DMR Gutters Lesh Gutter Work Photopage

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Here is one of our recent copper gutter jobs and more

This is a funny story about a house at owned by an Attorney David Lesh (http://www.davidlesh.net/). Around 10 years earlier I had replaced the gutters on his house on the corner of 17th and Fremont at 3443 N.E. 17th. The gutters and downspouts were done in white pre-painted aluminum to match the house trim paint. I had featured the special work of his house on our web site since it's beginning:

He recently sold that house and had bought another one only a few blocks away on a quieter and larger corner lot The funny part was how the General Contractor; Dan White of DAW Remodeling Co. was rebuilding this house shown below to sell and was having the roofing replaced. The arched entry way was covered with rusty steel under some composite flat roofing. His roofer had found our web site and had me cover it the with the 20oz copper sheets we use. The gutters were down, so I asked the Dan of DAW about having me install the gutters in aluminum or perhaps a matching copper, but he said he already had a gutter contractor lined up to do it:

It seems that the new steel gutters that were installed were so crappy that within a year Mr. Lesh contracted with me to replace them. They were clogged and overflowing. I know we do much better gutters, but since all these gutter contractors know what garbage they install, I see this as intentionally criminal. But since the CCB only requires a 1 year warranty and does not require gutter contractors to level gutters, let alone keel then clean, they suffer no liability.

Here is a couple shots of the copper roof a couple years later.

This has nothing to do with the work I did. It is just a really neat wood frame glass greenhouse Mr. Lesh had made on his new property.

After getting the exact measurements I spent about a week processing these new copper gutters and other custom parts like Leaf-catchers and reducers. These are the new front copper gutters fully formed and ready to be mounted with the 2 longer gutters in between that are for the sides of the house that never had gutters mounted since the house was first built.

Then it took me over half a day just to get these all carefully on the work van set for safe freeway travel. Here are the new gutter parts just after I arrived with them to the house.

This is the front of the house just before the removal of the cheap steel gutters the DAW Remodeling Co. had installed. They came down pretty easy and the corners pulled open without much effort.

This shows a close-up before and after photos of these right angle outside corners in the front entry. The other gutter contractor used 2 zip screws on the outside face, 2 screws in the bottom, and a single screw in the back of the corner.

This corner has 4 copper rivets holding the outer face together, 5 rivets in the bottom and 6 rivets in the back corner. That is a 1 to 3 ratio, or 5 of these short zip screws to my 15 rivets in each corner that was double sealed with a better caulk. I used a section of copper gutter that was pre weathered for this section that would be under the entry archway.

Here is the finished gutter job from different angles to get a good look.

These new outlets in the gutter floor are over 4 times larger than what the steel gutters had for out no-clog system. With the copper screens over the gutters he should have a trouble free rain management system guaranteed for the next 15 years.

These heavy-duty 20oz copper gutters are suspended 8 times as strong as Building Code requires. They all have a slight slope toward the outlets, so there is no chance of standing water in the gutters, and should rinse them selves out in a heavy down pour.

The cost for this set of copper gutters was $5,974.18 parts and labor.

This shows the larger custom No-clog outlets, special industrial size elbows, reducers and the Leaf-catcher in the downspout to strain out the debris that settles in the gutters and is washed down in a heavy downpour.

Here is classic looking finial which is 7' tall that the client bought at an auction. I noticed that it was falling apart and suffering rust stains from inside. I tested it with a magnet and found that even though it was covered with a thin layer of copper, it had a steel frame inside. The seams were soldered together, but many of them had split open. It was a bit top heavy with the large orb under the spire is just hollow.

I suggested to the client that I could replace the pillar with a one piece unit that has only one seam. He agreed it would be a good idea. after getting it to my shop it literally took me less than 2 minutes to carefully strip off the copper from the 8 sided spire. I don't know how old this is, but I also discovered the green tarnish was just a fake paint over the copper after spending a couple hours working to remove it down to the clean copper surface, so the whole finial will tarnish together.

After I removed all the steel out of this finial there was only this lower shell sections left that had very little strength. I suggested building a wider base that was 2' x 2' with a high quality marine grade hardwood plywood, instead of the 13.5" wide base it had with a hollow steel 1.25" tall box inside. I also recommended filling the orb with cement to help give it a lower base weight and strengthen them from dents. The new wider base seen here is now 70# without the 1.5" copper pole, which is heavier than the original finial weighed.

The final weight was 218.5# in all. I only wish I had anticipated the weak spot just under the large sphere, where the copper pipe is the only thing supporting everything above that point. It has more flex than I was comfortable with. I could not have used a larger pipe. As it was I had to enlarge the hole to accommodate this larger pipe, but I could have added a 1.5" diameter hardwood dowel inside the lower section of this pipe to help support it better. Just before delivery I spent another hour adding solder to this junction to help strengthen it as much as possible. This is the nicest phallic symbol I have seen, let alone worked on personally.

I quoted this project at $763
That was quite a bargain for what all this is took to do.

These window wells were set so low that Mr. Lesh had made a border of blocks above the window wells for his landscaping around them. But top edge of the wells were still not tall enough, so he asked me for options to build this up a few inches higher with a copper sheet metal.

I suggested that we angle cut some cedar 2x4s to set on their side for use as a solid base inside the copper sheet metal that I will form over the cedar boards for the set of 3 window well borders. Here is the results. He was very pleased and said they look better than he had imagined.

I quoted this project at $787.50

155 sq' of 20oz copper to rover entry roof - $3,100
226.15' of heavy-duty copper gutters & downspouts - $3,205.43
27 corners and end-caps to miter - $1,215
117.94' of hinged leaf screens - $501.25
5 larger no-clog outlets - $275
3 leaf-catchers - $165
6 sq' of copper flashing - $120
68.5' of fascia build-out - $342.50
2 storm drains cleared out - $150
7' tall finial rebuilt - $765
31.5' of copper covered cedar window well border - $787.50

$10,626.68 Grand total for all 4 projects