There is no doubt that a well looked after and maintained house will pay its owners back big time. Eventually. Every property needs some amount of maintenance throughout its life and after a long hard winter, spring is the time to have a really good inspection and get the repairs under way – such as gutters. These essential items, now mostly plastic, are attached to each other in a relay along the bottom edge of the roof and are held on to the ‘barge boards’ by ebvnly spaced brackets. Gutters catch all the rain that hits the roof on all sides which flows along the gutter to the corner downpipe and straight down into the rain water drain. However the smart householder will be ahead of the game and will have diverted it into a nice neat waterbutt. You have to keep an eye on your guttering, it can come as a ghastly surprise and not insignificant expenditure when parts of the gutterig wear out and fall away. A gutter specialist will be needed – complete with ladders or even scaffolding, to make good this dangerous situaiton.