Pergola Maintenance and Repair

Hi All,

Anyone can recommend me a Pergola company that is actually any good and can address a problem of insufficient drainage thats located in Northside of Brisbane?

I have a pergola in the backyard that leaks back onto the eaves when there is heavy downpour. The other day when it was raining heavily the rain caused the plaster on the eaves to fall in because there was a heavy light hanging and the plaster taking a soaking. No water actually gets inside the house as most of it just leaks out between the pergola roof and the eaves.

It only happens in heavy rain and I think its just because the drainage is insufficient so maybe adding another 1 or 2 drain pipes will solve it. Otherwise tilting the entire Pergola outwards so all the water goes and lands on the grass may be a solution - although no idea if that's workable or not.

Anyone recommend someone to me? Otherwise worse case I'm just going to remove the whole damn thing.

Here are some pictures of what I am talking about

Here is the backyard showing the Pergola



Here is the leak that happens during heavy rain.



Here is the result of recent heavy heavy rain. It eventually gave out and that heavy light would not have helped.

 

Hire a local handyman .. it’s very simple stuff .. don’t go to a pergola company .. they will rip you off doing something a handyman should be able to accomplish in 2-3 hours. There is no science with pergolas.

 

Do you reckon? Its more drainage stuff so I was going to call a plumber tomorrow to quote on how to address this. Installing new drains is probably what he is going to say I think or replace the existing ones with larger diameter ones.

Your right - let me reach out to a few handymen as well tomorrow see what they say.

 

I think you may be right on this one. We have issues with drainage in St Clair. I don't know what they did when they did the drainage, but quite a lot of the houses have had to put additional drainage in, because it just backs up, up the downpipes and does what you see in your photo.

 

its unlikely a drainage issue .. pergolas leak all the time .. it’s probably a leak which wasn’t fixed and it has damaged the eaves over the years .. it’s quite common where a pergola is attached to a roof through tiles, your leak is 100% around that area.

 

I'm looking at the photo of the water spilling over the top of the gutters. To me, that looks like drainage. I can't see a pergola in that photo though.

 

That's the part I'm not sure. I haven't been to this house in like 4+ years and even when I went I didn't pay attention to how the pergola roof attaches to the house and how the drainage works.

I've got the agent sending a plumber out there to quote to rectify and provide recommendations on the drainage. Cant fix the plaster and put up a new light until the drainage is sorted otherwise the same thing will happen again.

It may be that the pergola roof is utilising the house gutters for drainage but then I can see a downpipe directly on the pergola itself in another picture I have.

Anyway I think this is quite a common problem seen heaps of posts about very similar issues.

I hate leaks!!

Also had a toilet leak and roof leak in 2 other properties. I must say these last 4-5 weeks have been horrible for fixing things. I've spent so much cash on repairs lately

 

Yeah that dark photo is not very good. It was taken by the tenant like 2 years ago.

Looks like it rained so much the other day it couldnt handle it anymore.

 

Pergola's often have the very MINIMUM amount of fall (slope for water drainage)
So they're NEVER any good in a proper downpour
It only takes one tenis ball, dog chew rope or a dozen leaves to restrict the drain and this happens.

Consider yourself lucky, water isn't light, the fall on that pergola is about 3deg, so for it to back up over into the eaves means there's up to 50mm of water over the whole roof = nearly a tonne, more than enough for the entire structure to collapse taking the facia and eaves with it

Count your blessings

Edit: looking at the bricks it's a late 90's build, so the eave sheets probably aren't asbestos

 

So are you suggesting that the slope be increased? Can this even be done?

Water doesn't need much of a slope to flow and surely as a pergola installer they have minimum design specs so that this sort of things dont happen.

I dont know who built it but I cant imagine every single person with pergola having these issues. I live in Sydney and as you know its being pouring rain ALOT these days. Even right now as I type its pretty heavy and my Pergola at my house now never overflows so the mob that installed mine did it well.

 

The minimum slope is related to sheet overlap also, to limit water retension so the water is less likely to leak between sheet joins (@Scott No Mates will know better).
Like flood maps, there's area's able to cope with average to heavy rain in a 24hr period, though these days it's possible to have 3 months rain in a 24hr period (thanks global warming/weather changes), so we end up with 1/200 year flood events.
So sure, the pergola is built to cope with average rain, but in a decent sustained HEAVY downpour, even with clear drains it's never going to cope !

 

Yep that is what I am worried about. This house is in North Brisbane so it was raining VERY heavy last few days and I think the build-up of water and no gap between the periods of rain it eventually could not cope anymore.

Lets see what the plumber says - I think even if we add 1 or 2 extra downpipes and ensure all of the existing ones are free of build-up and flowing freely that may "just" be enough to handle most heavy rain events for the next 100 years! and if we have a freak event then not much we can do.

 

Plumber is definitely the place to start - with a plumber who knows about roofs and guttering!

 

I'd potentially put in some overflow spouts onto the gutters. Yes the water will come down onto the paving/grass but it's not like anyone's going to be standing there when it's raining. They are quite effective for heavy downpours and very cheap

They look like this and are good for gutters which might not have overflow slots on them

 

Something I will seriously consider. Cheap solution as well. Not sure if it will be suitable for my scenario but definitely something to look at.

 

Its common that house gutters in Australia don't cope with the sudden heavy downpours that can occur. The pergola will be concentrating the runoff from the roof sheets into one area of the roof gutter as well which doesn't help. Check gutters are clean.

Overflow spouts are a good solution. You can locate them on the gutters down the side of the house so they dont pour everywhere under the pergola. An upturned spout inside the gutter cut down to 20mm high with a hole cut out below it is a good solution as it doesn't relieve the water until it gets over the top of the spout. The prevents water overflowing in lighter rain conditions.

 

Particularly if the installer/plumber has the house roof gutters running out onto the pergola, adding to the amount of rainfall the pergola gutters and drainage has to cope with