We lost two days to rain: heavy rain was forecast for Thursday but nothing materialized, and it rained during the first half of the day on Friday.

Saturday was beautiful.  The crew began by continuing work on the south gutter rebuild.  Later they installed some slate.  It's slow work because they have to cut the tiles to the proper angle to fit around the reverse gables.

Finally some slate with a nice copper valley:

Here's a detail.  The red tool visible in the center of the scaffolding is used to trim the slates; basically a paper cutter on steroids.

As scheduled, this morning at 7:30 a truck arrived with six palettes of slate; they were unloaded by a forklift.  My contractor also dropped off the copper for the ridge caps and valleys.  They didn't do any other work today since heavy rain is forecast starting in late morning.

Slates stacked on end on their palettes:

Copper for ridges and valleys in the garage where it can be safey locked up overnight:

The crew worked all day.  They finished up the gutter replacement on the east and northwest, then moved to work on the gutters on the west / southwest section of the house.  Not a lot of new pictures today since it's the same kind of work as yesterday.

They installed an additional outlet and downspout on the west, to the left of the reverse gable.  The gutter here was designed to drain into the downspout on the northwest corner; however, the house has settled and water no longer flows as intended in this area.  Adding the new outlet was easier than rebuilding the entire structure.  Furthermore, if the gutter were realigned  to flow north, it would look out of level with the rest of the house.

The crew spent these two days repairing gutters on the east and northwest sections of the house. 

Ever since I’ve owned the house, I’ve had issues with water spilling over the gutters, particularly on the NW corner (where I get water in the basement).  In that area much of the soffit below the gutters was rotted, in addition to the gutter itself.  Three planes of the roof drain into one downspout there.  The east isn’t as bad, but my contractor told me today that the reason I’ve had problems on that side is because the gutter is very shallow — a wooden V whose center is only about 1.5” deeper than its outer edge.  It also has no positive drainage (i.e., is flat rather than sloped toward the downspout). 

You can gauge the amount of work involved by the fact that it has taken them two full days to rebuild the gutters in these two areas (south and west still to be done).  The gutters are the same shape as the original, but with higher outer edges and with proper drainage, and their insides are covered with EPDM (a liner made for this purpose).  The tubes that go through the gutters and connect into the downspouts have also been enlarged.  So I hope that this will solve the drainage issues once and for all.

After removing the original metal gutter lining, this is what was revealed:

This corner is also in bad shape:

A 2 x 4 will be added at the outer edge to keep the water in the gutter more effectively:

One of the new tubes that connect to the downspouts:

Tube installed:

The completed replacement gutter, covered with EPDM:

Scaffolding on the east for gutter work:

Daylight visible through rotted soffit on the NW corner:

The house was built in 1904, or perhaps earlier.  The existing slates have been exposed to the elements for at least 115 years, so it’s not surprising that they are at the end of their life.  In the closeup photo below you can see how the top layer on many of the tiles has come off. 

I was told by one contractor with extensive experience on historic houses that the original roof was Pennsylvania slate.  The information and photos on this page tend to confirm what he said; PA black slate is on the soft side with a life of 75–120 years. 

The built-in (Yankee) gutters are shallow and the tubes that lead into the downspouts are small, with the result that water often overflows.  So along with the actual roof we will need to address these drainage issues.  The wood making up the gutters (not visible now) may also be rotted.

The original slate on the west (right-click / View Image for larger):

Detail of old slate (right-click / View Image for larger):