1920s, but just as it appeared that the building would have a new lease of life and remain a permanent fixture of London’s skyline, it caught fire on 30th November 1936.

For reasons that are still speculated on to this day, an explosion in the women’s cloakroom started an office fire that very quickly spread thanks to the wooden floors, setting the entire building alight within hours and burning the palace almost completely to the ground.

To this day it is unknown who started it and why, although John Logie Baird, the man who invented the first working live television system, allegedly believed it was set to sabotage his work, with some of his early mechanical television equipment stored in one of the towers.