Metal building with no gutters?

[jaxs]

I've seen no mention of ground shifting caused by wide variations in ground moisture. Worse in some than others but foundation damage make's gutter cleaning a minor chore to avoid serious foundation damage. Half baked french drains next to buildings can make it worse than doing nothing. Foundation remediation companies that furnish warranty backed by bonds and insurance place drain bed far below foundation level. Stone bed of a shallow drain causes massive saturation of dry ground before reaching the point of diverting 100% of water. Companies that warranty their work long term always place the stone reservoir deep enough soil moisture never varies regardless of seasonal changes. Add to that the habit of drains becoming plugged and they can cause more trouble than they solve. Less cost for installation is why most people opt for gutters with the understanding they must keep ground moisture reasonably stable. Some do it by the seat of pants with soaker hose. Those in the know do it with irrigation system controlled in part by ground moisture. IMO, importing select fill if neccessary to raise building to facilitate good drainage is the best plan for cost and over the long haul.

 

[JasperFrank]

My 30 by 35 garage has its gutters at 12 feet. Its a royal pain to clean these and we have pine and maple trees around and the wind carries everything to the roof. They fill up fast and I have to clean them twice a year, moving the ladder all the way around, takes about 90 minutes. Its become a task as i have gotten older to climb and move the ladder 14 times.
Tried all sorts of Gutter Guards, none of which worked. (Commenters fill in your suggested Gutter Guards, here. ) Organic matter breaks down rather fast and makes a sludge in the gutters.
One half of the roof, which is a little up slope, feeds a 1500 gallon under ground cistern, that discharges on over flow, to an area down slope and away from the structure. This is not connected to the domestic water. The other half has a drain spout and directs water towards a lawn area that is down slope.
The PNW has a very different rain pattern then most of the country. I should have tripled the storage capacity of the cistern. It rains all the time in the spring and winter, cistern is always full and over flowing. Summer and Fall, it doesn't rain at all for 3 months. The rain just turns off completely and everything drys out. And the cistern is quickly used up to water gardens and stuff, and then i can't use it, after mid summer as its my required Water Reserve for wild fire control. I have no idea what the rain patterns are in your part of Texas. Do you have any sort of slope to work with?

 

[Torvy]

This is where it will be. Foreground is driveway. Garage will be straight ahead. 30' side across, 40' back. House will be in back left from here. Land slopes a bit from right to left, then drops a few feet just past the treeline on the left.

I am very familiar with PNW weather. Not quite so wet in East Texas, but average is 4-5 inches a month, drier in summer. No maples, but there are a few big oaks on the property.

 

[ponytug]

First: congratulations on the new building!

I have to admit that I am not a gutter fan. I have seen way too many issues with them over the years; clogging, leaves and debris removal, rotting the eaves and fascia due to poor installation, leaks...

A geotextile/filter fabric will clog with time. Period. A widely known company swore that their wouldn't, but of course it did, despite being surrounded with pea gravel. Year one had water flowing out the French drain, year two a dribble, nothing since.

Getting the overall drainage on your site right first is definitely the way to go. When the building is higher than the surroundings, and there are swales to divert flowing water, you are in great shape. The bigger the drop that you can engineer in, the less you have to worry about ponding. Given your site, I would think about how you could add some height to your building base and surrounding area to get the water well away from the flat terrace that you have. I would be thinking about how water from the building isn't going to be a problem for the house and driveway.

Water is the kiss of death for pressure treated posts.

So, a plastic lined trench like @s219 suggested will get your moisture away from your foundations. If you are worried about other water getting into/under it, make it wider and slope the ground into it to create a reasonable drainage. A plastic lined swale won't clog and will channel water away from your building for a long, long time.

I would make the eaves as large as you can to keep water off of your building, and keep water farther away from the foundation. Your builder should be able to advise you on what wind loads the metal can take in your area.

All the best,

Peter

 

[ponytug]

View attachment 735069
This is where it will be. Foreground is driveway. Garage will be straight ahead. 30' side across, 40' back. House will be in back left from here. Land slopes a bit from right to left, then drops a few feet just past the treeline on the left.

I am very familiar with PNW weather. Not quite so wet in East Texas, but average is 4-5 inches a month, drier in summer. No maples, but there are a few big oaks on the property.

I know that you wrote that the land drains right to left, but I wonder how it would be to put in swales heading straight back at least 6' either side of your garage, either to the trees, or a swale by the tree line going right to left. I would up cycle the removed soil to provide a raised base for the garage, plus 3' either side. One item on the swales is that wider is better, both for water handling, but also for ease of mowing.

Don't forget that what is good for the goose is good for the gander- I would raise the house as well... you could slope the land from the house and the garage to a swale in the middle, moving the spoils on to the building sites.

We lived in a house with drainage that was 90% right, and the last 10% was a constant headache. By the time we realized the issue, it would have required 75' of subsurface drain, under two trees and a sidewalk... so it never got fixed, and was always a headache in heavy rain.

As a result, I have a preference for drainage that just works.

All the best,

Peter

P.S. To me "dead level" just doesn't fly with rainfall.

 

[jaxs]

My 30 by 35 garage has its gutters at 12 feet. Its a royal pain to clean these and we have pine and maple trees around and the wind carries everything to the roof. They fill up fast and I have to clean them twice a year, moving the ladder all the way around, takes about 90 minutes. Its become a task as i have gotten older to climb and move the ladder 14 times.
Tried all sorts of Gutter Guards, none of which worked. (Commenters fill in your suggested Gutter Guards, here. ) Organic matter breaks down rather fast and makes a sludge in the gutters.
One half of the roof, which is a little up slope, feeds a 1500 gallon under ground cistern, that discharges on over flow, to an area down slope and away from the structure. This is not connected to the domestic water. The other half has a drain spout and directs water towards a lawn area that is down slope.
The PNW has a very different rain pattern then most of the country. I should have tripled the storage capacity of the cistern. It rains all the time in the spring and winter, cistern is always full and over flowing. Summer and Fall, it doesn't rain at all for 3 months. The rain just turns off completely and everything drys out. And the cistern is quickly used up to water gardens and stuff, and then i can't use it, after mid summer as its my required Water Reserve for wild fire control. I have no idea what the rain patterns are in your part of Texas. Do you have any sort of slope to work with?

To increase water storage without a lot of expense see post #17. A 10"dia x 4' deep pool hold's more than 2,350 gallons that could gravity feed your underground cistern which I assume has a pump. A simple foot valve in line between pool and cistern will alow cistern to fill then shut-off to begin fliiling pool. A manifold as mentioned will alow the choice of filling cistern or pool first as well as directing water away from pool before it overflow's onto ground (no pump required). Details on request.
Lowering gutter will greatly extend time between need for cleaning. When wind is blowing leaves/needles/debris off a roof WITHOUT gutters,observe trojectory it take's and you will notice that if there was a gutter 8" or more below edge most would fly over gutter. That should convince you it's worth lowering gutters not only for easier access,but to exclude a large % of what normally fall's in them.

 

[wolc123]

One option, is to put the doors on the ends of the main building, and porches off each side. That will bring your gutters down to a more reasonable height, to keep clean as you get older, plus give you a lot more handy storage space.


When I finish dismantling the last old timber frame barn that my great great grandfather built on our farm, I am going to extend the porch on the new pole barn. That will make the gutters safer to clean and give me more storage area.

I didn’t run the porch the whole length, when I built it, because I was afraid that last old 1883 barn would fall on it, and take it out. It sure feels safer cleaning the lower parts of the gutters.

I dismantled another twin to that other old timber frame barn first, because it was on the site of the new pole barn. I used many of the old , mostly American chestnut hand-hewn posts, beams, and the sawed roofing and granary wood from that, to make a loft and workshops inside the metal shell of the new pole barn.

I like having the machinery doors on the ends of the building, because we get a lot of snow around here. Doors on the sides don’t work out so well with a metal roof.

 

[wolc123]

JI got to fire up the tractor (after a couple hours of running the block heater) and plow later this morning. See what I mean about doors on the sides and snow:

 

[Torvy]

Thanks! That looks similar to our plan. The lean to will be on the right (east) side and run 20'. Will have a 10' roll up on East side to accommodate the tractor. Cars will go into the 8' doors on south side. I'd rather the tractor door be on the south, too, but not enough room. Maybe I should tweak the design to keep the truck under the lean to and put 10' doors on the end...hmmmm....

 

[Torvy]

JI got to fire up the tractor (after a couple hours of running the block heater) and plow later this morning. See what I mean about doors on the sides and snow:
View attachment 735119

I feel your pain. Fortunately, snow is rare enough and temporary enough down here that I can mostly ignore it. I spent almost half of my life up north. I sometimes miss snow, but not enough to live in it full-time.

 

[wolc123]

I am cold blooded I guess, and I don’t think I could survive south of around Gettysburg PA. One of the keys to surviving the winter up here, near the Canadian border, is a woodstove. Even though it’s close to zero outside right now, it is comfortable and about 80 inside.

 

[Torvy]

I am cold blooded I guess, and I don’t think I could survive south of around Gettysburg PA. One of the keys to surviving the winter up here, near the Canadian border, is a woodstove. Even though it’s close to zero outside right now, it is comfortable and about 80 inside.

For what it is worth, all of my northern years were 2-6 degrees of latitude north of you...but a lot further west. Most winters we had at least 30 days below zero. One winter we had 30 consecutive days with a high at or below zero and sixty below freezing.

 

[jaxs]

Texas weather can be anything except boring. When asked if weather in Texas is injoyable,the standard answer is "if you find you don't like the weather,wait a few minutes and it will change". The low in Presidio County today is 25* the high is expected to be 71*. If you feel your weather is unbearably hot one day this coming summer,Google Presidio weather and it will likely make a chill up your spine.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

How do you handle the water coming off of the roof(s)?

I just let gravity do it's job. If the building wasn't there it would just hit the ground anyway.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

First: congratulations on the new building!

I have to admit that I am not a gutter fan. I have seen way too many issues with them over the years; clogging, leaves and debris removal, rotting the eaves and fascia due to poor installation, leaks...

A geotextile/filter fabric will clog with time. Period. A widely known company swore that their wouldn't, but of course it did, despite being surrounded with pea gravel. Year one had water flowing out the French drain, year two a dribble, nothing since.

Getting the overall drainage on your site right first is definitely the way to go. When the building is higher than the surroundings, and there are swales to divert flowing water, you are in great shape. The bigger the drop that you can engineer in, the less you have to worry about ponding. Given your site, I would think about how you could add some height to your building base and surrounding area to get the water well away from the flat terrace that you have. I would be thinking about how water from the building isn't going to be a problem for the house and driveway.

Water is the kiss of death for pressure treated posts.

So, a plastic lined trench like @s219 suggested will get your moisture away from your foundations. If you are worried about other water getting into/under it, make it wider and slope the ground into it to create a reasonable drainage. A plastic lined swale won't clog and will channel water away from your building for a long, long time.

I would make the eaves as large as you can to keep water off of your building, and keep water farther away from the foundation. Your builder should be able to advise you on what wind loads the metal can take in your area.

All the best,

Peter

Pea gravel is a big mistake around drain lines. It will eventually plug solid. Around here, 2" washed round drain rock goes around the lines, and you don't even need geotextile fabric.

 

[ponytug]

@Larry Caldwell Thanks. I agree with you. Although when I asked around locally (and the manufacturer of the drain pipe), 3/8" pea gravel is what everyone recommended. Yes, in hindsight, if I were doing it again, I would definitely redo it with coarse, angular rock. Personally, I don't see how geotextile has any lifetime except in sand or gravel.

All the best,

Peter

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

We are installing seamless 6” gutters on our new building... it sits atop a hill, but we are on clay loam... I don’t need more water next to the building. We have a few trees, but the 6” seamless on the house wash the leaves right out.

 

[Ken45101]

I had gutters put on the horse barn. Eventually I ripped them back off. One of the problems was that the downspouts created permanent mud holes. Also had problems with snow and ice sliding off.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

I had gutters put on the horse barn. Eventually I ripped them back off. One of the problems was that the downspouts created permanent mud holes. Also had problems with snow and ice sliding off.

Did you have snow guard installed?

 

[Torvy]

It's a bad idea to build a building and not have an eave gutter, because an eave gutter is necessary to protect the foundation of the house.

That seems counter-intuitive. The gutters concentrate the rain to downspouts and focuses a higher volume of water to locations near the foundation.

Without gutters, the same volume of rain is spread across the entire roofline. The risk to the foundation is when the rain hits the ground. A well-designed drainage system should disperse the rain when it hits the ground (rocks) and channel the water away from the foundation. (I'm thinking a type of French drain).